- Chris R.
- No Comments
- Published: May 29, 2018
- Modified: April 17, 2023
“MoolahNinjas main goal is to help our readers improve their financial lives. We partner with other companies that share that same vision. Some of these links in this post may be from our partners. This is how we make money.”
If you’re exploring ways to make money online, you’ll often read about people making money from websites, but discovering how you actually can turn a website into a source of income can be difficult. After all, simply creating a site and hosting it on a web server won’t just bring in money.
The truth is that there are a number of ways that you can earn money from a website, giving you a variety of options for making a good side income. With several websites all properly monetized, you may eventually begin to earn enough income to become financially independent, but it all starts with choosing the right monetization option. Read on to discover 14 of the best ways of monetizing a website, so that you can get on your way to earning money online.
1. Email Marketing
Email marketing is possibly the most effective method of making money fast. With a good email distribution list, you can generate revenue, promote your brand and keep the flow of traffic to your website steady at all times.
You can use email marketing to:
- Directly market products and services to current and prospective customers
- Provide reports that are monetized to subscribers
- Increase traffic to a monetized website to make money
Of course, the success of email marketing depends on putting together the right list. One of the best ways to do that is with a lightbox pop up. These pop ups appear right over top of a web page rather than launching a whole new window, so they’re unobtrusive, and they are very easy to notice. They do not seem like spam to the site visitor. The box typically will say something like “sign up for our newsletter” or “get access to exclusive deals by joining our mailing list.” Site visitors do have the option to close the box if they don’t wish to provide their emails, but most people will go ahead and enter their email addresses when they see them in order to eliminate the window.
The app PopUp Domination is one of the best lightbox pop ups on the market and can work with any website. The app has a number of different designs and color schemes, so you can choose one that blends best with your website.
If you don’t want to add a lightbox pop up to your web page, you can use a squeeze page to encourage people to join your mailing list. A squeeze page is a landing page that is made specifically to gather email addresses.
The page should provide information about the benefits of joining your list. Find a way for your page to solve a problem, promise to answer an important question or spark the reader’s interest in another way. Quickly outline how adding their name to the mailing list will help them in some way. Make the page as attractive and professional as possible. A page that looks like spam isn’t going to convert visitors to subscriptions. You’ll also want to ensure that the page is search engine optimized, so that people will find it when they’re surfing the web.
In addition to creating a lightbox pop up or a squeeze page, you’ll also need to have a service to manage your mailing list and help you launch and track your email marketing campaigns. AWeber is one of the best programs to use for this purpose.
Benefits of Email Marketing:
- Allows you to market directly to your customers
- A single email can bring in a large amount of revenue
- Easy for anyone to do
- Proven to be a highly effective way to consistently make money online
Drawbacks of Email Marketing:
- You’ll need to be constantly adding to your email distribution list and finding new names to add can become challenging
- Email quality is important, as subscribers may opt out of your mailing list if they do not like the content
2. Selling Ads
Every website has some empty space, and there are companies out there that are willing to pay money to have their ads shown in those areas. There are a number of different ways that selling ads on a website can pay, including:
- Paid per click, where you receive revenue when someone clicks on a link
- Paid per 1000 views, where you receive revenue every time an ad is displayed 1000 times
- Paid per time frame, where you receive periodic revenue for keeping an ad displayed on your site for a set period of time
You can include ads on your website in one of two ways. First, you can seek out prospective advertisers on your own. This can be time-consuming, but if you do manage to sell some ads, you’ll be able to keep all of the money that you make. If you don’t have time to seek out advertisers or don’t know how to, you can use a third-party service like an Internet marketing company or a service like Google AdWords. With a middleman, some of the revenue generated from the ads will go to pay the third party.
Benefits of Selling Ads:
- With the right payment structure, ads can be guaranteed income
- Very easy to do
- Allows you to network and build relationships with other companies
Drawbacks of Selling Ads:
- Ads can detract from your content
- Turnover of advertisers is common, meaning you’ll have to spend time updating your site with new ads frequently
- To get guaranteed revenue, you may have to limit the amount you can make. For example, with a paid per time frame arrangement, you know you’ll get money for showing the ad, but the amount could be significantly less than what you’d get with a 1000 view or pay per click structure.
3. Make a Job Board
A job board is a section of a website where there is a list of job openings in a specific field displayed. The section is produced automatically by a website plug-in, and the jobs that are displayed are custom selected to relate to your content. You make money whenever someone clicks on one of the job listings to learn more about the employment opportunity.
In order for this type of monetization to be effective, the plugin must appear in an easy-to-spot area of a website. You’ll also need a lot of site visitors to generate revenue from this type of setup. If you want to give it a try, you may want to test-drive Jobpress for WordPress, one of the best job boards plug-ins.
Benefits of Making a Job Board:
- Absolutely no work is involved for you
- Can make your website seem more credible and professional
Drawbacks of Making a Job Board:
- Does not fit all types of websites
- Only profitable for websites with high traffic volumes
- Can be very competitive
4. Sell Services
Blog readers visit your site because they value the information that you provide. They trust you and see you as an expert in your field. Selling services allows you to capitalize on that trust and the value of your brand and earn money from your blog.
Think about how you can help your readers beyond just providing the information. For example, if you run a nutrition blog, you could provide nutrition counseling or meal planning services. To do so, you’d add a page to your website explaining what your services are and then either direct your readers to contact you for more information or have a shopping cart right on the site that allows them to instantly purchase the service. You can even allow payment with cryptocurrency to start another monetization method!
Benefits of Sell Services:
- Many people will take advantage of services if they like your blog content
- Can provide large amounts of revenue
- Very easy to deliver to your customers
- Low refund rate
Drawbacks of Sell Services:
- You’ll need to actively invest time in order to make money
- You will have to provide customer service, which can be stressful
- The number of sales is usually not steady, so income will fluctuate
5. Become an Affiliate and Write Reviews
Benefits of Writing Affiliate Reviews:
- Highly effective way to earn money
- Higher conversion rates than ads and email marketing
- You get free merchandise to test and review
- Allows you to connect with top brands
- Can help you to build your brand
Drawbacks of Writing Affiliate Reviews:
- You need to be honest with your reviews to maintain reader trust, so sometimes you need to say negative things, but this can end up costing you an affiliate. As a result, you need to choose the products that you review wisely
- Income may only come in shortly after the blog post is published, so you won’t get continuous revenue from each review
6. Become an Affiliate and Promote Products
Promoting products as an affiliate is similar to reviewing products in that you are providing value for the reader by recommending things that you know are beneficial to people who are interested in your niche. The difference is that instead of writing a review of the product in question, you promote it another way.
For example, if you write a blog about website design, you might provide a list of five different themes that are made by developers that you have an affiliate agreement with. You can also mention a particular product or service in the text of a post. As an example, if you had a fitness blog and were talking about the importance of staying hydrated, you might mention a particular sports water bottle that you have found to be convenient to take to the gym.
When the products that you promote sell, you will receive a commission from the affiliate. There are many examples of those online who have become millionaires just from earning affiliate commissions alone. If your website gets steady traffic and readers tend to come back to read your blog posts over time, you can generate a lot of passive income through product promotions.
You can also read our guide about earning money as an affiliate here.
Benefits of Promoting Affiliate Products:
- Great potential for earning a large amount of income
- High conversion rates possible
- Allows you to generate income passively on an ongoing basis
Drawbacks of Promoting Affiliate Products:
- Amount that you earn can fluctuate
- Conversion can be erratic; Some products will convert better than others, and it can be hard to predict which ones will do well.
7. Provide Memberships or Premium Content
This method of monetizing a website is gaining popularity because it can be incredibly popular. Basically, with site memberships and premium content, you produce extra content that is of high value to your audience and then charge a fee to access it.
Memberships allow readers to access all of your exclusive content for a set amount of time in exchange for a fee that is automatically re-billed until they cancel their membership. With premium content, readers purchase access to each blog post, video, e-book or other type of content on demand.
You can turn all kinds of things into premium content. For example, this post could have links to premium content with video or written tutorials on how to set up each of the methods of monetizing your website. The most important thing is offering content that people will be willing to pay for and to continue to provide good content to keep members from cancelling their subscriptions.
Benefits of Memberships and Premium Content:
- Can provide a continuous stream of income
- With time release set-ups, you can create a lot of content at once and then distribute it over a long period of time
- Affiliates can bring you traffic
- Potential to earn a large amount of revenue
Drawbacks of memberships and Premium Content:
- Initial setup can be time consuming
- You will need to continue to work regularly to produce premium content
8. Sell a Digital Product
When you have an established reader base for your blog, you can generate income by selling a digital product that relates to your content and provides value for your audience. For example, you could sell an e-book or a set of instructional videos on a topic related to your niche.
The hardest part is developing the content. Once it’s produced, you can promote it the way that you do your blog posts through social media marketing, relationships with other blogs and through affiliate marketing. A single digital product can bring in a large sum of income for a long period of time, provided that the content is evergreen, meaning that it remains valuable to the reader even as time passes and does not become outdated quickly.
Benefits of Selling a Digital Product:
- Affiliates can increase your site traffic and provide a passive stream of income
- Builds your brand and makes you an authority in your niche
- Very high revenue potential
Drawbacks of Selling a Digital Product:
- A lot of time is required to create the product and build an affiliate network
9. Selling Directory Listings
Not a lot of bloggers use directory listings to monetize their websites. On the one hand, that’s a shame because it can be a very profitable way of generating income from the web, but on the other hand, it can be good news for you, as you could potentially be the only person in your niche offering this valuable service for readers.
A directory is a list of links to websites that are relevant to your specific field. Each site that is listed pays a fee to appear in the directory for a set amount of time, and you can set things up so that they are automatically billed to renew at the end of the period unless they cancel. There will be a lot of work at first finding sites that wish to be in your directory, but once it’s all set up and running, you can earn a continuous stream of revenue without having to do a lot more than occasionally update your list.
Directories are great alternatives to ads if you’re worried about how advertisements will affect the appearance of your website and the user experience. To keep your listeners renewing, they’ll need to get traffic from your directory, making it important that you place the directory in a prominent area of your website and continually refer your readers to it.
Benefits of Selling Directory Listings:
- Can be very profitable
- Beneficial for readers
- Not commonly used, so it sets your site apart
- Can be guaranteed income
Drawbacks of Selling Directory Listings:
- Setup can be costly
- High web traffic is needed to attract listers
10. Offer Webinars
Webinars are online seminars on a specific topic that are accessible through a link that you provide. You can make money from webinars in one of two ways. The first option is to charge money for the webinar itself. In this case, you’ll need to come up with a topic that will entice your readers to sign up.
The second option is to sell a product during your webinar. You could promote an affiliate product, your own digital product or a service with this option. Just make sure that the webinar has value in and of itself and isn’t just an advertisement for whatever you’re selling.
You’ll need to invest in a good webinar software program before you get started. GoToWebinar is a great option, as it’s free and easy to use. You may want to make your first webinar free in order to get the hang of how to do it. If your attendees enjoy the experience, they’ll be willing to pay for a future session.
Benefits of Offering Webinars:
- Allows you to build relationships with your readers
- Provides a great amount of value to buyers
Drawbacks of Offering Webinars:
- Requires an investment in time
- Software for webinars can be costly
- Can be hard to select a convenient time for many users
11. Sell Something with Tutorials
Tutorials are widely read because many people go online looking for step-by-step instructions for completing different tasks. Adding tutorials to your blog is almost a guaranteed way to get web traffic, and when you work a promotion for a product into the tutorial, you can generate income by converting readers.
You could choose to sell your digital product or service with the tutorial or provide links to affiliate products that can be used to complete the tutorial.
Benefits of Selling with Tutorials:
- Provides very high quality content to readers
- Can rank highly on search engines
- Produces evergreen content that can provide money for a long period of time
- Easy to put together
Drawbacks of Selling with Tutorials:
- Selecting products can be time consuming
12. Sell an E-Book
More and more people are deciding to read e-books instead of purchasing paperback and hardback books. By producing a book that people can read on a mobile device, you have the potential to reach a new audience beyond your blog or to provide your blog readers with additional content at a price.
There are two ways that you can sell an e-book. First, you can offer your book through a website like Amazon or the Apple iBooks store. Secondly, you can sell the e-book right on your website. With the first option, you can compile blog posts into a book. For the second option, you need to generate new content either yourself or with the help of a ghostwriter.
Having a self-published e-book on the market can make you more of an authority in your field, establishing you as an expert in your niche. This can help you to make money in a number of other ways in the future, even if the sales from your book to not produce a lot of revenue on their own.
Benefits of Selling an E-Book:
- Increases the authority of your website
- Can provide revenue over a long period of time
- Opens up the door for speaking engagements and other consulting
Benefits of Selling with Tutorials:
- Can be very time consuming if you write the book yourself
- Can be expensive if you hire a ghost writer
- May not be profitable on its own
13. Provide Trainings and Workshops
Your readers visit your site because they value the information that they provide, and many of them would probably be willing to pay money to learn more about your niche from you directly.
Trainings and workshops give them the opportunity to do just that, and if you market and price them correctly, can be very profitable for you. The trick is to come up with the right topics for your readers.
You can hold the trainings and workshops live for one price and then allow readers who couldn’t attend to purchase recordings or videos of the events for a reduced price, giving you two different ways to make money. You could also start earning money as an online coach.
Benefits of Trainings and Workshops:
- Large potential revenue stream
- Can become an opportunity for speaking engagements
- Helps solidify you as an expert in your field
Drawbacks of Trainings and Workshops:
- Requires a large time investment
- Marketing your trainings and workshops can be difficult
- May be stressful
14. Sell Your Site
If you’re making money with your website, selling it can allow you to profit greatly from all of the work that you’ve put into it so far.
While the idea of selling your site may make you nervous at first, the amount of money that you could potentially make could be so great that your nerves will quickly be calmed. There have been instances of successful blogs selling for so much that their owners don’t have to work for years after the sale is complete.
To sell your site, you can work through an online business broker or through a website service like Flippa. Both of these methods will require you to pay a fee either to the broker or to the website service to help you complete the sale, and it’s a good idea to check out a few options before you agree to use any service or broker.
Benefits of Selling Your Site:
- Gives you a large sum of cash at one time
- Process can be completed in just 1 month
Drawbacks of Selling Your Site:
- Once your site is sold, you will lose that asset completely.
- You will no longer be able to make money with that site directly; however, if you have another site, you might be able to continue to make passive income by being an affiliate for your old site.
Other ways of earning money on the Internet
Owning a website, and then monetizing it, is not the only way of earning money on the internet. There are several different other ways that you can create an extra income on the internet, and most of the mare equally as good as monetizing a website.
If you are interested in learning more ways to earn money online, go check our page which shows the best ways of earning money on the internet.
If you have any questions regarding earning money on your blog or website, or in general earning money on the internet, please feel free to post a comment, or write to us on our contact page.
