Today blogs and websites form an effective platform to earn money and have a passive or active income. Top bloggers like Moz earn $44.9 million per year, while an average blogger earns $300-400 monthly. Earning on blog or website is relatively simple and hassle-free and allows you to generate steady revenue. However, you do have to establish your niche and work on creating good quality content for your audience. Have a look at the top ten ways to monetize your blog or website below.
Accept Donations
Good blogs attract quality crowds who want the content to keep on coming. Hence, people are not averse to paying a little donation to the blog owner. The donation plugins work for both non-profit and for-profit websites. You can ask for donations from your patrons by making it possible to pay you in a safe way. You could accept donations with WordPress plugins like PayPal, Give, and Charitable. Remember to send in an automatic thank you note every time someone gives you the donation.
Advertising
Advertising is the most popular way to monetize your blog or website. However, it also requires high traffic of 10,000+ daily visitors. If you try advertising on a low traffic website then it would prove detrimental as the traffic would be diverted to the advertising sites. One great approach to advertising is substituting PPC ads with display ads. Nevertheless, once you have established your niche, you can demand your own rates from advertisers for the privilege to put in their ads on your website.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the topmost ways to monetize your blog. It is basically an approach to promote other businesses and earn a commission through every purchase that transpires via your website. For successful affiliate marketing, you need to have a niche market, an affiliate product, and a regular inflow of audience to your website.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is very much like a regular advertisement, only here Google selects the ads that it wants to put on your website. AdSense works by choosing ads that match your blog’s content and audience. These ads are developed and paid for by businesses who desire to promote their products on your website. Different businesses reimburse differently for their ads, and so the actual revenue would vary. You can take advantage of Google AdSense by signing up for the service, and Google would automatically place suitable ads on your web pages.
Listed Member Only Content
Value-added blogs often create listed member only content and charge a little extra for the privileged content. While you can create your website for the general public, you can keep some part of the content reserved for listed members. You can keep a tiny portion of the content visible to trigger the interest, while locking the remaining part for listed members. It will create curiosity and more people would want to pay to get access to that content. Of course, you will have to work continuously to come up with exciting content to keep the members engaged, happy, and coming.
Sell Digital Products
Many bloggers sell different types of digital products directly on their websites. So, if you have the necessary software skills then use them to make useful digital products and sell them to your eager audience. In fact, if you lack the time and/or the skills, but have the suitable knowledge and decent traffic to your website, then you can even hire a developer to build that useful digital product for your followers and enjoy the money flowing in.
Sell eBooks
Selling eBooks acts as an effective way to earn a great passive income. Creating a book is easy and once it is adequately priced then people would easily buy it. You can monetize the eBook sale even with a low traffic website. It would be beneficial if you sell the book in your particular niche. For example, if your website is about health and fitness then can write an eBook on fitness guide and direct your audience to its purchase page. In case you don’t have time to write the book, then you can take the help of a ghost writer and publish it easily on your website along with other platforms like Podia or Gumroad.
Sell Physical Products
Blogs or websites form a good platform to sell physical products to your audience. Once you have established your niche, you can sell products in the same category. For example, a blogger on childcare can start selling child clothes and accessories in collaboration with local producers. A few bloggers even move on from selling select merchandise to establishing a fully developed ecommerce site. Some bloggers even sell limited edition products and earn high revenue from the sales.
Sponsored Reviews/ Posts
Sponsored reviews and posts are amongst the least common approaches to monetize your blog because it requires huge web traffic and high credibility to pull it off. If you have established yourself as a credible authority on any topic and your website enjoys a huge inflow of traffic, then you can charge a certain fee for reviewing different products on your website and giving your opinion about them. However, remember to give an honest opinion about the product so that your audience would believe in you and keep coming back to your website.
Start a Podcast
Podcasts are the biggest rage right now. More and more people are switching on to podcasts to get entertained or explore new knowledge. You can start a podcast to increase traffic to your site and earn from selling sponsorship slots to businesses that desire to connect with a certain section of your audience. Podcast is specifically useful for new bloggers as most of the content in their niche has already been written about. Hence, by starting a podcast, they essentially create a new market for themselves. You can host your podcast on a media host (like Transistor, Buzzsprout, Blubrry, and Libsyn) that allows you to store the audio files which can be downloaded and streamed to your listeners.
I am Sunil Tarwara, a seasoned IT professional with over 13 years of hands-on experience in Website Development and Digital Marketing. With a deep understanding of the challenges faced by businesses, I have been trusted by hundreds of clients to achieve their digital goals. I have Master’s degree in Information Technology.
Apart from websites, I like hill stations.