Here are a few simple ways you can start making money from your website. As soon as you’re getting some traffic, even a few hundred visitors a month, you can begin monetising your website.
People often ask me “how can I make money from my website?” and my answer is through Advertising, guest blog posts or affiliate marketing. There is a fourth way, but that’s better deployed as the main purpose of your website rather than something you can bolt on. Check it out at the end of the post.
The following options may not work as a main or supplementary source of income if you run a website dedicated to selling your own products or services. Of course, there is always the option of blending some of these monetisation options to suit your business and SEO objectives.
Need help deciding how to create the prefect blend? A marketing consultant would be a good person to seek advice.
To make money from your website, you can:
- Run banner advertising
- Allow guest posts
- Affiliate marketing
Advertising
Maybe the most common way to earn money from a website has been through advertising. In fact, the history of advertising online starts with a 1993 clickable advertisement purchased by Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe who are actually a law firm. A pretty radical move from a typically conservative industry.
When Google appeared on the scene, people started using AdSense, which is probably still the most well-known and popular way to advertise using banner ads. AdSense was so lucrative at one point that people would throw up a website, stick on some ads, drive traffic to it and boom, they have some money coming in. Repeat that a few times and it was a reasonably sustainable business model.
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Over time, the power of AdSense has been reduced, but this and other banner networks are still a good way to bring in a few extra pennies. There are still other banner ad networks around and even a few free ones like www.1800banners.com which I don’t endorse, but they have an interesting business model to contemplate.
Above is an example of banner advertising on thetruesize.com. This website had a very popular tun a few months back and no doubt generated a lot of page visits. Being the subject of blog and social media posts really helped put this site on the map. I’m sure they managed to make a few pennies from their banner advertisements too. As of the time of publication, the banner ads were no longer visible.
Guest Blog Posts
The next option for making money from your website, the humble guest post, can also be a form of advertising. Once your website is getting traffic, there will be people who want to pay for placement on your website. Take Forbes as an example…people pay £hundreds to get an editorial piece on that website.
You can be paid to post articles on your website in exchange for a link back to their website.
Question is, are you selling links, or is it a legitimate practice? Selling links is something Google looks down upon. Just because large organisation can get away with it, that doesn’t mean you can too.
On some level though, guest blog posts are advertisements in the form of editorials.
I’m sure you’ve noticed the click bait articles on the bottom of website pages you visit, often on reputable news websites? There are actually thousands of websites like that and they just publish regular news stories with their own spin on it. They may also have stories about the ‘radical new way to cut your fuel costs in half the government doesn’t want you to know about’.
This is a form of advertising that has endured in the print news world. You will find many niche news sites offering sponsored articles as a way to get stories out there. If you can build a strong brand, you’ll be able to attract them too.
Running a website like this can still make you money from both advertising and publishing editorials, even in 2024.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when you get commission by sending customers to other brands where they make purchases. Often, affiliate marketers will create entire websites designed to attract inquisitive visitors, then send them on to make purchases with their affiliate.
Websites dedicated to affiliate marketing might be a one-stop shop for learning about a specific product from interest, to desire to action. They can have FAQs, tutorials, videos and more. The commissions paid can be large for high ticket items.
Amazon’s affiliate marketing scheme can be the easiest when just starting out with affiliate marketing. They offer a percentage of purchases made on their site over a set period of time. You could even combine Amazon with a few other affiliate partners and create a website based around shopping. I’d suggest sticking to a range of similar products that align with a lifestyle choice. For example, bicycles and required accessories, or products for another outdoor lifestyle like running.
When formulating ideas, start broad, but don’t go too generic with something like ‘outdoor lifestyle’ products. Pick a niche within that category such as a website for amateur runners. That opens up a wide range of related products at various price points. A niche with a wide range of customers with diverse goals that can be segmented even further. You might even find segments within that niche that are so lucrative, you can niche down even further while still growing revenue.
Review Site
A similar monetisation model to affiliates is that of the review site which is our wildcard here. Build a beautiful review website for companies in a specific industry to help visitors learn more and make a choice while making money from commission on the products they buy.
This kind of website has become particularly popular in hyper competitive and potentially saturated spaces like SaaS and marketing. The biggest drawback and the reason I would not suggest this as a way to make money from your website is the huge amount of work involved to see a return from your investment as we’ll see.
If you can build a successful website like this, you can charge companies to be featured prominently.
Review Site Examples
Launching a review site can be a costly and time-consuming endeavour, but in my opinion offers the greatest potential for success. Just take a look at the number of pages each of these examples of review websites have built to get an idea of the immense amount of work they’ve done.
Capterra
772,000 Google indexed pages
104,125,158 links to Capterra from 60,295 domains
One of the best examples of review websites is Capterra, who operate in the SaaS niche. I remember when boosting the profile of Joblogic, I approached Capterra to be listed on their website. For some reason, they wanted to have a full-on meeting, ostensibly to understand the business and how they could help Joblogic get the most out of its association with Capterra. I remember they asked a lot of questions about the business size, type of customers we were looking for and categories aka keywords we wanted to be or were already being discovered with.
At the time I first spoke to them, Capterra was nowhere to be found for ‘service management software’, a keyword Joblogic ranked highly for (but now are nowhere to be found for those keywords). After the interview and Joblogic being listed on their website as one of many other SaaS providers for service management software, Capterra suddenly started to outrank Joblogic, pushing the SaaS provider’s website into second place. It became clear they worked hard at SEO and the only option was to work even harder to outrank them.
UpCity
27,000 Google indexed pages
828,336 links to UpCity from 26,411 domains
This is a great example of a niche where a lot of competition means a lot of companies willing to pay good money for referrals. In order to grow, marketing agencies need to take on a lot of new customers each month. The prices they can charge for new customers can be in the tens of thousands per year, so they have a decent budget to splash on the channels that will get those customers through the door.
UpCity really go for location based targeting and throw in a lot of reviews and top agencies in various locations. Presumably most if not all of these are effectively paid placements. Even if they’re just ordered by rating, then number of reviews, agencies who are most invested in UpCity in terms of time and money will have the most and best reviews.
Trustpilot
16,900,000 Google indexed pages
241,607,469 links to Trustpilot from 278,034 domains
Trustpilot is probably the best known example of a review website. They have categories as wide ranging as banking, estate agents and shoe shops. They truly are a juggernaut of review websites which allows them to go for such wide ranging categories.
A slightly different version of Trustpilot is made available for each country. The UK subdomain of Trustpilot will allow British visitors to see and review only the companies relevant to them. Other review sites will handle localisation on their main domain, but clearly Trustpilot have the scale and resources to use multiple subdomains instead.
Your Monetisation Option
The easiest way to get a sustained income from your website aside from selling your own product or service would be with advertising. Unfortunately, the income involved may not make you rich any time quick, so you’d need to run several websites or combine your main website with a few of the other options.
If you are selling your own products on your website, then advertising could be seen to devalue your brand. Even worse, you might inadvertently promote a rival product. For a hobby/passion/voluntary organisation website, advertising could be a great option to cover some of your costs, or paying part of your marketing budget.
Guest blog post posting or editorials are another nice option, but you would need to get several per week at a good rate to make it lucrative. One or two guest blogs month at the right price could definitely pay off your website costs and for some of your marketing budget. The guest post route does need you to be on top of what you allow onto your website, curating both content and the links you’re giving out.
If you choose to launch a review website, you’ll need to put in a lot of work on SEO. Unless you can find a less competitive niche, you’re in for a long, uphill battle. The stats I provided for the example websites, though basic, tell you all you need to know about these three review websites and what you’d need to compete with even the smallest of them.
Should you decide on a review website as your chosen monetisation option, your best bet may be to grow your review website with the strategy of it being acquired, cashing in when the time is right.
As with everything in life, diversity is the key to success. By combining two or three of these ways to make money from your website, you’ll come across the perfect individualised formula for success.