How to monetize a Backdrop site

Hi...,

And welcome to our Backdrop community.

Do you mean modules to help someone monetise their own website, or the official backdrop website?

Hello. Welcome to Backdrop

Some of the things you are asking for can be done with Ubercart.

Ubercart out of the box supports  buying a role, which could satisfy your paid memberships need.

The paywall with a few items to read for free may be possible but might require a custom module.

Pay to publish may be possible with the roles, though if it is pay per article that might require a different solution though I think others in the community might have had this use case.

I'm not aware of an integration with Patreon, but it may be feasible

I think your local ad server requirement could possibly be done with Ubercart, but may need some custom solution.

Assuming this is a How to question, I will move to that section so you get more views.

Coming from Drupal, I would recommend using the shop system Commerce rather than Ubercart for the features you’re looking for.
It has already been ported to Backdrop CMS.

General Recommendations

1) Pay to Publish (paying 10$ for each node you publish)

The Commerce Node Checkout module would be a good fit here (unfortunately not yet available for Backdrop CMS).
However, I was able to port the base module reasonably well using Coder Upgrade. It works fine so far in my test environment, though it’s probably not “production-ready” for publishing yet — at least not with my current level of expertise.

I haven’t attempted to port the Commerce Node Checkout Expire module yet, since it depends on additional modules — mainly the Interval module. That said, Interval now seems to be available for Backdrop CMS as well, which should make porting easier.

2) Membership + Paywall

Using Commerce together with Rules, you can sell user roles quite effectively, including for limited time periods.
This gives you a solid foundation to build on.

For example, you can assign a “premium role” with additional permissions:

• No ads
• Access to exclusive content
• Other custom privileges 

Alternatively, you can implement a paywall. There are several paywall modules available for Drupal, though they would need to be ported to Backdrop CMS:

• https://www.drupal.org/project/field_paywall
• https://www.drupal.org/project/content_paywall
• https://www.drupal.org/project/nopremium
• https://www.drupal.org/project/premium_content

In some Drupal projects, I’ve also used Commerce License for membership features (also not yet available for Backdrop CMS), but it’s not strictly necessary.

3) Patreon Integration

As far as I know, there’s no useful integration available for Drupal or Backdrop CMS.

4) Ad Server

I’m not aware of any ready-made automated solution.
A possible workaround would be to create a Commerce product or a Webform with payment functionality, allowing users to upload banner ads.
You would then need to manually add those banners to your ad server.