A WebmasterWorld thread has some SEOs discussing that for some of their query niches, Google tends to be ranking a lot of PDF documents at the top of the page.

Personally, I have not seen this but I can believe it. Google wants to return the most relevant information for the query, be it a web page, video, local listing or a PDF white paper.

So ranking for PDFs is not a new topic, but how do you monetize them after you rank for them?

GoodROI shared in the thread his thoughts:

Add affiliate links to your PDF.
In the content of the PDF you can talk about and promote your company’s products/services/ebooks/whatever.
Link juice flows through PDFs so you can sell links.
You can also sell ad placement or banner placement.

But managing these types of things in a PDF is a harder than in a web page. It is hard to serve dynamic ads in a PDF document. Plus some PDF viewers warn users of clicking on external links from a PDF, which can drastically drop click through rates.

In any event, if you are looking for tips on monetizing your good ranking PDF documents, join the thread.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.