Ways to Monetize Your Website
If you’ve had a brand, website, or blog for any amount of time (heck, even if you haven’t even launched yet!) I’ll bet you’re curious about ways to monetize your website.
I sure was. I dreamt of adding flexible income and building something of my own.
I’m going to bet that’s the reason you landed on this little corner of the internet too.
(If so, WELCOME! I’m super glad we found each other!)
I can so relate to your dream. It’s the reason I created this website while on vacation in the summer of 2022 – because I knew there was a path towards creating and monetizing online businesses that could be packaged up more easily than other people were doing it.
So without further ado, here is the list of the top 10 ways to monetize your online business:
- Place Ads on Your Website
- Sell Your Own Product
- Sell Your Services
- Membership Service
- Dropshipping
- Write an eBook
- Affiliate Marketing
- Sponsored Content
- Accept Donations
- Flipping Your Website
Let’s dive into each one together.
1. Place Ads on Your Website
Ad revenue is one of the easiest ways to monetize your website.
It takes a little bit of upfront work, but once you’re into an ad network, you can literally makes money in your sleep (the dream!).
Some of the best and easiest ad networks are Google Adsense (best for beginners with little traffic yet), and Mediavine (when you’ve grown a bit bigger).
That said, ads can be a little controversial.
We’ve all been to websites that have ugly, annoying ads all over the place and popups that interrupt the flow. What are you inclined to do when landing on those pages?
Leave the site.
You want people to STAY on your website, browse to multiple pages, sign up for your newsletter, and check out your products or services.
If ads interrupt that process, they’re likely not worth it.
That said, many websites use ads effectively and still make it work. Even the main news outlets and magazines integrate ads nowadays.
These publications used to be paper-based, with print ads. Now, they’re mostly digital and have ads seamlessly integrated into their design.
Take a page from their (digital) book, and set your ads up not to ruin the user experience – but to enhance it.
Do it well and you will happily see this revenue stream start to grow as your traffic grows.
Just keep an eye on your site’s bounce rate (the % of people who visit just one website page before leaving). If it starts hovering towards 70% or beyond, consider redesigning things to keep people on your website.
2. Sell Your Own Product
I strongly believe that the best way to monetize a website is by selling your own digital products.
Specifically, digital courses can be one of the best products out there, as they can be priced much higher than other products. I have entire modules and posts created specifically about creating your digital products, but here is an introductory list of some of the products you can create:
- Digital Products
- eBook (more about that in #6 below)
- Digital course (my favouite!)
- Printables
- Templates
- Custom Spreadsheets
- How-To Guides
- Printable art
- Photos
- Craft Patterns
- Software, games, apps, website templates, etc.
- Physical Products
- Apparel / clothing
- Mug
- Bags
- Stickers
- Physical art
- Toys
- Games
- And on and on – if you need inspiration, check out Etsy!
Not sure where to start?
We have a post dedicated to how to create an online product that walks you through the process step-by-step – including how to come up with an idea, how to pick your product, how to market it, and how to sell it.
3. Sell Your Services
Selling your services is similar to selling your own products, but in this case, you’re offering your time.
This could be in so many forms, but here are a few examples:
- Photography Services
- Graphic Design
- Web Design
- Consulting
- 1-on-1 Coaching
- Group Coaching
- Accounting Services
- Legal Services
- Repair Services
- Tutoring
- And so, so much more!
Basically, whatever your expertise, passion, or interest is, you can offer your services on it.
Truly think outside of the box – people have made great money in out-of-the-box topics: we’re talking makeup tutorials, handstand coaching, camping preparation – really creative things!
4. Membership Services
Memberships are kind of a hybrid between a product or a service.
Membership services allow you to sell premium content to your audience base that’s only available to paying members.
This can include lots of different offerings, including:
- Special podcast episodes
- Member-only newsletters
- Exclusive updates
- Access to “close friend” lists on social media
- Free eBooks, templates, PDFs
- Weekly or monthly meetups
- Private groups
- In-person meetups
- A members-only portal on your website
- Etc.
However you decide to package it up, it includes a regular membership payment (monthly, quarterly, annually), that provides people with premium access they wouldn’t otherwise get.
Pricing for this can range wildly. I’ve seen anything from a $5 a month to $20,000+ for top providers.
Remember, you can always start low and scale up once you have increased demand.
5. Dropshipping
This one is actually way easier than it sounds!
Dropshipping is when you sell a product that you don’t actually own or manage yourself. You don’t have to oversee warehousing, inventory management, etc.
You simply have a portal for people to place orders.
Think of it like having a storefront, where you sell products made by multiple suppliers. You don’t handmade every product there, but you get a commission off of each of them. That’s how it works, but in the digital format.
Here’s a great image that describes it well from Shopify (who has their own app that connects your store to 1,000s of suppliers). You can even check out that Shopify article for the easy step-by-step guide to get started.
6. Sell an eBook
Technically a digital product, ebooks are so popular that it was worthwhile including separately.
Now, when you think of a book, you don’t need to necessarily create a 200 page tome.
It can be fairly short and to the point, have fillable pages/images, etc. Even journals count!
The main thing is to ensure it adds great value to your readers.
That’s the case with everything here – you want to create ravenous fans who will recommend each thing you create to their friends, because you’ve made amazing, valuable products catered directly for them.
Do your research, think about what your target audience could most use, and get to work on creating it.
7. Affiliate Marketing
This is a great way to monetize your website and a way to earn great income without creating your own products (or even better – in addition to it).
Affiliate marketing is essentially referring other people’s products on your platform and getting a commission for each sale that goes through as a result.
For example, say you are given a unique promo code for a $100 product, like MGL10. You promote it, giving your customers that code for a 10% discount. The customers get 10% off, and you get 20% of the ticket price simply for referring them.
In the worlds of The Office’s Michael Scott: it’s win-win-win:
- The retailer gets a sale they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten
- The customer gets a 10% discount
- You get a 20% affiliate commission
This can work particularly well for higher-priced items, like digital courses. Especially if you haven’t invested the effort to build your own course yet, imagine the potential commissions if you refer sales for courses that cost upwards of $1,000.
A few of those, and you’ll start understanding the power of creating your own digital product!
In that case, you may even start searching out your own affiliate partners, to get you extra sales. Even if you give away 30% in commissions and discounts, that’s still 70% of the product cost that you otherwise would never have received!
8. Sponsored Content
With sponsored content, you create content recommending a specific product or brand, in exchange for payment.
We’ve all seen influencers on social media doing this – recommending lots of products, sharing links, and often getting a kickback.
With new regulations, influencers are now required to disclose they have a vested interest in the post – that it is sponsored, or they may receive a payment for posting it. Honestly, that’s a good thing, as it helps give transparency and authenticity to creators like you.
The main reco here is to pick something that you truly love and use regularly to partner up on.
Your name and reputation will be behind it, so if you recommend something that turns out to be a dud, all that trust you’ve built with your audience can get wiped away in an instant.
You can reach out to the brands that you love, offer to do a post or blog article about it, and see what they say. And in time, you can even have brands reaching out to you!
9. Accept Donations for Exclusive Content
Honestly, this one has surprised me, but it really does seem to be a legitimate way people are monetizing themselves lately!
There are even apps, like Buy Me A Coffee, that integrate with your social platforms, that people can use to make small donations as a thanks for the great content you’re putting out. And people actually use it!
Another one is called Patreon, where members pay a small fee to get extra bonus content, like bonus podcast episodes, access to close friend lists, etc.
A best practice here is when you get a donation, to do a little thank you slide, thanking the person for contributing. People love appreciation, and it can encourage others to do the same.
FYI these platforms can also be used for monthly membership payment above: a great 2-in-1 tool.
10. Flipping Your Website
This way to monetize your website one comes at the end of your website’s life – it’s where you sell your website.
It may seem sad to say goodbye to all that hard work, but if you’ve come to a point where you’re truly done with it, this can be a great way to get a last good payment out of it.
In fact, you can actually get some really great money if you’ve built a strong brand and legitimate audience!
Some people even do this as their main gig, creating, then flipping websites. If you’re great at building businesses, this may be the one for you!
Simply follow the processes outlined on MarketingGrowthLab.com to create your online business step-by-step. Then market it, flip it, and repeat!
It’s not easy – it can take work to build a website – but it’s possible.
Entrepreneur.com has a great article about how to start a website-flipping side hustle to get you started on learning more.
Audience First, Money Second
Remember – whichever of the 10 ways to monetize your website you choose, never forget the golden rule:
Focus on your audience first, money second.
Many a great entrepreneur have been tempted to overload their website with ads, promote products they half-heartedly believe in, or create a half-baked product only for the $$.
Do not do it.
It’s the fastest way to lose the audience that you worked so hard to gain.
Simply put, your audience are reason you exist.
They’re the ones who support you, the ones who will hopefully have your back in the future, and they’re who you exist online to serve.
Always, always, have their interests first, before yours. Keep coming back to this, again and again. Even if you slip, even if you forget, come back to it.
Keep listening to them, hearing what is important to them, and adjusting accordingly. They will tell you what they need, if you listen carefully enough.
I’m not perfect myself – I’m sure I’ll mess up at some point. Being a business owner is not risk-free, and I’m not a perfect person by any means. But I will keep trying to create content that help to make my audience’s life better in some small way – YOUR life better in some small way.
And to me, that is worth the risk of starting this business in the first place.
Questions? Feedback? Ideas? Hit me up at any time at [email protected] any time.
And I’d love to hear what was YOUR favourite way to monetize your website online? Even better, did you do something not listed here? I can’t wait to hear!
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