Factors You Should Consider While Evaluating a CMS – Part 5

This is my last post in this series. I have tried to cover the major factors you should consider while evaluating a CMS. However, the CMS's ability to monetize and community support, I believe I cannot skip, so throwing some light on these factors.

Ability to Monetize

Many websites are built to become a direct source of revenue. These websites may either be e-commerce sites or may intend to earn revenue using affiliate marketing, selling advertising real-estate on their pages, by putting paid advertising using channels, such as Google Adsense, Kontera, Bidvertiser, etc., in-image ads, accepting sponsored content (such as blog posts/articles), creating email lists, etc. Your CMS should allow an easy transformation of the portal into an e-commerce site in the case of the former. In case you’re willing to go for one of the latter monetization techniques, your CMS should support the addition and execution of JavaScript snippets securely, integration with affiliate websites, installation of monetization-related components.

Available Expertise and Community Support

Regardless of how feature-rich a CMS product might be, you still need few developers to implement it for you. Also, your developers need ongoing support from their fellow developers from the community as well. This is why you should certainly consider how easily experts are available and if they are reasonably affordable. You should also check the online community that supports and uses the product you’re considering as a potential candidate in your CMS evaluation exercise.

Here I complete discussing factors that you should consider while evaluating a CMS. What other factors you think we should consider. Share your thoughts.