There are countless online communities where the creator makes millions with the advertising of the site. There are few places online where a site creator is willing to offer a portion of the profits to their users, just for participation.

Helium is one community that offers writers the ability to see a small residual income based off the page views of the articles you write. Another community that offers the same benefit is mylot: myLot User Profile. It’s a forum type community that pays you for participating on the site. It’s a great place to meet people and find friends spanning the globe.

So why don’t more online communities follow this same practice? Why not encourage your users to hang around and see what is going on and capitalize on their use of your site.