- #1. Selling Products
- #2. Selling Services
- #3. Selling Ad Space
- #4. Affiliate Marketing
- #5. Accepting Donations
- #6. Sponsored Posts
- #7. Generating Leads
- #8. Subscriptions & Memberships
- #9. Freemium Model
- How Long Does It Take To Monetize Your Website?
- Which Method Should You Choose for Your Website?
- Final Thoughts: How To Monetize a Website
Whether it’s a small side hustle or your entire monthly income, monetizing websites has never been more popular – or profitable. And, there are multiple ways you can make money through a website. You only need a little time, effort, and the right website builder.
In this guide, I’ll share how to make money from a website using these nine popular strategies, and explain how you can get started.
I’ve recently updated this guide to ensure the nine monetization methods highlight relevant and accurate information, helping you to make an informed decision based on your website type. In addition, I’ve added more expert tips and fresh imagery, as well as a new section to break down how long it takes to monetize your site.
#1. Selling Products
When you think about making money from a website, you think about selling products, right?
Roughly 20% of all sales happen through ecommerce stores – by 2026, online sales are expected to exceed $8.1 trillion. The best part is that anyone can set up an online store and start selling products.
There are two things to consider:
- What kinds of products do you want to sell? (for example, physical products, digital products, print-on-demand products, etc.)
- How do you want to sell your products? (for example, through a website, social media, online marketplaces, in-person locations, etc.)
For the purpose of this article, I’ll focus on using DIY ecommerce website builders to sell products. Builders, like Shopify and Wix, have made it easier than ever to create an online store – no matter your skill level.
These beginner-friendly ecommerce platforms offer tons of sales tools and business support, such as website analytics and sign-up forms for newsletters. And, if you need extra functionality, select builders also provide app markets from which you can install third-party plugins.
Selling digital products can be a good alternative to physical products, especially if you don’t have the space or time to store and manage stock. Read our guide to the best digital products to sell for inspiration.
#2. Selling Services
Another common way people make money online is by selling services. This could be anything, from creating custom diet plans to a window cleaning business.
Like selling products, you can use a website builder to sell services. My advice? Find your unique selling point (USP) to differentiate your service from others on the market. Why should people buy what you’re providing?
Many website builders, such as Squarespace, make it easy to design a site from scratch and offer services. For example, Squarespace’s Acuity Scheduling tool lets you take online bookings through your site. The website builder has also recently improved its service-based tools, such as client invoicing, to make the process as easy as possible for business owners.
#3. Selling Ad Space
You might find them pointless or annoying as a user, but displaying ads on your website is one of the easiest ways to make money. However, while website ads are simple to set up, they’re not a huge money-spinner unless your website gets a lot of monthly traffic.
The most common way to sell ad space is by using a pay-per-click model. This is where you receive a commission from the advertisers every time someone clicks through to their site via an ad on your web page.
The average CPC (cost per click) for sites selling ad space is $0.63. To put that into context, you’ll have to generate thousands of clicks each day to earn $100,000 per year in profit.
There are three ways you can jump aboard the ad bandwagon:
- Use Google AdSense – This involves Google embedding code on your website to advertise, and reading what your page is about to ensure all ads that appear are relevant to your content. Unfortunately, Google AdSense has become increasingly competitive, making it harder and harder to generate a reasonable rate of return.
- Sell ad space directly to companies – This requires more legwork, but it puts you in a stronger position when selecting the type of ads that are displayed on your site, and when you’re negotiating a higher payout per click.
- Use an ad network – Sites like Adsterra and Media.net work similarly to Google Adsense, but often provide a greater return and more targeted ads.
Just remember to consider your visitor journey when selling ad space on your site. If your ads make your website look messy or limit its functionality (for example, by slowing down loading times), this could impact the success of your website and decrease profitability.
#4. Affiliate Marketing
Thanks to the rise of bloggers, influencers, and content creators, affiliate marketing is more popular than ever. You’ve probably clicked an affiliate marketing link without even realizing it. But what does it actually mean, and how can you make money off a website with affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an arrangement between your website and a company – you direct potential customers from your site to theirs.
There are two ways to generate profit from affiliate marketing: CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition). Similar to ads, CPC is where you receive money every time someone clicks a link on your site that sends them to the affiliate (partner company).
With CPA, you don’t receive money unless that user actually converts – this means the visitor needs to buy a product or sign up for a service from the affiliate company. As you’d expect, CPA payouts are far higher than CPC, because you’re making the affiliate company money.
Rather than simply providing ads to users as a sideshow, affiliate marketing can link neatly with your content. People are generally more tolerant of this kind of marketing, and it’s a lucrative method, especially if you’re looking to make money from blogging.
Naturally, the more traffic your website gets, the more traffic you can potentially redirect to an affiliate partner. In this respect, it’s a lot like selling ad space – you need to get a lot of site visitors for it to be a worthwhile revenue stream.
#5. Accepting Donations
While selling ad space and affiliate marketing rely on your website getting a lot of traffic, donations can be a more effective way to make money if you can build an engaged community.
If your visitors (literally) buy into your content, it makes sense that some will be willing to show their appreciation for your work via a donation. This is pretty standard practice among podcast websites since many rely on funding from listeners to maintain their shows.
Wikipedia is one of the biggest examples of a nonprofit site that accepts donations. It’s an open-source information resource that’s free to use, and the founders want to keep it that way. To show appreciation for the site, you can now leave a donation.
Most major website builders and payment gateways will let you embed donation buttons on your site. I’d recommend opting for PayPal due to its universal popularity. After setting up your PayPal account, you can create and customize your donation button to suit your business.
#6. Sponsored Posts
Nowadays, sponsored posts are synonymous with influencers who promote products to their follower base in return for cash. And, as your website grows in popularity, you might have companies reach out to you in the hope that you’ll promote their business or products too, by publishing content that they’ve written on your site.
There are a few things to consider when sharing sponsored posts:
- Stick to relevant content – Your sponsored posts should align with the interests of your site visitors. For example, if you sell watches online, it doesn’t make sense to host content from a company that sells furniture or pet products.
- Follow FTC (Federal Trade Commission) guidelines – There are strict guidelines in place that state that, if the content you’re producing on your site is sponsored, you need to declare it to visitors.
- Be an expert in your niche – You can flip the process on its head! If you’re seen as an authority on a topic, other sites may want you to create content for them.
When it comes to sponsored posts, I can’t stress the importance of relevance enough. Just because someone is willing to pay you to post on your website, doesn’t mean your audience will get value from it. A poor match will also likely lead to poor performance, which is bad for the sponsor and you.
#7. Generating Leads
My seventh suggestion for monetizing a website is lead generation. This is the process of putting potential customers in touch with relevant companies.
For example, if you run a site geared around athletics, you could work with sports brands, nutritionists, and personal trainers to help put these partners in touch with people – or “leads”.
Now, not only do you need to find companies that are interested in having a commercial relationship with you, but you will need to optimize your site. By this, I mean focusing on setting up a clean, easy-to-navigate website with clear CTAs (calls to action).
You must make it obvious to visitors what happens when they click on a CTA – in most cases, they’ll be redirected to a form that will ask for personal information and contact details. After this, they’ll be contacted – or “qualified” – by the partner company to see how interested they are in their service.
You’ll then be paid for every lead you deliver to the partner company. This is a model called CPL (cost per lead).
Relevancy and quality is everything when it comes to selling leads. If you can connect willing buyers with relevant businesses, there are huge earning possibilities. So, before picking companies to work with, work out exactly what your audience wants and the challenges they face, then approach companies that offer great solutions.
#8. Subscriptions & Memberships
Subscriptions work best when you have a product or service that people can’t physically buy but need to access regularly. This could be anything from online-only products to digital content. It can be a great recurring revenue stream for your website.
If your website is popular enough, you can place premium content behind a paywall. Large brands, such as The New York Times, adopt this monetization method.
Luckily, most website builders will let you create a “members only” area on your site. Members can then sign into your website with their unique account details. In this area, you can store all of your exclusive content, such as articles, research, videos, podcasts, and more. You could even give away free merchandise to subscribers to boost your brand’s appeal.
#9. Freemium Model
If you’re not sure how to make money off a website, my final recommendation is to provide a freemium product or service. This is a great way to demonstrate value without the customer risking a financial investment.
So, how does it work? A freemium model is where you offer a limited version of your product or service for people to use while keeping more advanced features behind a paywall. Let customers get a taste of your product first.
How Long Does It Take To Monetize Your Website?
Monetizing your website does take time – growing your website is a marathon, not a sprint, and monetization relies on your website gaining quality visitors and a good amount of traffic.
Because of this, you should set your expectations early. New websites will struggle to see consistent revenue through these monetization efforts, whereas the process will be easier (and quicker) for more established sites. Realistically, you’ll need to wait at least three to six months – maybe even longer – to start reaping the rewards.
Which Method Should You Choose for Your Website?
Deciding what monetization method you choose depends on a few factors:
- The purpose of your website
- The way you want to display your content
- How much monthly traffic your website gets
- The number of returning site visitors
| For established, high-traffic sites: / For new sites: | |
|---|---|
| I recommend exploring affiliate marketing, selling ad space, sponsored posts, generating leads, and offering a freemium model. | I recommend looking at selling products or services, accepting donations, and offering subscriptions since this can be a great way to build an online community. |
Of course, all of these options are available to anyone, whether you’re a full-time business owner or your site is simply a side hustle you have on the go. But, if you want to make the big bucks, you’ll have to grow your site’s popularity first.
Final Thoughts: How To Monetize a Website
People used to think that selling products on an ecommerce website was the only way to make money online. But, as the internet continues to grow, there are now far more ways to grab your share of the cash. To recap, here are my top strategies for making money from a website:
- Selling products
- Selling services
- Selling ad space
- Using affiliate marketing
- Accepting donations
- Publishing sponsored posts
- Generating leads
- Selling memberships and subscriptions
- Using a freemium model
Of course, it helps to have a large and popular site – but even smaller, new sites can get in on the action by exploring the nine methods I’ve discussed above.
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