Marcus Richards
While you can make some good money from almost any website, it’s going to take quite a lot of work. With blogging and influencer marketing now becoming legitimate jobs rather than just hobbies or side incomes, it can be all too easy to assume that making money online is easy. Creating a blog, choosing one of the top recommended strategies for monetisation and sitting back while you watch your bank balance rise sounds easy enough. But, it’s not always that simple – almost 70% of bloggers make less than £5k per year and most new bloggers give up before they see any cash, because maintaining a blog or website will often mean a lot of unpaid hard work. However, if you can power through it, there are several website monetisation options that will pay off. Here are some of the top ways to monetise your website.
Affiliate Marketing
If you want to sell your website in the future, a site that brings a lot of money in with a strong valuation is important for both buyers and sellers. And, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetise your website, allowing you to earn a commission from every referral that you make to another business. One of the most popular methods for doing this is comparison websites, where users can compare similar companies to find the best deal for them, with the comparison website getting a commission once a customer signs up. You can also start a review site in your chosen category where you can review items and link back to them using your affiliate link.
E-Commerce
Creating and selling either a physical or digital product using e-commerce is one of the best ways to monetise a website. Digital products are ideal for monetising your website if you are short on time, since these don’t require the continuous creation or sourcing of physical products. All you need to do is create the product once and then copies can be distributed to buyers over and over. Ebooks and audiobooks are some of the best digital products to create and sell on your website, along with online courses, software, and digital downloadable files like stock photos, graphics, illustrations, website themes, stock footage, video effects, and audio jingles.
Create a Paid Membership
You can monetise your website by creating a paid membership area that offers some extra value to visitors who are willing to pay to sign up. There is plenty of software now available that you can easily integrate with a website on almost any platform to allow users to pay to sign up for more if they like. Some popular types of paid membership sites include memberships that offer access to special deals and discounts, directories, private forums and discussion boards, mastermind groups and more.
Sponsorship Deals
Sponsorship deals with other companies can also be an ideal way to bring some additional money in using your website. If you run a blog, then you can write reviews and more information about certain products or services on behalf of another company for a fee. You can get paid to publish a relevant post with a link to the sponsor’s website, reviewing your sponsor’s product or service in your articles, or promoting your sponsor on social media.
Accept Donations
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking your readers or viewers to support your work, rather than showing them tons of ads. It’s not uncommon to see lots of content creators online including gamers, artists, and other creative types asking for financial support from readers, which they will often reward with exclusive content. Patreon is a popular option for donations, or you can use PayPal or Buy Me a Coffee.
Offer Services
If you are an expert in something, you can use your website as a portfolio to promote your services and skills online. Freelancers who have a personal portfolio website tend to charge 65% more for each hour of work they do compared to those without a website. You can offer a range of services that you can promote and demonstrate on your website including graphic design, web design and development, virtual assistant service, content writing, app development, SEO and digital marketing, proofreading and editing and more.
Dropshipping
Another way to use e-commerce to monetise your website is to set up a dropshipping store. Dropshipping is a fulfilment method that eliminates inventory management and shipping. All you need to do is list the items for sale on your website and when somebody buys them, they will be shipped directly to them from the supplier. You don’t need to keep any stock or deal with packaging and shipping; all you have to do is advertise and sell the product.
Whatever type of website you want to create, these are just some of the best ways to monetise your site in 2021.
