what is "monetize"?

Meg Hourihan's weblog

Meg didn't like the overuse of the word "monetize" at the recent ETech conference. I think the word is a barbaric neologism. Right up there with "network" as a verb.

More about ETech from Robert Kaye, Mayhem & Chaos Coordinator and creator of MusicBrainz, the music metadata commons. I like the sound of all that, but am not sure what he does exactly. But there are links to explain it all.

Anyhow, to get back to "monetize," I think it sort of means "to monetarily maximize" or something similar. But I didn't look it up yet, I'm just going by the sound and look of the word. Maybe it's not such a bad word after all, if the meaning is clear without having to refer to some jargon dictionary. I like neologisms okay; I just don't care for displeasing word constructions. And the word looks like "Monet" and I'm quite sure it has nothing to do with French Impressionist painters.