As blogging and influencer marketing gain popularity as professions, it’s easy to assume that making money online is simple. You can create a blog and choose from one of the many recommended monetization strategies to watch your bank balance grow.
Generating revenue from a website can be a slow process, but it’s important to persevere even if you don’t see immediate results.
How to monetize your website
This guide is designed to show you how to get a return on investment from all the work you put into your website instead of teaching you how to make a lot of money quickly.
1. Experiment with affiliate marketing
As an affiliate marketer, you earn a commission from every referral you make to another business. For example, if you refer a customer to a website and they make a purchase, you earn a commission.
If a reader buys a book that a book blogger recommends, the blogger will get a commission from the sale. Similarly, if you buy a piece of recommended clothing from a fashion blogger, they will get a percentage of that sale.
Although affiliate marketing can be successful, you need to take care not to damage your reputation in the process. But here’s an important caveat: To succeed with affiliate marketing without damaging your integrity and reputation, you need to:
- Properly disclose any affiliate links or relationships you have (no one likes a sleazy pitch)
- Recommend products and services your audience cares about
- Don’t go on a frenzy of promoting anything and everything (without testing the product or at least checking its reviews)
Product reviews
If you are an affiliate, you can help customers by writing reviews of products you have used and liked. This is because many customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Before making a purchase, customers often read reviews.
Tutorials
You can deliver a lot of value to your audience by creating a tutorial around a product you are pitching.
This type of affiliate marketing content is most effective for recommending:
- Software and online tools
- Beauty and makeup
- Kitchen appliances
- Hobby-related products
Recommended tools and resources
When available, you can support me by visiting my dedicated page of favorite tools, apps, books, and anything else I genuinely enjoy. Purchasing from my affiliate links helps keep this website going. Thank you!
2. Pay Per Click Advertising with Google AdSense
PPC is a way for website owners to make money passively by having readers click on ads. The most popular tool for this is Google AdSense.
Google AdSense is a simple way to make extra money without putting in a lot of effort.
So how much will you be getting?
- 68% of the revenue on AdSense for content
- 51% on AdSense for search ads
The best part is that you will always be paid by Google on time, which is usually between the 21st and 26th of the month.
How to monetize a website with Google AdSense:
- Read the Terms and Conditions. Make sure that your website meets all the criteria.
- Proceed to sign up for AdSense and wait for approval.
- Once your account has been approved, simply embed the JavaScript code into a widget.
- Place the ads anywhere you like on your website.
3. Create and sell a product (digital or physical)
Selling digital products is a good way to make money if you do not have a lot of time to spend on creating new content, as it does not require regular updates like a blog would.
eBooks and audiobooks
If you want to make money from your expertise, you need to create a guide that others can use to take action. This will require a lot of work upfront, but it will be worth it if you can get people to pay for your guide. Yes, you’ll need to put in a ton of work beforehand and:
- Become an expert in something
- Sit down and type those words
- Transcribe them to audio (optional)
- Design a cover
- Prep a marketing campaign
Launch an e-course
You can productize your expertise by creating online courses and earning a recurring income every time you launch or relaunch your course.
Build and sell an application, plugin, or other software
Your website can be used as a starting point for launching a new software product. Ask your readers what problems they think an app or plugin could help solve. Test your minimum viable product with a group of beta users. When you’re ready, launch it on Webflow to an audience that’s already interested.
Sell digital downloadables
If you have some experience with graphic design, you can put a digital product on sale on your website. Here are some product ideas:
- Templates, checklists, trackers
- Blog graphics
- Stock photo bundles
- Photoshop presets
- Illustrations
- Website themes (including Webflow templates)
- Premium design elements (icons, fonts, etc.)
- Video effects or stock footage
- Audio elements (jingles, brand tunes, etc.)
Sell merchandise
If you want to start selling branded merchandise on your website, you’ll need to add an ecommerce CMS and connect to a third-party fulfillment service.
Some of the popular options are: Some of the popular options are:
- Teespring: on-demand apparel printing
- Spreadshirt: apparel, phone cases, and accessories
- KITE: over 250 product types supported
4. Selling Ad Space
This method is worth a try if you are willing to put in more time. By directly selling available space on your site to advertisers, you can earn more money from displaying advertisements.
There are a few options available to you, the most common being to list your site on ad directories and networks. You can let advertisers know that you are selling ad space by listing your site on ad directories and networks.
- Make a media kit – a summary that outlines the statistics and key facts of your website.
- Send it to potential advertisers. Let them know why they should work with you.
- When you’ve landed your group of advertisers, manage them using Google Ad Manager.
5. Sponsored Content
Content that is sponsored by a brand or business is a collaboration between the publisher and the business. This is a way to make money by creating content for a business and then publishing it on your site.
Before creating sponsored content, consider these few points:
- How much influence you have online.
- The number of sponsored posts you’ll be writing each month.
- How much time you’ll spend creating the content.
- Brand value (the sponsored content vs. your blogging brand).
Mentions on your website or blog. Links to the sponsor’s website. Shout-outs on your social media accounts. Negotiating sponsorship deals with other companies is another way to leverage your website audience. You can charge for mentions on your website or blog, links to the sponsor’s website, or shout-outs on your social media accounts. You can charge for:
- Publishing a post on a relevant topic with a link to the sponsor website (advertorials)
- Reviewing one of the sponsor’s products in your article (sponsored reviews)
- Including their content in your email newsletter (newsletter sponsorship)
- Any bonus promotion on social media
6. Flipping Your Website
This method of making money from your website is different from the others, as it involves selling your website. If you have a popular or high-traffic website, this can be a profitable option.
You can find out how much a website is selling for by looking at the listings on Empire Flippers.
Your website valuation will depend on several factors:
- Niche
- Monetization model
- Monthly revenue to expenses ratio
- Amount of traffic
- SEO metrics
- Conversion rates
- Social media follower count
The factors that affect the selling price of a website are:
- The age of the site
- The revenue and profit it generates
- The size and scope of the website
- The niche it is in
- The level of competition in that niche
- The amount of traffic a website has
- How much profit it generates
- Revenue steadiness
- Continual growth
7. Monetize access to your email list
If you’re spending hours creating content for your newsletter, you’re not alone. However, you may be wasting your time.
Appeal to your readers to contribute financially to your endeavor – many will agree to do so because they are already aware of the value of your content.
The Economist’s paid newsletter, Espresso, has been running since 2014 and is still active today, indicating that it is a successful monetization strategy.
If you want to set up a paid email newsletter, you can use Revue or Substack. This will prevent people from being able to share your content publicly.
8. Monetize your expertise
If you are a freelancer, you can use your website as a portfolio to promote your skills and services online. Having a personal website tends to allow you you charge 65% more per hour than those without one.
Here are some ideas:
- Website design and development (you can pick up this skill in Webflow University)
- App development
- Graphic design
- Virtual assistant services
- Copywriting and content marketing
- Editing and proofreading
- SEO and digital marketing
- Transcriptionist services
- Recruiting and career services
- Any other service you can do remotely
Spinoff idea: Advertise in-person services
You can use your website to find clients in your area and pitch other in-person services such as:
- Workshops
- Retreats
- Speaking engagements
- Face-to-face consulting
Another spinoff idea: Provide one-on-one coaching sessions
Ask your readers if they want to learn more about what you do best and offer to help them.
Forbes reports that the coaching niches that are growing the fastest right now are leadership, professional, relationship, health & wellness, and financial. According to Forbes, some of the other fastest-growing coaching niches right now are:
- Women empowerment
- Employee engagement and satisfaction
- Chronic illness
- Sexuality
- Sales
9. Set Up Online Courses/Coaching
You can find free courses by combing through YouTube videos or looking for free downloadable PDFs. Online courses can come in many different formats, such as simple PDF downloads, recorded audio, or well-produced videos. For example, Guitar Tricks offers step-by-step videos as well as how-to articles.
How to monetize a website via courses?
- Pick a topic/niche.
- Create a new website or integrate your course into an existing site.
- Upload the content and promote it.
If you want to make money by setting up online courses, there is no limit to how much you can earn, as it will only be determined by how many people visit your course.
10. Coupons with Affiliate Links
Most shoppers look for ways to save money when they buy things. One way that businesses use affiliate marketing is by giving their customers coupons from affiliate partners.
You can increase traffic to your website by displaying coupons.
So what are the options?
- Post coupons from affiliate partners/programs you’ve joined to your existing sites.
- Contact your local and national retailers for deals you can promote on your website.
- Create sites dedicated to offering coupons. These can be general, such as coupons.com, or specific, like Holidayers.
11. Start a premium certification program
If you are an expert in your field and have a strong personal or business brand, you can start a certification program. It would be like an advanced training program or e-course, with homework, exams, and grading.
Copyblogger offers an Authority program (soon to be the Digital Commerce Academy) for content marketers and writers. Joanna Weibe from Copyhackers runs a Copy School for conversion copywriters.
The people behind both blogs have a lot of credibility in their industry, which makes their programs more trustworthy.
12. Set up a dropshipping store
There are three aspects of ecommerce that are generally considered to be pretty boring: inventory management, fulfillment, and shipping. Dropshipping is a fulfillment method that does away with all of that.
As a dropshipper, you don’t store any inventory. Your supplier is responsible for that. They also make sure that every item is wrapped and shipped securely to the customer on time, while you focus on getting more orders.
To earn $1,000 to $5,000 per month, you need to be willing to work hard every day. That is:
- Set up a nice ecommerce storefront
- Find reliable suppliers
- Invest in pay-per-click ads to promote your products
- Provide good customer service
- Look into other ways of growing your store traffic
13. Donation Based Monetization
If your content is valuable to readers, you may request donations to support growth of your website. Though not every reader will donate, sufficient traffic may generate enough income to sustain your website and create additional revenue.
Asking your readers for support is nothing to be ashamed of. Many professional gamers, comics writers, artists, and other creative types have a group of fans who are willing to donate money.
You can set up donation buttons on your site that allows readers to contribute directly to payment processors such as PayPal, Stripe, or Fundly.
4 website monetization strategies to drop in 2022
It’s easy to choose a simpler monetization strategy like display ads over a more complex one, like creating an e-course.
1. Display ads
There’s a lot of ad networks you can choose from if you want to place ads on your blog to make some money.
It is not very difficult to put some advertisements on your blog, but you will not make a lot of money from them.
Here’s why:
- 25% of internet users use ad blocking software, meaning they don’t see your ads.
- To earn $100,000 with Google AdSense, you need to have approximately 20,000 daily website visitors (plus 25% more to make up for those using ad blockers).
- Most people have mixed feelings about online ads.
2. Selling links
Although sponsored posts won’t have a negative effect on your search engine rankings, if you state that you’ll include a do-follow link to someone’s website for a price, you’re likely to be penalized.
The Google Web Spam team has repeatedly warned bloggers not to sell backlinks or participate in any other link schemes.
3. Infolinks
One popular way to monetize your blog is through Infolinks. This method has been around since the early 2000s.
This network used to be popular for in-text advertising because every time a user clicked on a link, they would get paid. The ads displayed would be mildly related to what the user was interested in.
4. RSS feed ads
Ads that are included in RSS feeds should no longer be used as a method of monetization.
RSS feeds aren’t as popular as they used to be and having one on your website can make it look cluttered. Most people don’t click on ads anyway, so having RSS feeds probably won’t make much of a difference.
Audience comes first, monetization second
Your website audience is your most valuable asset.
Monetizing your blog will be difficult unless you put in the effort to grow your readership and create a reputation online. A good looking website is essential, but you also need to spend time finding your niche and publishing high-quality content. Engaging with your early readers is crucial for building a relationship with them. Once you have a strong rapport, you can look into monetizing your blog.