Who doesn’t love the idea of traveling around the world while your website is making money online? The best thing is that with 000webhost, you can create a free website and earn money!
Well, you can make this dream come true. Nowadays, having a website or a blog is more than a hobby or skill. Your website is a potential gold mine. Making money online is a perfect choice for passive income. Bloggers can make a living – even prosper – just from their websites.
There are many ways how to monetize a website. We’ll overview the easy and proven to work ones.
Preparing your website for monetization
You can monetize any website, but you can’t do it right away. You have to know when is the best time to do it. There are some groundworks you need to prepare before picking a monetization method.
- Drive more traffic
Traffic is crucial. It generates leads and, leads generate sales. No matter how you monetize your website, if you don’t have traffic, you have nothing to convert. Therefore, you should focus on growth and driving traffic to your website first. Some monetization strategies require a minimum amount of traffic. - Prepare high-quality content
High-quality content is a must for driving traffic and monetizing your website. You need to research your niche and what your readers are looking for. Only then you can create great content. Make sure it’s content your users want to read. Excellent content will keep visitors engaged and help your website grow. - Have dedication and hard work
Website monetization is easy, but you can’t do it overnight. It may take months or years of hard work and dedication before you can get regular income from your website. You should pick a monetization method that will work best with your project. Some methods might not suit your site, and that’s fine! But, it should not be your reason to give up soon. There are always other ones you can put to good use!
1. Pay Per Click (PPC) (Google AdSense)
For PPC, Google gives you two tools: Ads and Adsense. Ads let you buy traffic for your website, while AdSense helps earn money by setting ads on your site. Every time your visitors come to your site and click an advertisement, you get paid. That’s why it’s called pay per click.
Registering with Google AdSense is easy. First, you need to check the Google AdSense program policies. Make sure your website fits the guidelines. Next, go to the Google AdSense sign-up page and sign in with your Google account. Fill up the application forms and click submit.
Once your application is accepted, Google will provide you with code. Put the code in your sidebar or anywhere you’d like the ads to appear. If you are using WordPress, check out our tutorial on how to add Adsense to WordPress. From here, Google will do the rest. They will find the ads that are suitable for your blog’s niche and audience. They will also take care of the calculation for each click.
There are factors that determine your CPC rates. The country, niche rate, and level of Google partnership are some of them. However, you can increase your rates and conversions. For starters, you can optimize your ad placement. Ad size, color, and location will affect whether users click it or not. Long content that fills the AdSense blocks will also help you level up your rates.
Pros and Cons
If you’re trying to monetize your website for the first time, PPC by Google AdSense can be the solution or you. It’s super easy to start and requires no technical knowledge for registration. However, it has strict rules which are updated continuously. If Google finds that your website violates their terms and conditions, they can remove ads from your website.
2. Affiliate Marketing
The alternative for cost per click is cost per action or CPA. This method is usually called affiliate marketing. You get commission if your visitors decide to buy the product or service by clicking the link on your site. While Google AdSense will automatically place the ads related to your niche, affiliate marketing lets you pick the desired products and services to promote.
To start earning with affiliate marketing, you need to join an affiliate network first. That way, you’ll find which products or services to promote easily. We highly recommend established affiliate networks like:
After joining the affiliate programs, choose the products or services you’d like to promote and add affiliate links to your website. If you want more income, you can join multiple affiliate networks or promote more products and services.
Pros and Cons
Affiliate marketing doesn’t require high traffic to get high income. Remember, you get paid from sales conversions, not website views. But the more traffic you drive to your site, the more sales conversions you can get.
Affiliate marketing rates are usually higher than CPC. Just put in the link, and start earning recurring income. Choose the products and services you’d like to promote carefully. If you promote bad quality products, your visitors might lose trust!
3. Accept Donations
A donation may not be the fastest route to earn through your website, but you can make enough money to cover your website’s operational cost.
There’s no precise estimate of how much you will earn from a donation. High traffic doesn’t guarantee donations either. A few satisfied visitors might determine the donation amount. So, your focus is not only to increase traffic but delight visitors with your content too.
The simple way to increase your income via donations is by giving your visitors reasons to do it. Tell them why they should donate. Convince them that their money will help you achieve your mission.
There are a few ways to accept donations on your website. First, you can add plugins that enable your visitors to donate via your website. We recommend adding a PayPal Donate button to your website. It is probably easiest and way to accept donations. Paypal will help you manage the donation as well.
Register with PayPal to start accepting donations.
Pros and Cons
The good thing about accepting donations on your website is that you don’t need a huge amount of traffic. You only need an audience supporting your mission. You can keep your website ad free too. Visitors love a clean website with no ads.
Sadly, with this method, you might not get recurring revenue. Users often donate only once. But there is a chance to build a website like “Wikipedia” which is donation funded.
4. Set up an e-commerce platform
If writing useful content is too demanding, you can start selling products through your website. Having an e-commerce platform may bring you profit.
You create your online store right after installing WordPress. Don’t worry if you are not familiar with this, setting up WooCommerce plugin on your WordPress will automatically turn your regular WordPress template into an e-commerce site. Next, you need to customize your site with some e-commerce themes and plugins. After customization and uploading products, you’re ready to sell and make money online.
Pros and Cons
If you want to make money fast, building an e-commerce site is a perfect choice. The popularity of e-commerce is rising! People look for and buy products online more and more often. If you can make your online store stand out of the crowd, you can reach buyers from all around the world. It is also possible to get recurring income.
On the other hand, early stages of e-commerce might be hard. Setting up an e-commerce site requires dedication and hard work. You need to learn product and website development skills.
You also need to be good at marketing to make users notice your store. Your marketing strategy also defines whether your customers want to purchase your products again. You may need to think about payment gateways, packing, and shipping as well.
5. Flip Your Website
In plain English, website flipping means you buy, build, and then sell website. You don’t sell things on your website, you trade your website.
Website flipping can be very effective. Many people out there know that having a website is a good investment. However, not all of them want to build a website from scratch. They prefer to buy already established websites, add more content and then sell them.
You need to develop your website before you can sell it. Find a niche, choose themes and plugins, create some content, and monetize it. The more income you get from your website, the more money you can get from selling it.
Where to sell your website?
After your website starts making money online, flippa.com will help you find a buyer. Usually, you can sell the website for about 10x – 22x monthly income.
Pros and Cons
If you don’t want to deal with the stress of long-term website growth, then website flipping might be for you. This method will give you reasonable revenue. You’ll get money from monetization, then you’ll earn much more from selling it.
However, there’s a catch behind this method. Website flipping requires observation skills, to buy the right website and technical skills to improve it. With this method, you risk actually losing money.
6. Sell Ad Space
Selling ad space is another common practice to monetize your website. If you have enough traffic, your website might impress other business within in the same niche. For example, if you run a blog about parenting, a children book publisher might be interested in putting an advertisement on your website.
First, you need to optimize the ad space on your website. Plugins will help you to get the job done. Usually, the ads will be placed on your sidebar. Next, let your visitors know that you’re accepting ads with a text like “Advertise Here” or “Banner ads cost $xxx per month” to attract some related companies.
You can also market aggressively by emailing the company and informing them that they can place an advertisement on your website. Don’t forget to attach your website analytics. Websites with higher traffic and user engagement statistics will attract business’ more easily.
Pros and Cons
Selling ad space on your website is a promising monetization method. Unlike Google AdSense, this method lets you cooperate directly with the advertiser. Without a third party, you can set your own rate. If you find out that pop up banner ads get higher attention from visitors, you can set a higher price for it too.
In contrast, this method requires a lot of traffic and engagement on your website. You need to have at least 10,000 monthly visitors to convince any company that you have a great website. Sadly, finding clients might take time as well.
7. Sell digital products
Selling digital products like stock photos, design templates, or e-books is also a good way to get passive income. Once you upload a product and set the price, you can sell them repeatedly.
Unlike an e-commerce site, digital products are easier to manage. You don’t need to think about packing or shipping. You only need to provide a download link once your visitors have processed the payment.
WooCommerce is still the best plugin to help you sell digital products. But, you also need to think about the payment gateway.
Pros and Cons
Selling digital products is a great long-term monetization strategy, as your income won’t depend on advertisement. You can set your own desired prices, and won’t need to worry about your product stock since digital products are always downloadable.
On the contrary, digital products take a long time to prepare. You need additional skills such as graphic design or photography to sell digital products. But, a long way of recurring income is worth the effort you make.
8. Sponsored posts and articles
Promoting other businesses does not always translate to ads. You can promote other products/services with your articles. This is called sponsored posting or native advertising.
If you do product reviews on your website frequently, this monetization method suits you best. In fact, this method is more favorable than placing ads because it allows you to engage your visitors more.
However, similarly to selling spaces for ads, your traffic is the main key to attracting clients. Having more than 10,000 visits per month should be your first requirement if you want to choose this route. If you have achieved that number, be proactive and contact some potential brands to promote your service.
Pros and Cons
If you are doing it right, you could become a trusted influencer. The more people trust your reviews, the higher the rates you can set for a sponsored post. You also don’t need to find clients. They will find you.
As for the drawbacks, this method requires a deep observation of the products. You also need to understand your audiences’ persona and find the right approach to convince them. Most importantly, this method requires trust. Once you’re promoting bad quality products, you will lose both credibility and traffic at the same time.
9. Provide online courses
Once your visitors find your content helpful, they will see that you are skilled in your niche. It’s possible to begin teaching through online courses.
Before you provide online courses, you have to prepare the lesson plan. You need to design the structure of your topics and how to deliver it understandably. This stage might require a lot of brainstorming or trial-error.
The next crucial thing in online courses is videos. You need to think about the video concept and find a videographer if you are not good at video editing yourself. Online courses require a lot of hard work. In return, you can set a higher price than any other digital product mentioned previously.
Pros and Cons
Providing online courses lets you demonstrate your expertise publicly. People may find you on the web and decide to invite you as a trainer or speaker.
Videos can be a stumbling block. Before uploading tons of videos to your website, check your hosting plan first. Videos will use a lot of your hosting resources and damage other sites within your shared server. Moreover, managing videos needs extra effort.
10. Provide consultation services
If developing a robust online course is too time-consuming, you can share your skill by providing a consultation service. Your visitors can place inquiries on your website, but will only get answers if they pay for your service. You can prepare some paid plans and give them different offers in each one.
Pros and Cons
Providing consultation is not as easy as it may seem. In fact, it could be really exhausting. The more clients you get, the more energy-consuming it would be. However, it can earn you a lot of revenue.
Conclusion
Well, turning your website into an income source is doable. Just remember that you need to learn before you can earn. Your main target is to help your visitors with your content. If you can achieve this, money will follow.
Every monetization method has its own strong and weak points. It is fine if you decide to do a trial run to find the most suitable method for you and your audience. If you do it right, your dream of making money while having fun with your family is about to get real.
