Guest Article

Modern websites are a prime opportunity for making money, especially now that tools like WordPress, Tumblr and BlogSpot make it so easy for people to set one up. All you have to do is turn your ideas and experience into money. To make a good living online, you need to have a combination of high quality content and a large amount of traffic. Once that’s in place, you are in charge of when you work and how much you make from it, and the best part of all you can work from the convenience of your own home. Sounds good, right? Then let’s get started! Here are ten simple tricks for turning your website into a money maker.

1. Start blogging

Most marketers agree that starting a blog is the most effective thing you can do to drive traffic to your website. Cover everything from the news in your niche, to tips and tricks, how-to guides and behind the scenes updates provide great content as well. If you’re linking offsite, you can often take part in an affiliate program to generate a little extra revenue, which leads us to our next suggestion.

2. Find a partner

It’s a good idea to partner up with a relevant brand so that you can combine marketing efforts to reach more people together than you ever could on your own. Consider writing posts for each other’s sites. You can also team up on a co-branded campaign and cross-sell products to each other’s customers.

3. Build an email list

When you’re running your own website, it’s imperative for you to develop an email list. That way, you can easily contact your visitors with news, special offers and giveaways, and email subscribers are more likely to take action, too. In fact, email receives 50-100x the click through rate of social media marketing. Whether you’re selling products or making money from advertisements, your email list will help you to meet your revenue targets.

4. Make money through selling ads

There are two main options when it comes to selling ad space on a website. The first is to contact businesses directly to offer them a deal, and while this helps to ensure relevance and to maintain quality control, it can also take a lot of time. The second is to use a tool like Google AdSense, InfoLinks, or media.net. You won’t make as much as you would if you sold the ad space directly, but it’s less of a headache to set up and you get paid per click based on the ads’ performance.

5. Have a members-only space

While it’s a good idea to offer most of your site for free, you’ll often find that people are willing to pay to become a member in exchange for exclusive content. This is similar to how many newspapers are gating certain stories behind a paywall, and it’s particularly effective for sites that already have a reputation for quality content. If creating a membership area is cost-prohibitive or otherwise unworkable, you can look into using sites like Patreon, which allow people to sponsor you to create content in exchange for perks such as early access or inclusion in your acknowledgements.

6. Make something and sell it

In today’s technological world, you don’t have to create an actual physical product in order to have something to sell. Think about creating an audiobook, video series, e-books, an e-course or a whitepaper.  Any kind of special content files and other downloadable information is potentially something to sell. Invest in a professional graphic designer to produce a quality product. Be sure that the cost matches up to its actual value, though!

7. Sell workshops

If you’re known for something specific – such as successful being real estate agent, web design guru or a successful blogger – then you can offer up paid workshops to help people to follow in your footsteps. You can set up workshops both in your local area and online via live webinars. You need to set aside budget to advertise the sessions to encourage sign-ups, but it can be quite lucrative.

8. Sponsored posts

If there are other companies that are relevant to your visitors, you can charge them a fee in exchange for a sponsored post on your website. This works well for everyone because the companies benefit from the added exposure and your readers benefit from new content that’s relevant to their needs and interests. You just need to make sure that you clearly indicate on the post that the content is sponsored, and identify who is sponsoring the content.

9. Sell it

If your website receives a lot of traffic and is relatively well-known, you might be able to sell it. If you own a niche audience, their may be a corporate audience willing to pay you to have access to your audience and the content you have developed over time. Many larger companies are buying smaller ones because of their content and their brand equity. If nothing else, your domain name may have a value from its equity alone.

10. Become an Influencer

If you manage to grow a thriving social media brand off the back of your website, you’ll find that may be able to get paid as an influencer on social media by corporations. PR agencies will come to you with offers to be a part of social media promotions. Many advertisers will be willing to pay you to promote their product or service through social media per tweet or post, but be sure to disclose when a post is an ad to avoid being fined by the FTC.

If you want to make money online, you can do it, but understand that it takes time. It might take more than two years of consistent blogging two-three times a week to build up enough of a following to be relevant for advertising or a corporate influencer contract.  If you publish quality content consistently, you’ll be well on your way to way to turning your website into a money maker.  Start using these tips, and the cash should start rolling in.

About the author

Alek Manov is a Design Principal at EuroVPS. He is responsible for the visual communication and user engagement. He is a passionate researcher of human psychology and always looking for a way to innovate and implement new experiences by challenging established design patterns.