Monetization is converting existing traffic on a website into an income or revenue stream. I am sure you would love to earn from the hardwork that you invest in your website. A well-monetized website can support itself and also give you paychecks. Who doesn’t love paychecks? 

Many people are always excited to monetize their website but in most cases, you will find out that the website is under-monetized and it would have earned a lot more if the monetization was done properly. 

In this article, we shall look at the different and approved ways of monetizing your website to earn from it. 

What should you know before choosing a monetization strategy for your website? 

• Traffic will greatly affect your income. The more traffic your website receives, the higher your chances of getting a big paycheck. 
• Some niches or topics require different monetization strategies. Therefore be careful about your selection. 
• Forget about quick money. Website monetization and earning takes time and dedication. 
• Don’t get discouraged if your first paycheck has a few bucks on. IT will get bigger and bigger as time goes on. 

How to monetize a website. 

To start getting paychecks from your website, you can choose one or more monetization strategies from the list below. Usually, people may have even above 5 monetization strategies set up on their websites. The most common strategies are to display Ads and affiliate marketing. 

1. Display Ads.

Display ads are the most common way of monetizing a website.  Pay per click is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time their ads are clicked. So, these types of ads are displayed on your website. 

The good thing about display ads is they pay even per impression. It is always per 1000 impressions.  It is referred to as RPM which stands for Rate Per Mile. The RPM becomes the multiplier and it can range from $6 to $30. 

One of the popular tools for display ADs is Google AdSense. 

For starters or websites that have traffic less than 10k visitors, Google AdSense is the best option in display Ads providers. With 10k visitors per month, you can upgrade to Ezoic a premium ad provider that provides more paying ads. 

2. Affiliate marketing.

If you choose affiliate marketing, you will earn a commission for every referral you make to another E-commerce website or business. You are paid by a percentage on the purchase of the customer you referred to them. For instance, if the commission is 50% and the customer referred to buy a product worth $100, you will get $50 as simple as that.  

Some affiliates pay for customers you referred to them even they don’t make a purchase. Affiliate programs work at the principle of storing a cookie or call it a tracing code of the client referred to them. The client may not make a purchase on the same day you referred to them but as long as they do in the cookie storage period, you still earn your commission. 

Some affiliates offer recurring commissions and can pay you as many times as the customer you refer makes a purchase. 

Amazon used to be one of the biggest and most earning affiliate program providers until it cut its commission even some being cut from 8% to 1%.  

In every sector or niche, there are affiliate programs where you can refer people to buy services, E-books, products, memberships, and many others.  So, with an affiliate, you can choose to display Ad banners with affiliate links, write reviews, and recommend products to your audience.  

You should however choose your affiliate programs wisely and the products you promote. Poor choosing either of the two will make you lose clients and money if the product recommended is of poor quality and the commissions paid are very little. 

3. Selling Ad space.

You can directly sell space or sections on your websites to advertisers directly instead of passing through advertising companies or platforms like Google AdSense.  

The method is time-consuming and advertisers might need a certain minimum number of visitors. The space provided to advertisers might be used to display Ad banners, links, or information related to the advertiser. In most cases, the advertiser and website on which the Ad is displayed must be in the same or related niche. For example, a skincare website might sell an Ad space to a dermatologist. 

With Ad space, you are paid depending on the visitors you get. You might either be paid by impressions or by clicks on that Ad. You can also choose to be paid a specific amount without putting impressions and clicks into consideration. 

4. Sell products.

You can start selling physical or virtual products to your audience. In this way, you will earn more money than when you do affiliate since there will be no middle man in between to share the money with from the sale. You are paid immediately and directly. 

You will however need an E-commerce setup to get your website able to sell products. IT also needs security and knowledge concerning creating products, payments, content, design, and other additional resources. You can however get the design and setup done for you at a fee through an agency like Billionaire Surge. 

In the case of physical products, you should also think about shipping and delivery. 

Compared to other monetizing strategies, selling products isn’t easy and will require a little bit more work and knowledge. 

5. Donations.

Accepting donations can also be another way to monetize your website. However, this method isn’t so effective and the money got from it isn’t guaranteed every month.  

With this monetization, you may not necessarily need to have a great audience but rather an engaged audience or community. 

This monetization strategy will require skills and creative content to make people donate. It requires sympathy or great love from your audience to be able to get donations.  

One of the websites that rely on donations to run is Wikipedia. But with this strategy, Wikipedia is earning less than it would have earned if it chose display Ads and affiliation. 

To start receiving a donation, you should set up donation buttons on your website and link them to payment processors like PayPal, Stripe, Fundly or direct banking. 

6. Online courses.

Online courses are becoming popular these days with almost every niche having courses to sell. They may be detailed ”How-tos”, information, lessons, and many others. 

If you haven’t ever bought a course nothing strange is in these courses just a detailed put together useful information from posts and articles. Since people are lazy and it may take time running from article to article, when you put together these articles in a nice way, they sell like hot cake. 

In the website niche, Project 24 by Income school is one of the most successful selling Online courses about blogging and content creation.   

There are very many courses in internet marketing, gardening, DIYs, and many others.  Therefore you are limited with whatever topic or niche your website is in.

7. Coaching or monetize your expertise

You can also choose to monetize your expertise through coaching. This might be teaching them in an area you are an expert in. Guess you have seen online fitness trainers and of which you pay a monthly, weekly, or daily subscription fee for their coaching. 

However, with this type of monetization, we have to be engaged always. Unlike courses that you can record and send to your audience, coaching usually requires your presence. 

It also requires expertise or success in something. As you can be coaching about something that you don’t know of. General knowledge about a topic may not be enough to convivence your audience and make them stay or engaged. 

You can also choose to offer services in the field that you are an expert in.  Tell the audience of your expertise, works done and prices you charge.  

Some of the expertise that you can monetize to provide online services are website design, app development, graphics design, copywriting and content marketing, editing and proofreading, content creation, SEO and digital marketing, transcriptionist services, and other services that can be done remotely. 

8. Post sponsored content.

You can be paid to write reviews or posts about a certain website usually of a similar or related niche.  It is an easy way to get money as it just involves posting the article on your website. In other cases, you may also be required to write the article or review it yourself but this means more money. 

The sponsored article may also bring traffic to your website if it happens to rank organically. 

However, sponsored articles are posted on websites that have a huge and engaging audience. 

9. Membership websites.

This monetization process requires people to pay and become a member with a certain level of added benefits or services. Just like you may see a real gym where you pay a subscription to access the equipment and coaches, a membership website charges an amount for readers to access certain content and services. 

The strategy can be used for coaching websites or websites that teach new lessons. You can also choose this strategy if you are sure your content is worth paying for.  This can be combined with coaching or online courses.

To set this up, you will need to install plugins that restrict content and gives access to certain content depending on the membership level. 

10. Create and sell to an email list.

Creating emails from your audience can be a great way to monetize your website. When you collect these emails, you can send affiliate links or inks of your products to your audience. This can increase your sales, affiliate, or increase your website visits. 

Through emails, you can sell E-books, info products, courses, subscriptions, and physical products. 

Usually, these emails are collected from people who visit your website and they are interested in your type of niche. Making a sale to these kinds of people can be simpler since they are interested already.  

However, in order to collect these emails, you should have a lot of visitors in order to collect a good number of emails. 

11. Set up a dropshipping store

Many people have made a fortune from drop shipping. Simply, a website that operates a drop shipping model purchases the items it sells from a third-party supplier or manufacturer who then fulfills the order on your behalf.  

Your job is to get the audience to buy products and the manufacturer will send the products to the buyers. This cuts operational costs and saves you the stress of shipping and processing of the product. 

It gets quite easy if you have excellent internet marketing skills to be able to pull off some good sales. 

Here is what you need to do if you are to set up a dropshipping website; select a profitable niche, do competition research, secure a supplier, build the E-commerce website, and set up the products ready. 

12. Flip your website.

For a quick fortune, you could choose to sell off your website. This strategy can be quite profitable depending on the type of site you run.  

However, the selling price of the website will depend on the traffic your website receives, the profits it generates, revenue steadiness, and growth.  

While buying a website, some people use 38 as a multiplier of the average monthly income. For example, if the website earns $50 per month, this multiplied by 36 to get $1,800 from the sale. 

Summary.

• Display Ads: google displays Ads and this strategy doesn’t require any work apart from setting the Ads. 
• Affiliate marketing: write engaging content and include affiliate links in your content. It will not require any more work after the content is written and the article will run for years. 
• Selling Ad space: research and contact high price paying advertisers to advertise on your website. It will not require work after the Ad is set up. 
• Sell products: set up an E-commerce platform to sell your goods on. Might require some bit of extra work if the purchase process is not automated especially for physical products. For virtual sales, you may just sit back and relax as things work themselves. 
• Donations: Regularly engaging with your audience can increase donations. But you can, however, sit back and relax as donations come in. 
• Online courses: create helpful information and sell it in form of a PDF, videos, or E-books. No much work will be required after the course is made and its sale is launched. 
• Coaching or monetizing your expertise: this will require regular or daily engagement with your audience to meet their demands. If you are doing online services, you will need to complete tasks to earn and this requires daily or regular working on the sites to complete tasks. 
• Pst sponsored content: write reviews, articles or post already made posts from other websites at a paid fee. It will not require any work after the content is posted on your website. 
• Membership: create a membership platform where your audience can buy a membership in order to access certain content. It may require additional work if you do coaching to your subscribed members. 
• Create an email list: collect emails from people that visit your website. It requires sending emails to your email list. 
• Dropshipping: sell products to your audience and let the manufacturers meet your sales on your behalf. It will require no work since the process is automated. 

When I say it doesn’t require work, it is with exception of gaining more traffic to your website. Since a lot of traffic increase your sales, aim at gaining more traffic in order to maximize your earning.