Making money is one of the best things about having a website. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the hardest. Most people go about it the wrong way. We’re going to fix that for you here, right now.
We’ll cover seven of the most common ways people try to make money with their websites and tell you what works and what doesn’t so you can skip all the trial-and-error stuff and get straight to making cash. The best thing is that even if you don’t have a website already, these are still good strategies because they work just as well whether or not your site is brand new or has been around for years. Let’s dive in!
1. Google AdSense
Google serves ads on billions of sites across the web including yours if you sign up for AdSense. The company matches relevant ads with your site’s content and serves them to relevant visitors. Your visitors see the ads, you make money. You can choose whether or not Google will serve text or display ads (text ads are usually much more popular), how big they’ll be, and whether to use ad links that open in new windows/tabs.
2. Promote sites
Rather than just publishing content yourself, become a publisher of other people’s content! Find sites that you like and figure out how to promote them write reviews about their products, link back to them from your site, try to drive traffic their way. Then reach out and ask if they’re interested in partnering up: maybe they’ll offer you a commission for every sale or lead you to send their way; maybe they’ll give you free or reduced-price items in exchange for reviews and links.
3. Online courses or ebooks
Imagine you’re starting a business, but rather than joining the rat race to win customers, you sell them your product upfront before they ever need to check out. This way, all you have to do is serve ads on your site and let visitors know about your product which helps readers identify with you more quickly. Once you have an audience who trusts what you have to say, it’s easier for them to buy from you when they see your sales pitch! The best part? You can avoid shipping costs entirely because you don’t actually have to send anything out in the mail!
4. Affiliate products
It’s not enough to just run ads on your site. You have to promote specific items or brands, and keep track of which ones are most successful so you can continue selling them! But with an affiliate program, you don’t have to do any of the work you simply show visitors ads for particular items that you recommend (or better yet, they come across automatically), then send that traffic directly to the company selling those items. You get a commission every time one of these sales occurs (and no, they’re not usually small commissions).
5. Ad space to direct advertisers
If you’ve got a great-looking site that’s already attracting many visitors, then why not put ads on all those eyeballs? You can sign up with direct advertisers who are interested in finding new customers through your website. This one sounds pretty similar to selling Google Adsense spots, and it actually is! The difference is that you’ll get paid more per click or visit because these people are seeking out specific audiences.
6. Sell content to other publishers
Many websites have full print magazines these days, but they don’t have the resources necessary to write their own articles every month! That means there’s a huge market for well-researched and interesting content that publishers can simply reprint without needing to worry about plagiarism. You can do this yourself, or partner with another company that’s hiring writers and put them in touch: either way, you get paid for your efforts without needing to actually create the content.
7. Offer self-promotion opportunities
This may be hard to wrap your head around at first, but if you’re a business owner, then chances are good that you already have something people want! Whether it’s a service or an actual product, offering self-promotional spots on your site will attract visitors and help you sell more stuff. If you offer services like web design or SEO, offer promotional posts in return for the client mentioning you when they refer potential customers or even let them choose a banner or sidebar ad in return for their business. For physical products (like books, music, and apparel), you can offer promotional spaces to businesses who operate in the same space and your readers will love finding out about cool stuff they may not have known about otherwise!
One of the best things that every website needs is traffic, the more people who visit and interact with your site, the better. But you can’t just expect visitors to happen upon you by accident: instead, create specific campaigns so you can tell where each visitor came from and how much they spent on your site when they got there! You don’t need to hire an advertising agency to do this either: many marketing services let you set up your own campaigns and then track their performance so you can see what’s working best to get new traffic.
If you’re ready to take your website to the next level, think about turning it into a mobile app! The bigger brands have apps for all of their different products and services: if yours is already successful, this should be an easy step in growing even larger. You can either pay another company to develop the app for you or do it yourself using a service like PhoneGap. Either way, once you’ve got people coming back to your site on a regular basis, this is one way they’ll keep finding out more about what your business has to offer!
Thank you for reading! This article is only a brief overview of what you can do to make money with your website, but it should get you started on the right path. Now that you know how to get visitors, turn them into repeat customers who want to be sold additional services and products, and even make sure they keep coming back for more. There’s no limit to what you can accomplish online if you do it right: don’t let this opportunity pass by without taking advantage of every opportunity available.
This article was written in partnership with Galaksion.
