Making money from a website isn’t all that difficult. Even sites that don’t have a lot of traffic can make a few bucks here and there. Whether you’re operating an online business or simply have a personal blog, you might as well consider the following to supplement your income.
It all starts with generating traffic. This often comes from creating a few viral posts to bring in the people.
Once you have a good flow of people visiting, the possibilities to make money online increase. In fact, some of these methods may even give you a few ideas of your own.
Here are 35 of the best ways to make money with your website or blog.
1. Google Adsense
Did you know that Google is the number one marketing platform in the world with more than $502 billion in capitalization? Wouldn’t it be nice to get a slice of that pie?
Perhaps one of the most popular systems to make money with your blog or website is Google Adsense. In this platform, you’re showing ads for other companies on your pages and posts.
It’s an easy to use system that is virtually plug and play. The only real drawback is that you don’t have a lot of control over what is delivered onto your site in terms of advertisements.
Google will give you the code to copy-and-paste into any area you can place text on your site. Once someone clicks on the ad, you make money. Some ads will credit you a small amount simply by showing it.
It’s literally that easy.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when you’re advertising the goods of a third-party on your website. Should someone click on those ads and make a purchase, you get a slice of the proverbial pie.
It works like this: You get a special tracking URL that you can place on your site. When a visitor clicks that link, he or she is taken to a third-party’s website. That tracking URL is then linked to the sale if that visitor makes a purchase. Usually, your pay will be determined by percentages or flat fees depending on the company.
For instance, GreenGeeks offers up to $100 for a certain number of qualified signups. Using a provided tracking URL, the company connects the buyer to your website. All you need to do is paste the code.
3. Donations
In 2015, more than one million donations were made online. Although a large portion of them were to charity organizations, many people gave for the sake of helping others.
A donation button on your site could be a great way to gather a bit of revenue quickly. This is ideal if you help charities, especially if you market it as assisting others on your site.
Online companies such as PayPal will even give you the code to copy-and-paste directly into your posts and pages. PayPal will then do the rest.
There’s a lot of good-hearted people on the Internet looking to help those in need. A donation button gives them that opportunity.
4. Lead Generation
Generating leads for companies is similar to affiliate marketing. The biggest difference is that companies will pay you whether someone makes a purchase or not.
Essentially, you put a graphic on your site for the sole purpose of creating a link to a specific product or service.
A fee is often negotiated between the owner and the advertising company. This is usually based on the amount of traffic the website owner sends to specific business pages.
5. Private Ad Space
Many site owners will offer private ad space on their site for a monthly fee. Essentially, you’ll charge an advertiser to put a banner or graphic on your site regardless if someone clicks it or not.
One of the reasons why many people like this method is because there is nothing to track outside of displays and perhaps clicks. All you need is space on your site for the advertisement and to collect a monthly fee.
This is a common practice for those who support other local companies in their area. Perhaps you can convince those businesses to advertise on your site as well.
6. Email Lists
Email has been one of the most cost efficient forms of marketing since the inception of the Internet. Many use these simple messages to boost sales, engage customers and offer direct products.
This is often viewed as a long-term strategy as it could be quite a bit of time before someone takes advantage of what you offer. However, it has very little cost and upkeep.
You may be able to develop an automatic system from your site to do most of the work for you.
7. Running eCommerce
According to online shopping trends, eCommerce may reach more than $684 billion in transactions by 2020. This has been a steady growth since the creation of the Internet.
Opening an online store is much easier than trying to do one in the real world. For one thing, there is a nominal overhead expense unless you decide to get into a warehouse. Otherwise, it’s much cheaper to operate while giving you access to worldwide shoppers.
A lot of owners operate eCommerce sites from the comfort of their basements at home. As long as you have something good to sell, you can easily make money with your website.
8. InfoLinks
InfoLinks is an ad-sharing platform much like Google Adsense. However, the restrictions for placing ads are much lower and it has more available options.
While this system may be easier to put into place, the trade off is that you may not make as much money. InfoLinks has a lower payout to site owners on average when compared to Google.
Still, it’s something you can implement on your site and forget about until the checks start coming in. The only thing you truly need to worry about is creating good content for people to read.
9. Members-Only Content
Ever thought about owning a private club? Your website could become the next best thing. Members-only content has potential to create a good revenue stream, as long as you have the information everyone wants.
By offering a monthly membership and restricting access to your best material, you may develop quite a cash cow of content.
Just make sure you offer something beyond what people can get for free from a simple Google search. Valuable content leads to greater possibilities with membership accounts.
10. Sponsored Content
Sports stars aren’t the only ones who can get a sponsorship. Some companies will pay you to write about their products or services. This works best if you have a lot of visitors per month.
There are also a few sites out there that can connect you to those companies willing to hand out freebies as well as pay. For instance, Tomoson.com shows potential businesses your reach through web and social media channels. Those companies then decide if you have enough influence among potential customers for what they need.
It can be quite lucrative if you collect a lot of fans and followers on both your site and social media.
11. Reselling Your Content Offline
Search engines frown on selling content from one website to another. However, there is nothing wrong with selling it to print magazines, educational institutions and other offline formats.
You may be surprised by how often bloggers sell their post collections to businesses in the real world. Some will go so far as to create a printable version of their website to hand out as reading material.
12. Selling Digital Goods
Digital products are good to sell because they don’t require packaging or expensive overhead. Things like eBooks, music or any other digital media can be distributed en mass with little to no cost to yourself.
For example, you can offer an eBook from your website. Again, PayPal can help you set up a cart for digital downloads quickly. The only drawback is that you may have to email the files directly to your buyers.
An alternative to this is setting up an eCommerce site using free applications. For instance, PrestaShop has an easy system that installs well as a subdomain for your website.
13. Hosting Classes
Many people will pay to know what you know. If you have a great deal of experience or knowledge in any given industry, you can market those abilities.
By setting up classes online, you can generate a bit of cash from those who show interest. There are multitudes of platforms out there that will help you get started right away. Some are even free to use and can plug easily into your website through copy-and-paste coding.
The trade-off is that it may take a lot of your time.
14. Professional Consulting
Consultants can make a great deal of money by helping others. If you consider yourself an expert and have people skills, you can offer to help others for a fee.
If you want to take this a step further, you can tie an “800” number to your website and take calls. Perhaps you can install a live chat plugin to help people.
15. Paid Webinars
Webinars are kind of like classes without the intensive interaction between teacher and student. Although there is a degree of “Q and A,” it mostly centers around delivering high quality information from your website live.
In some ways, this is like combining education and consulting into one easy-to-use setup.
Some systems, such as Webinars OnAir, provide you with everything needed to host your own. These often come with features like redirecting after registration and charging people to attend.
16. Polling Your Visitors
If you have a lot of traffic, why not leverage your users to make some extra dough? Running surveys from your site gives you access to a lot of data. That information could be worth money to the right business.
You could also offer to run surveys directly for a company from your website. In this model, you could agree on a payment-per-user platform and receive money directly from that company for each answer from the polls you host.
17. Paid Directory Listings
Companies will pay good money to have a popular website display contact information. It works a bit like lead generation. However, there is one major exception.
Listings can have multiple companies simultaneously on one page.
This can also double as a good way to attract more visitors. The more businesses that are in your directory, the more people may be looking for specific brands.
Some website owners do this primarily for local organizations. This may be a great place to start your own listing service.
18. Deliver an App
If you have a bit of skill creating an app, you can use your website to promote it. You can also use your site as an extension of the app to give it more versatility in user experience.
Many app developers create their products to work in tandem with the website. It allows you to cover your bases for both mobile and desktop users while increasing the potential for making money.
An example of this is how many fitness apps work on computers and mobile devices with the same data, such as MyFitnessPal and Fitbit.
19. Text Linking
Not all ads need to be in graphic format. Selling text links is when you provide a link back to a company to help sell a product or service. It’s similar to the lead generation mentioned above with the exception that it’s a text link and not a graphic.
This can also be marketed as back-link building as long as both companies are relevant to each other. You may even be able to get a link back to your own site to boost its reputation in search engines as well.
20. Newsletters
Newsletters can be beneficial to keep visitors interested in your website. They can also be useful to make money online.
Including links to third parties can be part of you advertising campaign for those companies. If you don’t want to include third party links, you could always require a subscription fee for the newsletter while delivering content to the readers that isn’t found on your site.
This gives your users a sense of belonging to a special community that isn’t accessible by anyone else.
21. Combining Forces
Many businesses that compliment one another will often join together to boost success. By combining resources, and often technology, both companies have potential for greater earnings.
For example, let’s say you own a landscaping website and business. It might not take much to partner up with a local plant nursery. They can give you discounts when using their plant life exclusively for your customers. The trade would be the nursery advertising your company when a customer is looking to renovate their yard.
This is a common practice in many industries because it offers great success to both parties.
22. Selling Website Improvements
A common practice for many online businesses is the act of selling apps or widgets specifically designed for their website.
For example: You create an amazing widget for your website to track stock prices full of fun features. Now, why not sell that widget to someone else who may want the same tool?
Selling off your improvements could be an easy way to make money with your blog. Potential buyers can see the improvement working live directly from your site. This may then prompt sales and further interest in your abilities.
Ideas for this could include widgets, themes or even snippets of custom coding.
23. Going Live
At least 80% of all online users between 16 and 54-years old watch video clips or live streaming. Video is also one of the most prominent uses of the Internet in general.
If you have a lot of visitors throughout the day, you can turn your website into a video studio. Using tools such as YouTube, you may deliver live video feeds to engage your audience while cashing in on the YouTube partnership program.
This doesn’t include money you might make from product placement and advertisements within the video itself. Perhaps a company can pay you to review an item in your video.
You could also combine the membership only area with your live feed. This means people would have to pay in order to watch your digital broadcast.
24. Blog Posts to eBook
A common method for people to turn a profit from their websites is to create an eBook consisting of the most popular posts and pages. By taking the posts users find the most appealing, you could turn them into pages of a book.
The only real drawback to this method is that it may take time to discover what content you have that is the most popular with visitors.
25. Offering a Job Board
Approximately 23% of full-time freelancers will use online job boards to find work. This doesn’t include the professionals who are simply looking for a job at local companies.
Job boards can be profitable by giving other companies a platform to advertise their openings. Once the coding is placed onto your website, it’s possible to make money online by accepting payments from employment agencies and companies alike.
If there is one thing you can count on from the Internet is how often people use it to find work. Because of this fact, you may experience an even greater flow of traffic to your site thanks to the job board.
Also, maintaining a job board takes very little time.
26. Offer Yourself for Hire
Many freelancers will use their blogs as a form of online resume. Putting a contact form on your website, you may be able to generate interest from potential clients.
This is especially true if you demonstrate your abilities within the blog itself by posting about what you know.
If you don’t use content management systems such as WordPress, contact forms may be a little bit tricky to implement. However, it’s possible to find files and snippets to paste in a Google search. For example, CSS-Tricks.com has a nice layout for a free contact form.
27. Pop-up Advertising
Delivering pop-up ads can be lucrative, even though it may be annoying to a few of your visitors. There are many ways you can implement this style of advertising on a site, and most nowadays will use Lightbox imagery.
This is effective because many pop-up blockers don’t detect Lightbox images as being a “threat.”
You can use pop-up ads in a variety of ways. Many include the ability to sign up for newsletters, custom contact forms or selling products and services for third parties.
28. Content Locking
Locking the content of your site is similar to how premium webpages work. The biggest difference is that content lockers can be triggered by many different things.
For example, the material on a post could be hidden unless the visitor clicks on an advertisement.
Many will offer to show the page for a very small fee. Instead of offering a monthly membership, visitors could pay as little as 25 cents to read a specific article. Perhaps you can use a locker in tandem with live video feeds.
Tools like OptinMonster give you a great deal of control over what gets locked. Once you have your settings in the system, it will give you a code to embed in almost any content area you want to block.
29. Auction House
You don’t have to maintain a traditional eCommerce site if you want to sell some goods. Hosting an auction house on your site adds a layer of intrigue and excitement, especially if you have some good things to sell.
You can install a variety of auction systems such as PHP Pro Bid. However, you will want to keep an eye on out-dated software and scripts. Some older tools may cause security problems if they’re not current and regularly upgraded.
30. Ads in the RSS Feed
Really Simple Syndication is used in a variety of ways from online readers to submitting blog posts. Some systems will allow you to place ads directly into your RSS feed.
Selling ad space to others privately in your feed could be a great way to make a few extra dollars each month. This is one of those methods that can work well with other money-making ideas such as selling links.
31. Audio Ads
With the increasing growth of podcasts and streaming radio, many companies invest in audio ads. Essentially, these are similar to traditional radio ads.
Hosting a podcast on your website could pique the interest of marketers willing to pay you for a spot on your show. Since podcasts have potential to reach a wide audience, you could easily put it to work for you to earn a bit of extra income.
32. Writing Content for Others
Because content is a big part of business marketing, there are always companies looking to hire writers. If you have a blog, you can turn it into a way to market your abilities and attract those looking to pay for your writing.
Much like selling improvements mentioned earlier, potential customers can actually see your completed work live. Based on how well you create content for your website, a client may contact you to write his or her material.
Just make sure you put your best posts forward. After all, the content of your website will be marketing your abilities as a writer.
33. Private Forums
Although there are free forums around on the Internet, private forums have potential to be very lucrative. This is especially true if you have experts in a specific field waiting to answer questions.
People are more likely to pay for expert advice from a trusted source rather than spend hours looking online for a solution. A good example of this is Experts-Exchange.com.
For a low monthly fee, you can offer guests professional assistance regarding the industry. This is another method that could work well with content locking. In order to get access to live chat, phone calls or message boards, the user has to pay or click a link.
34. Rental Space
Much like real estate, some people may be interested in renting out space on your website. This could be anything from a simple blog post to subleasing a subdomain.
A common use of this platform comes from setting up landing pages for companies to link back to their products or services. It’s kind of like when you see ads pasted to cars traveling down the road. The company is paying you for a space on your property.
Although most site owners prefer a reseller account, it is possible to share your site with a third party for a monthly fee.
35. Sell the Site
Selling your website has potential to make you a lot of money all at once. In fact, some people make a decent living from “flipping” websites much like what others do with houses and real estate. It’s the same concept, but it’s in the digital world.
In order for this to be a lucrative venture, you need to demonstrate that the site can generate a great deal of traffic. The more popular the website, the more money you’ll make.
Once you sell the site, there’s nothing stopping you from buying another one and starting the process all over.
Find What Works Best for You
A website can do more than merely offer information about yourself or the company. Many use their pieces of the web to supplement income. With all of the options that are available, why not take advantage of a few to help increase your bank accounts?
You may find yourself enjoying the benefits of a residual income without doing extra work to receive it.