How To Make Money From Your Website: 11 Most Common Ways
Owning a website is like owning real estate. This is because just like real estate, you can put advertisements and rent out parts of your website just like what you do with real estate. But in terms of earning potential, a website can have more earning potential than a real estate.Why is this so? This is because unlike real estate which have limited physical capacity in selling advertisements and rental spaces, a website resides virtually online where everyone in the world using your website can be served virtual advertisements and virtual spaces.
For example, the biggest supermarkets and malls in the world even when combined together cannot compete with the sheer abundance of the products being offered for sale by the likes of Amazon and other e-commerce sites.
"How To Make Money From Your Website" Summary List:
1. Ads2. Affiliate Marketing
3. Digital Products
4. Merchandise
5. Ad Space
6. Sponsored Articles
7. Courses
8. Product Sponsorship
9. Product Placements
10. License/Sell Content
11. Sell Website
Final Words
"How To Make Money From Your Website" Summary List Details:
1. Ads
Most start monetizing their website by showing ads. This is because although there are many ways of monetizing a website, people who visit and in turn create websites see ads on other websites and immediately see the potential of monetizing their websites with ads alone.However, although the most popular, ads are not the best money earner for websites. For example, there is a ”quotes” website who earns three thousand dollars a month because their website attracts more 500,000 pageviews/month.
This roughly translates to 0.006 cents per pageview. Considering that most websites barely make it to 10,000 pageviews a month, one is just likely to earn USD 60.00/month or even less. As you can see, to make real money with a website business, you need more than just ad income.
Another thing to consider about putting ads on your website is that your website visitors don’t like them and they would more than likely ignore them. Intrusive ads can even drive down your website visitor numbers if they annoy your website visitors.
You could also hurt your website’s image if you allow ads that contain spam, pornography, gambling and so on. There are even shady ad networks that “sneak in” ads which you didn’t allow.
But all is not bad with an ad centered website monetization business. I made an article about Anne Moss who makes about USD 200,000 ad income/month from publishing 1000 articles/month. Here is the link to the article: "Anne Moss: Make Millions Online By Scaling Up Your Blog"
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2. Affiliate Marketing
Almost the same as putting ads in your website, the difference is you get to choose which affiliate advertisements you put in your website. You earn a commission whenever your website visitor clicks an affiliate link and buys the affiliate advertiser’s products and/or services.Another advantage of it is that you get to choose how to promote an affiliate advertiser’s products. At the minimum, you can simply put an affiliate link and at the maximum you could add entire website pages promoting the affiliate advertiser’s products.
Affiliate advertisers also significantly pay much higher commission fees per sale as compared to ad networks. Affiliate advertisers pay higher to incentivize website owners to make more effort in promoting their products than just providing links.
Of course, when you are the one who selected who advertises in your website, you also share part of the blame when the affiliate product you endorse in your website happens to be a dud and in extreme cases, even dangerous.
This is the reason why you have to put a disclaimer in your website stating that you earn affiliate income on the affiliate products you feature in your website. This informs your website visitors that your website information may be compromised by affiliate income.
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3. Digital Products
What are examples of digital products? These are products that can be made using a computer. These are ebooks, images, downloads, data, reports and so on. If they can be transmitted via the internet, they are digital products.For example, you can start by selling ebooks on your website because ebooks can be made using any text editor like MicroSoft Word or Apple Pages. In short, anything that is written using a computer can be transformed into an ebook.
And you don’t even need expensive softwares to turn your text file into an ebook. For example, Draft2digital an ebook publishing company automatically turns your text file into an ebook.
You don’t even need to worry about distribution to online book seller sites and libraries, Draft2Digital handles the distribution and payment processing of your ebooks. All you have to do is write a book and Draft2Digital does the rest.
You can also setup your own e-commerce feature in your website using softwares as those offered by Shopify. It costs a bit of money, but if you are serious about setting your own e-commerce website, definitely consider Shopify and similar e-commerce website vendors.
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4. Merchandise
You could also sell physical products in your website. It could be anything like t-shirts, mugs, stickers, posters, caps, toys up to smartphones, electronics, appliances, cars and so on. In short, you can sell anything and not just digital products.But you would definitely need an e-commerce feature in your website. Again, software companies like Shopify can provide you with ready made e-commerce software which you just need to integrate in your website.
Of course, if you start selling physical products, you need to consider how you would pack, warehouse/stock and deliver the physical products you sell in your website. Selling physical products is way more difficult than just selling digital products.
But I have actually written an article about Ramon Van Meer who became a multimillionaire by selling physical pet products like pet food, pet toys and even pet themed paintings.
He uses dropshipping and only designs and markets his physical pet products. He leaves the tedious part of manufacturing, stocking and delivery to other companies which greatly simplifies his business. This is the link to the article: Ramon Van Meer: A Millionaire by Flipping Websites And Pet Products.
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5. Ad Space
This is like having a physical billboard in your website which can be seen by anyone who visits your website. For you to monetize your website doing this, your website needs to be very popular and well visited.You might say that this is just like affiliate marketing where you dedicate a space in your website for affiliate links. But there is a big difference between selling affiliate links and selling ad space.
Your ad space can link not only to an affiliate link but also to any digital link like another website, a YouTube video or a podcast. You could be selling ad space to someone who is promoting their own digital content.
But unlike partnering with ad networks and/or affiliate advertisers, you get to set your own price. You for example, can set a different price regarding which page in your website the ad would appear and how much space it takes on a page.
You also get to have a say or approve the content of the advertisement. This is unlike serving ads from ad networks where you don’t control what kinds of ads show up in your website.
Again, you must inform your website visitor that the ad showing in your particular ad space is sponsored content. Just to remind you again, you are responsible for the kinds of information appearing in your website.
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6. Sponsored Articles
Again, this kind of website monetization only works if your website has gained authority in the eyes of advertisers and not essentially to your website’s visitors. Usually, high traffic to your website is enough to convince advertisers that they should advertise on your website.This is the reason why you should consider both your website’s visitors and your advertisers when putting content on your website. Both website visitors and advertisers can provide you with revenue. Don’t forget this.
Just like selling ad space in your website, you could also set the price for the sponsored articles appearing in your website. For example, you could charge a per word rate that appears on your sponsored content.
You also control or approve the content which appears on the sponsored articles in your website. This allows you to approve/disapprove sponsored articles that might effect your website’s reputation.
Again, don’t forget to say that the sponsored article appearing in your website is sponsored content. This informs your website’s visitors that you actually approve of the content appearing in the sponsored article.
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7. Courses
Nowadays, it seems to be that almost all content creators have a course to sell especially regarding how to be a content creator. But this is understandable, A content creator has a ready product of experience and knowledge in content creation just by being a content creator.For example, Adam Enfroy is a well known content creator who earns in excess of 100 thousand dollars/month by selling his affiliate marketing courses. He actually provides his income figures online.
But his main income source is affiliate marketing of which he earns in excess of between 100 to more than 200 thousand dollars/month. He sells in excess 300 affiliate products. So, he really practices what he teaches in his courses.
If you want to be like him, you could sell your courses on your own website or additionally, you can teach your courses via online and face to face seminars. But this is already branching out of your main business which is selling website content.
If you want to keep it simple, You could upload your courses on such online learning sites as SkillShare which is a well known online learning site. You can then redirect your website visitors to SkillShare.
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8. Product Sponsorship
This is a step up selling ad space or sponsored articles. The difference between the two previously mentioned is that you yourself create the content for the product being featured in your website.Your product sponsorship contract with your client company entails creating favorable content/advertisement for your client company whose purpose is to promote your client company’s product or the client company itself. You are basically acting as an advertising company.
You are actually selling the reputation of your website to extract a favorable response from your website’s visitors regarding the companies which paid you for a product sponsorship. So you are what is now called in social media terms an ”Influencer”
A product sponsorship deal can boost or ruin your reputation. This is the reason why you should stay away from shady companies offering you shady product sponsorship deals no matter how profitable it can be to you.
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9. Product Placements
This could be as simple as mentioning the name of a product within a paragraph in your website or showing the image of a product in one of the background of a picture in your website.By doing this, you indirectly give your support to the product even though you might not be doing this on purpose. So, take care of what you write and the images you put on your website. A free image you found on a free image site might have been made free for a purpose.
This is a marketing strategy that has been used by the likes of Hollywood for a long time already. For example, it is well known the many car companies pay James Bond movie producers a lot of money just to have their cars featured in the movies.
So be very aware that any piece of text and image in your website can be monetized. If you have a picture of yourself or some other people on your website, the clothes, shoes and the accessories you wear can be monetized.
Even the seemingly innocent items like the snack or soda you are holding and eating can be monetized. This especially applies if you are already a certified social media influencer.
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10. License/Sell Content
If you have ever visited the Wikipedia website, you might have noticed that there are images in the website with tags referring to them as ”licensable images”. This means that you cannot copy the image without a license which could mean paying a fee.Some newspapers like CNN also license their digital content like their news footages, articles, news images and so on. This kind of monetization especially applies to videos and images as they are hard to duplicate.
The good thing about this monetization method is besides you being able to set the price by which your digital content would licensed, you may be attributed by the parties using your digital content which is free advertising for you.
This is a good monetization source for anyone who produces a lot of digital content like photographers, writers, authors, reporters, journalists and so on. This is why you need to build a catalog of your digital content.
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11. Sell Website
You could also sell your website and all of its contents to such e-commerce online business marketplaces such as Flippa. You can sell websites, apps, videogames and the likes in Flippa.But before you can sell your website in such sites as Flippa, you should be able to prove that your website has commercial value. Usually, this entails giving the monthly earnings information of your website.
This might be an option for you if you are just starting out a website business. Many buy established websites because building a website following is hard. It could take years before a new website attract a good number of visitors.
Contrary to this, there are professional website flippers. These businesspeople buy unprofitable websites, makes them profitable and then resell them for a much higher price than they originally bought it.
If you are planning to sell your website in the future, it is highly advised that you don’t use your actual name as the domain name of your website. This might cause complications in the ownership rights of your website.
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Final Words
There are many ways to monetize your website and not only through ads. There are a lot of website owners who make good money with affiliate marketing and by selling ad space and product sponsorship in their website.You might also choose a more complicated way of making money from your website by selling digital and/or physical products. This is more complicated as this monetization method might include you creating an e-commerce business.
You could also sell courses as well as actually selling or licensing the contents of your website. Lastly, you can sell your website and all of its contents.
However, you should provide quality content on your website such that website visitors, advertisers, and the search engines like Google itself would notice how significant your website is. This in turn would increase the monetary value of your website and its contents.
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You Might Be Interested To Read This Article:
Anne Moss: Make Millions Online By Scaling Up Your Blog
Meet Anne Moss a millionaire blogger. In case you’re wondering how much she earns per year, she earns close to US$ 2,400,000 per year on her portfolio of 25 websites. This figure is from an interview made on her by the YouTube Channel Niche Pursuits...