12 effective website monetization strategies for publishers

Many businesses have a website they want to monetize but may not consider it a priority because they have a different source of income. On the other hand, some websites hope to transform into successful money-making businesses. And then, there are blogs with a good amount of traffic that they wish to leverage to make money. If you’re in any of these situations and willing to make some money from your website but don’t know how, read about the best website monetization strategies right here.

12 best website monetization strategies

1. Google AdSense
2. Selling ad inventory
3. Affiliate links
4. Affiliate coupons
5. Sponsored posts
6. Memberships and subscriptions
7. Paid courses and certifications
8. Digital downloadables
9. Online store
10. Drop-shipping store
11. Donations
12. Website flipping

1. Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a website monetization platform for website publishers and one of the easiest ways to make money. It works on the Cost Per Click (CPC) model, where you run ads of various brands on your website and get paid from them for every click the ads get. But to use one of these popular website monetization strategies, you want to ensure that the ads are relevant to your website and its content. Showing a shipping service ad on a lifestyle blog will definitely not work.

Another way to benefit from AdSense is through Pay Per Click (PPC), where you pay to generate website traffic from search engines. This may not help you monetize directly, but it increases your website traffic, which may positively impact your other website monetization strategies. However, AdSense requires you to fulfill some essential criteria or eligibility requirements to get on board.

2. Selling ad inventory

One of the effective website monetization strategies is selling ad inventory

If your website is new, especially if it’s a blog, you can allocate some ad space to start website monetization through ads. For this, you can work with a website monetization company to connect you to advertisers who want to advertise on your website. Some website monetization services even offer personalized website monetization strategies focused on your niche by suggesting the right ad formats and placements. Google AdSense is one of the most popular platforms for monetization through ads.

While monetizing your website ad inventory is a great idea, it may involve many things to take care of. Here are a few of them:

• Your website must offer high-quality content and not unlawful or illegal content.
• Your ads must be policy-compliant, which involves practices to avoid while placing ads.
• The user experience of your website must be good.
• It must have a considerable amount of authentic traffic, not invalid or bot traffic.

3. Affiliate links

One of the effective website monetization strategies is placing affiliate links on your website

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest website monetization strategies for web publishers. By including a link to an affiliate’s products on your website or blog, you can gain a commission from them. These links are called referral links. How do you get access to the affiliates? You can join an affiliate marketplace like Amazon Associates, Rakuten Marketing, and more. When trying to implement affiliate marketing, you must take care of a few things to make it work.

• Your website/blog with affiliate links must have high-quality content.
• You must choose a product from your niche.
• You must add a disclaimer that you may earn from the affiliate links.
• You must update the links regularly because they expire.
• You must look out for special offers for extra affiliate income.

4. Affiliate coupons

IOne of the effective website monetization strategies is placing affiliate coupons on your website.

Similar to affiliate links, you can sell affiliate coupons on your website. Shopping coupons, discounts, and cashback are some things that attract all customers. By partnering with other businesses, you can sell their coupons to the traffic on your website and earn a commission. This also works well in getting more traffic to your website. How it is done:

1. Visitors come to your website.
2. They get a coupon code that they can copy.
3. They are redirected to your partner business’ website, where the product is sold.
4. They use the coupon during their purchase.
5. You earn a commission.

5. Sponsored posts

One of the effective website monetization strategies is having sponsored content.

Sponsored posts are those that promote another brand on your website. For instance, you could write a product review, announcement, or tutorial for a brand, add a link to their product, and get paid by them. Such content is also called a guest post and has proven to be one of the most profitable website monetization strategies for many. Your website needs to have good traffic for brands to pay you for sponsored posts. But there are a couple of things to review when accepting sponsored posts.

• Is the sponsored content relevant to your website? For instance, promoting headphones on a makeup website is an idea that will backfire.
• Will you just be publishing the sponsored content or even writing it? The amount you quote depends on your choice.
• Is the sponsored content adding value to your brand, and how?
• Additionally, you must add a disclaimer stating that the sponsored posts are paid.

6. Memberships and subscriptions

One of the effective website monetization strategies is to add memberships and subscriptions.

One of the extremely beneficial website monetization strategies is to add memberships. They require your visitors to pay for a unique plan that offers exclusive content, services, or more, which is otherwise not available. For instance, a food and lifestyle blog can introduce a membership to give users access to exclusive food recipes. There are a couple of things to ensure when you are using these website monetization strategies are:

• Is the website monetization model suitable for your website?
• Can you consistently produce valuable content that is worth paying for?
• Does your website have enough consistent and unique traffic to benefit from subscriptions?

Depending on how feasible they are for your website, you can choose from three types of memberships.

1. Subscription: This is where your website users will pay monthly to access exclusive content.
2. Transaction: In this billing structure, you sell individual pieces of content, such as tutorial videos, ebooks, podcasts, etc., for a fixed fee.
3. Metered: This model is where you give the users limited access to content, after using which they are charged to continue reading.

7. Paid courses and certifications

A lucrative source of recurring income, paid courses are the way to sell your expertise through how-to videos, articles, and tutorials. This website monetization strategy requires a lot of promotion to set a foothold as an industry expert. Another thing that matters is the content quality. Videos must be well-produced, articles must be well-written and free of errors, and tutorials must be technically strong. In other words, for this website monetization strategy to bring continuous income, the content must be premium. On the other hand, to introduce certifications, your business must be a well-established or globally-accepted brand name authorized to certify users.

8. Digital downloadables

Some popular examples of downloadable resources are ebooks, audiobooks, templates, illustrations, podcasts, videos, PowerPoint themes, clip art, and photographs. Having these can contribute to your passive income in the long run. But the question is, is your content and design team large enough to produce these resources? If yes, digital downloadables can be a thing for your website and can turn out to be one of the profit-making website monetization strategies.

9. Online store

Most businesses sell merch on the side. If you have the skills to run an eCommerce business, start a product line around your business niche or sell other brands. However, having an online store is a bit tricky owing to the many tasks involved. To start with, you need to do the following things.

1. Decide on the products.
2. Decide on the domain name.
3. Set up an eCommerce platform.
4. Create a marketing strategy.
5. Handle the shipping and delivery.

But even before that, you must determine whether these website monetization strategies are relevant to your business niche. Can it be scaled? Will it benefit you in the long haul? How desirable are your products? Can you introduce new products on a timely basis? Will you handle the shipping or involve a third party? These are a few questions you must ask yourself before hopping on to the eCommerce bandwagon. Plus, maintaining the online store will require an extra workforce and strategic effort.

10. Dropshipping store

In a drop-shipping store, you do not need to keep stock of products or handle the shipping and delivery. Instead, the stocking, shipping, and delivery are handled by third-party vendors. Your only responsibility is to get orders, which eliminates your efforts of managing an inventory. Although this is considered safe and profitable for new business owners, there are a few things to do.

• Set up an eCommerce website.
• Offer excellent customer service.
• Find trusted third-party vendors.
• Improve your store traffic, perhaps by investing in PPC.

11. Donations

One of the effective website monetization strategies is asking for donations.

Try asking for donations to grow your website when all is said and done. Rather than one of the effective website monetization strategies, they can be considered financial support for your website. You can ask for donations by inserting widgets at several places on your website where they are clearly visible. Although not all your visitors will contribute, some might, considering you have large website traffic. And if your website truly adds value through its content, users are more likely to donate.

12. Website flipping

If you have expertise in building websites, you can create and flip them for a massive amount. More than one of the website monetization strategies, this could be a mainstream business idea because a lot of effort is required to get a website up and running. The amount your website sells for depends on a lot of factors, such as the niche, traffic, and SEO, to name a few.

Not all website monetization strategies work for all websites. Thus, it is important to ponder over what might work and what may not. Understand your website’s requirements inside out, realize your business needs, and thoroughly research the shortlisted website monetization strategies before you implement them.