How to Monetize Your Website – The Best 6 Methods

So you put a lot of work into your website, creating quality content and optimizing it for search. I talked about how to make money online with SEO, but what about just how to make money from your website in general? There are lots of ways to turn your passion into your livelihood, provided you have the traffic for it (check out my huge list of 51 website traffic sources to flood your site with valuable traffic).

Here are the top 6 ways of how to make money from your website.

How to Monetize Your Website

Adsense

Adsense is probably the most popular way to monetize your website.

Adsense is the publisher end of Google Ads. Advertisers create their advertisements in Google Ads, then Adsense displays those ads on participating publisher websites and Google properties (including YouTube).

If you sign up for Adsense, you can get those ads shown on your site. You get paid based on how much traffic or interactions those ads get for those advertisers.

Adsense is popular amongst webmasters because most of the work is done for you. Google decides what ads to show on your site and handles payment for you. Depending on how much traffic your website gets, you can make a very nice income off of Adsense alone.

Sign up for Adsense and start making money off of your traffic.

3rd Party Advertisements

Similar to Adsense, there are a lot of other 3rd party advertising networks you can use to monetize your website.

Many of these give you a bit more control over the content which you display on your website. You can have a certain amount of contact with advertisers while still having the ad network dealing with the technical and money side of things.

Here are a handful of ad networks to check out:

• Mediavine
• InfoLinks
• BuySellAds
• Media.net
• Conversant
• PropellerAds
• Monumetric
• Revcontent
• AdThrive
• Bidvertiser

Some of these feature more demanding requirements before you can join, such as certain traffic thresholds you have to meet or content they won’t allow.

A lot of webmasters like these ad networks because they get paid simply for making their content. No additional work is required, and they don’t have to actively promote anything.

Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are for promoting specific products and/or services. Unlike Adsense or any of the other ad networks mentioned, here you’re choosing the exact thing you want to promote.

There’s typically more work required, as with affiliate marketing you’re directly trying to promote and sell the products and services of another. It’s conversion and commision based income – no sale, no commission.

The upside is that the money is typically better; if you can sell, that is.

Plus the things you promote on your site are much more targeted for your audience because you’re the one deciding what to promote.

You decide what your audience would be most interested in, then you can find the product/service to match that interest.

You then market it to them by linking to it in the context of articles on your site, email marketing (more on this in a moment), via social media, anywhere.

As long as someone clicks on your affiliate link to be taken to the page for whatever you’re promoting, you get a commission.

Different companies offer different commissions for conversions. Different networks, too. Amazon offers anywhere between 1-10%, depending on the niche, for every successful sale registered by one of your affiliate links, though this can vary depending on some factors.

Clickbank, on the other hand, exclusively deals in digital products. With no stock issues and virtually no overhead costs, commissions are much higher. It’s typical for the affiliate to receive 50-75% of every sale on Clickbank, hence its popularity amongst affiliate marketers.

Here are some affiliate networks to check out:

• CJ
• ShareaSale
• Amazon
• Clickbank
• Ebay

Each network has different levels of requirements before you can either get accepted or promote specific products. Some products require special approval if the company is more discerning about its affiliates before you can promote it. Others you just click on and you get your affiliate link and you’re good to go.

I got my start promoting Clickbank marketplace products over 10 years ago and still make the odd commission here or there from sites I set up over a decade ago.

Your Products/Services

I can’t cover this list of how to monetize your website without mentioning promoting your own products or services. It seems obvious, but it’s worth mentioning in case you’re not.

The idea is that you create a product of your own to sell. Unless you’re looking to upscale and start a small factory in your garage, this typically means digital products.

You can write an informational eBook on whatever the topic of your website is and promote it there.

You could also create a piece of helpful software/app related to your niche. Most people who do this have no technical knowledge; they simply take their idea and outsource it to someone with coding abilities on a gig website like Upwork or Fiverr.

Once you have your product, you can promote it via your website, social media, email list… you can (and should) even take it to some of the affiliate networks I just mentioned.

After your product is in an affiliate network’s marketplace, affiliate marketers promote your product on their own sites and their commissions just come out of the sales you make. It’s kind of like having an army of marketers generating free advertising for you and your product.

Email List

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to make money online in general. It’s also arguably the best way of how to monetize a website; let me explain.

The idea is that subscribers to your email list are your most loyal and valuable contacts because they are the most invested in your content. When someone takes the time to sign up for your email list, it shows that they respect your opinion in your field.

And if they only signed up because you offered them some kind of incentive (like my 7 Day Rank Climber’s Bootcamp), then they’ll grow to respect your opinion over the course of your follow-up emails.

Your email subscribers are so valuable, that I always say that your website isn’t complete until you have a way to capture email addresses.

If someone comes to your website, there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever be back. If they give you their email address, you have constant contact with them on demand.

Have a signup form and/or a pop up so that anyone who comes to your site at least sees that you have an email list.

Then offer some kind of incentive which they can only get by signing up. I use my training course, but you can have an eBook or equivalent giveaway item like a relevant and helpful niche specific infographic upon signing up.

Once they’re on the list, make sure to email them about important posts on your site; really anytime you have information that will help them.

Over time you build up a relationship with them, and that trust they have in your opinion will only grow.

When they respect your opinion, you’ve got their attention whenever you send out a new email.

And whenever you have something to promote, your email subscribers will be the first ones to convert for you. Putting the right offer in front of your list can result in a huge payday, which is why the sooner you start building a list the better.

Donate Link

Last but not least, in addition or separate to all of these other options, featuring a donate link on your site can earn you income, as well.

If you’re creating quality and unique content and have a decent following, you’d be surprised at how many of your regular visitors would be willing to donate to you.

Simply explain that there are costs associated with running your site and creating your content in both time and money, and mention that if anyone wants to help you out they can.

You can feature a simple Paypal link, or use a service specifically designed to connect content creators with supports like Patreon. Patreon is nice because their platform is all about monthly supporting donations.

Obviously don’t hound people about it, but make sure a link to your donation page is easily found and visible so that your visitors can leave a donation should they wish to.

So there are six ways of how to monetize your website. Again, it’s all about quality content (and traffic), so keep creating what you love and now hopefully get paid to do it, as well.