30 Proven Ways To Monetize a Website (or a Blog)
There are a lot of ways to monetize your blog. Some methods mentioned below might work for you; some might not, in case it doesn’t, have hope and try another method. So let’s start.
1. Pay Per Click Advertisements
As the name suggests, you get paid for every click a visitor makes on the ads displaying on your website. To enable this, you sign up to a provider and they provide you a code to place on your site. After this has been done, the provider will then send ads to your site, relevant to your content. Google AdSense is the most preferred provider, though providers like Clicksor and BidVertiser are also available in the market. The profitability of the PPC depends on the traffic on your website as very less people would click on these ads. So, you’ll need a good amount of organic traffic to gain profits.
2. Cost Per Mile Advertising
CPM is similar to PPC advertising but instead of earning on a per-click basis, you earn according to the number of page views you get on the site. To make it easier, you earn $1on every 1000 page views on an average, though every provider have their own pay scale. There are a lot CPM providers you can take services from, but the higher the better. Though this is much beneficial for websites with large traffic, anyone can give it a shot.
3. Text Link Ads
These advertisements let you place text based ads within your articles. To avail this, you need to sign up to a specific product affiliate advertising scheme or sign up to a specialised provider to automate the service.
Text-Link-Ads works wonders as it has a non-intrusive way of monetizing your blog that won’t put off your readers.
4. In-text Ads
In-text adsare also placed inside your text content. These are usually double underlines and advertisements will pop-up every time someone places the cursor on it and then people can choose whether to click on it or not, well this can help you earn a little sum of money. To avail this, you need to sign up to an In-text advertising provider that can place sponsored links on your content.
5. Advertising Widgets
This is the newest method but the people using this approach are increasing. This method uses widgets designed to be placed on the websites without any hassle to generate revenue. It is a mixture of PPC, text link ads and affiliate programs.
6. Advertising Space
This method allows you to sell some space on your blog to the advertiser, where they place their advertisements for a limited period of time. The process totally eliminates the middleman and hence you can charge the amount you prefer. This is only beneficial if you’ve a huge recurring traffic.
7. RSS Adverts
It’s a reader friendly webpage of a website and can be monetized using CPM or PPC methods. If you’re planning to create an app of your website RSS will fetch all the content for you. You can find adverts for your RSS feed on BidVertiser or through Google FeedBurner.
8. Audio Advertising
You can add Pay Per Play audio adverts that automatically plays when someone visit the site and visitor can’t close it. This is a very intrusive method but you earn $5 per visit Or you can choose to add ‘Podcast ads’ and mention the new feature in your newsletters in order to inform people beforehand so they won’t turn off.
9. Pop-ups/Lightboxes
Pop-ups are extremely annoying but would work wonders if used wisely. While using pop-ups make sure that they don’t appear a lot of time and directly advertise what they need to.
10. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is kind of traditional advertising, where you get sponsorship from a product that is relevant to your website and display the advertisement and you get commission on every sale.
11. Product Reviews
As the name suggests, you simply have to review the products in detail and publish them on your site. It could be about films, cars, gadgets, etc. If the product has an affiliated program, then you can make a good amount of money.
12. Create & Sell Your Own Product
You have something to offer the society? A service? A product? Great! It’s your chance to earn by selling your own product. Simply make a website in ‘hire me’ format that has your post folio and voila! You’re all set.
13. Write an eBook
E-books have been gaining a lot of popularity these days. An E-book will help you gathering a larger data base and earn a decent revenue.
14. Write a Hardback Book
This may be the continuation of previous method. If you’re a good writer and your E-book had a good response, you can use this method to promote your books and gain audience.
15. Write Tutorials & Guides
Internet is the best place to find answers for your queries. If you have in depth knowledge on a topic, start writing tutorials and guides, this would help you gather a lot of organic traffic.
16. Teaching Program
This could be the continuation of previous method, where you can keep blogging about the subject you hold expertise in and ask your visitors to sign up for your paid course to learn some exclusive skills.
17. Live Workshops
The next step after online teaching course is to have a live workshop as workshops let you interact with your audience and receive feedbacks.Many people don’t understand text or video tutorials and hence are ready to spend money to learn a set of skills.
18. Host A Webinar
Webinars are digitalised version live workshop online. People attend webinars to talk to an expert on a specific subject. You can earn money from Webinars by reserving virtual seats for an individual by charging some amount, so they can interact with you during the process.
19. Be a Consultant
If you hold an expertise in a specific niche and have a good reputation amongst the people of that particular niche, then you can become a consultant and earn a great sum. You can either offer one-on-one consultancy or via skype, it’s up to you.
20. Find Sponsors For An Event
If you organize events, such as a workshop, a weekly podcast, etc., you canfind companies to sponsor them and advertise the company in the beginning and at the end.
21. Selling Services (Hire Me)
You can build a website advertising your services and visitors pay you for availing your professional services through your website.
22. Membership Site
You can create a membership site, where you teach/offer people a particular skill and later make them realise that they can learn/ gain a lot more if they were a member of the website.
23. Private Forums
You can create private forums where people with similar interests can discuss their ideas by paying an annual/ monthly fee. You must have strong exclusive content on your private forum only accessible to members, to gain a large number of members.
24. Email Marketing
Email marketing can help you generating you lots of money by building a large email list of your customers/visitors. You can add an option of registering for the newsletter, and when people do that, you get their e mail ids making it easier for you to promote your products and services.
25. Surveys & Polls
Place surveys and polls from certain companies on your website is a good idea as you’ll be paid just for displaying it, though visitors can participate in voting. To avail it, you need to choose a company, relevant to your content and sign up.
26. Paid Directory Listings
In this method you simply allocate space on your website to list links of different companies and services that are relevant to your content. If you have a huge number of followers you have confidence in, you can take the privilege by charging a specific amount for specific guaranteed views.
27. Job Boards
You can create a site that lets companies post job vacancies and you can charge some listing fees and finders fee, if the job form is filled by a visitor.
28. Sell Your Custom Template or Theme
With increased blogging, people are demanding for new, unique themes. If you have created your own custom template or theme, then you can consider selling it. The better your skills are, the higher prices you can charge.
29. Donations
A method that is not followed much, you can simply provide your services and ask people to donate some amount to you, in order to keep your website alive, so you can continue your work. This will help you earn some amount of money for sure. This method is quite common in typography and graphic designing.
30. Auction Your Website
Some websites just don’t earn and this leaves the owner disheartened because of the effort they’ve put in. If your site is one of such, you might want to consider selling it before you shut it down. This way you would at least get something.
