How to Monetize Linux Hacking/Pentesting Website?

nicemkay

nicemkay

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It seems I've been caught a bit off guard.

I have a website with Linux tutorials, and had a few kali linux/hacking/pentesting related tutorials, on how to use various popular tools. Given the amount of websites and YT channels on this topic , where the websites monetize via Adsense and YT channels monetize via Amazon/Adsense/other, I thought it would be smooth sailing.

However, it seems the content is sensitive, and I moved it to another website so I can use Amazon Associates on the original website, without having to worry about getting banned.

I saw that many such websites have Adsense all over, however I applied with this site to Ezoic and the website got rejected.

The site isn't about hacking people's Facebook accounts, but it can be interpreted as malicious I suppose. In my eyes the content is well intentioned, but maybe I'm biased. And I do understand that advertisers may not want to deal with situations that are subject to interpretation.

Still, I'm pretty sure I'm missing something here, since you can Google "how to hack wifi" and top results are using Adsense.

I believe one reason is that many of those sites have a lower number of hacking tutorials, out of their total number of posts. However others have 90% of their posts about hacking and still use Adsense.

Does anyone have experience with such websites and how to monetize them with a reputable network?
 
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Have you considered offering a mini course/guide on how to protect yourself from these types of hacks?

Putting Adsense a side, there's affiliate marketing, promoting VPN's, Security Software (Review type content), Personal information removal services (OneRep Aff, etc), weekly hangouts or Slack community for a small fee of $7/monthly were you go over what is happening in the niche/vertical and can do QA.

In terms of other affiliate offers, checkout https://offervault.com/ and https://odigger.com/ to get an idea of what offers are currently available for your niche.

Not sure what your hardware skill level is, but a cool YouTuber I watch Seytonic has his own PenTools for sale https://www.seytonic.com/maltronics

It doesn't hurt to reach out to sites that you frequent that are similar or slightly larger than yours that are monetized that you enjoy reading and asking the site owner how they got monetized.
 
Besides the ads, one of the things you can do (and is a logical upgrade) is simply a course lik the previous poster said. The individual tutorials are only one small thread and a few might want more.

Don't go crazy. Just use something like Gumroad to sell your stuff.
 
I also think a course is the way to go for this. I know when I was doing a bit of that stuff, Heath Adams was just getting going with his courses, is made good money on them.

I would create a funnel, give away something for free, landing page main course/ then email marketing from there.

I'm in a tricky niche also and I've just started building out the same for my site.
 
Use affiliate links to different courses on Udemy etc, or you could create your own ebook/course
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I was thinking the usual route in this case is monetizing through a course, but I'd have to invest the time into building that course, then promoting it, and I don't think I have the expertise to make something that I would genuinely consider worthwhile to ask money for it.

The things I post are solid information, but they're not book level material, at least not in my opinion.

I would've loved Amazon because I sometimes recommend relevant hardware from there, or ads since people can click on them if they're interested, and both of them wouldn't require much special attention.

I'm trying to keep this website and the way I monetize quite transparent, so if I review something I'll have to try it out myself.

@steeleone you make a great point about reviewing software and services. Thanks a lot! I decided I want to enjoy this website (as opposed to other websites I have that aren't as fun to work on). Making honest reviews for VPNs (or other software/services) myself sounds really fun. Since many VPN's, hosting, etc, are shilled to death just because they pay more, this might be very refreshing. Thanks again for suggesting!
 
If you don't have the expertise, you could collaborate with someone who has it but doesn't have the audience.
 
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