What is the best way to monetize a high traffic website?

This is an excellent question, and it's good to think about beforehand, just remember that in this specific field it's always best to test. there is several ways to monetize your website, and not many creative AND effective ones unfortunately. Only creative OR effective. this i say unfortunately. Advertising: it can be Contextual Advertising, or behavioral but it's usually banner based. They both compete for the same display space usually. Affiliate Programs allow for you, the the affiliate, to gain a commission from a sale each time a visitor is redirected to a merchant’s link. If you have a page or content site that gels well with a specific merchant, you can do very effective things. On mobile it's a little tricky still. Affiliation usually works well with apps installs rather than merchants.  Mobile advertising services can help you to monetize your mobile site but copying your banner strategy to mobile won't work well, it takes a larger % of the site space. consider some more creative ways that work well on mobile: Content Recommendation - Content Recommendation involves earning revenue by recommending related content on your site that is targeted to a specific consumer audience. Lately I have saw an Gesture Monetization solution called “errnio” this is only on mobile web, the solution based on user gestures, and doesn't affect the site performance or other banner solutions so it only adds revenue to you.

You may find that some simple optimization of your ad placements with AdWords can significantly increase the amount of clicks and earnings. I would also look at the content of the site and what people are looking for and try to provide monetized affiliate links to earn commissions on the things they are buying. Contact me if you want some help

I use OIOPublisher.  Self service ads, it works awesome.  You can use affiliate ads to fill in the empty spots and make money from those offers while you find advertisers.  All you have to do is approve or reject the ad, the software does the rest, from uploads to billing. I personally don't like Adwords...except when used with Google site search.  A good alternative is Infolinks.  I've been having some good results without the tackiness of Adwords.  Another thing you want to do is start an email list.  Once they visit your site and leave, they are probably gone forever.  However, if you capture their email address by offering something small for free (ebook, tips, etc) then you can market to them again and again.  I use that on my site too.  I recommend Aweber.  Selling ads the and email list...that is where the real money is.

Sponsored content is undoubtedly the most profitable monetization option for high traffic websites. And, it takes some groundwork to get started with sponsored content; Here's a comprehensive guide to implementing sponsored content  http://www.blackmonk.com/blog/2014/05/monetization-through-sponsored-content-implementation-road-map-for-publishers - Implementation guide for monetization through sponsored content

Sell advertising spots that fit in with the 'normal' content. A bit like 'promoted posts' from Facebook. These types of advertisements are generally accepted in terms of good ux, and perform better for the advertiser than the flashy type of advertising. That means you can also charge a bit extra. Another idea is to start a blog section about American Made products and affiliated themes, and let advertisers produce brand content for a certain amount of money. It all comes down to being relevant for BOTH your visitors and advertisers.

I know this isn't the direct answer to your question, but have you considered (or do you currently) collect 'subscribers' or 'members' that can opt-in to receive a newsletter from you, which in turn will be a vehicle to include relevant advertising, and thus 5-10x your revenues?

Google generally gets fairly high CPMs for advertisers fyi. There are a few other options available: 1) Contact advertisers directly and charge higher CPMs. Not fun, but many major websites do this. 2) Talk to other ad networks (Rubicon, Pubmatic, Admeld, Google are the largest) 3) Try moving around ad units so they are in more visible, and clickable, places. Put an ad unit in the middle of content, or at the end of content. 4) Use more 300x250 ad units, and less 'addy' looking units like the 728x90 or 160x600. You wont get premium CPMs for those 5) Dont even consider using any other unit sizes that the three mentioned above. Hope that helps!

One of the most common forms of website monetization, display advertising simply refers to the banner and text ads.Affiliate marketing involves steering your visitors to products and services of a third party merchant; if that merchant converts your referrals to a sale, you get a slice of the action. Lead generation can be thought of as a cousin to affiliate marketing; it involves capturing information about qualified visitors  and selling that information to a third party who may want to sell to that lead. A store online  where users can buy branded merchandise. For more information visit this link below- http://trafficreportonline.com/what-are-the-procedure-to-increase-website-traffic-get-amazing-traffic-report/

Great traffic! I work at http://RewardsDen.com and we provide a real-world rewards program for websites, blogs, and other online communities who want to drive reader engagement and create new monetization without intrusive ads. How it works: -You copy/paste a line of code in the footer of your site - We automatically reward users with points for doing important actions like, coming back everyday, social sharing, commenting, etc. - Users redeem the points on your website for rewards - Our brand partners supply the rewards for free and pay you every time one is redeemed. It is a great supplement to ads and is non-intrusive, plus there is no risk to try it out.