How to Monetize a Website Like a Pro: 8 Proven Ways to Boost Your Revenue

By Ankit Main

If you want to know how to monetize a website or how to make money blogging, then you’re not alone.

Millions of websites are created every year, and most of these sites get closed within the first couple of years due to a lack of proper monetization strategies. 

Making money online needs an in-depth knowledge of sales and marketing.

If you’re looking for the best ways to monetize your website and earn at least $1000 per month, then read this article till the end.

No BS, only actionable website monetization strategies that you can start implementing today!

Before going further, please understand why people don’t earn money online even after putting lots of hard work into building a beautiful website.

Top 5 Reasons You’re Not Making Any Money Online

1. Shiny Object Syndrome

I have seen many people who are interested in blogging, drop shipping, website design, Amazon FBA, CPA, Freelancing, and much more.

While exploring multiple aspects of digital marketing isn’t bad, you should not lose focus on your primary goal.

Instead of being a victim of Shiny Object Syndrome, choose one of the best ways to make money online that suits your knowledge and skill set. 

2. Not Having a Business Mindset

Today, most people create websites to make money. However, only a few of them treat their website like a real business.

To grow your website and generate sustainable revenue, you must leverage 3 Ms, i.e., Money, Men, and Methods.

People who lack the proper knowledge of these 3 Ms fail to monetize their websites.

For example,

Beginners think that domain and web hosting are the only investments required to build a successful website.

That’s not true!

Otherwise, the web hosting companies would not be renting their servers.

To create a money-making website, you need to make strategic investments, including domain, reliable hosting, premium design, market research tools, high-quality content, advertising expenses, and much more.

3. Not Building Audience or Customer Base

The world has changed from a business-centric to a customer-centric approach. 

Building a dedicated customer base is essential for any website or online business.

In today’s competitive era, Google and customers will replace you whenever they find someone better than you.

4. Mediocrity

You can’t be a winner by being mediocre.

To achieve great success, you need to offer high-quality content to your audience.

If you think that a particular piece of content is not going to help others, then don’t publish it.

With billions of pages on the web, no one has time to read your copy unless it offers any value to them.

5. Impatience

Many people think building a website is a quick-rich scheme.

That’s not true.

You may need to keep hustling for six months or even more to generate a significant income from your website.

This is the time when most people give up and blame that blogging doesn’t work.

Procrastination and inconsistency also stop you from getting closer to success.

Knowing Your Worth – $1 or $1M

After reading this heading, your reaction would be, “I’m not going to sell myself for money.” 

However, the whole world is based on transactions.

Whether you buy or sell something, the transaction happens. 

It associates with everything, including physical products, digital products, services, time, and knowledge.

How does this relate to website monetization?

Please note that website monetization isn’t limited to publishing content and making money by putting ads on your site.

See the below image to understand the bigger picture of the digital economy.

I-Pyramid in Digital Economy
I-Pyramid

1. Implementation

It’s the basic level of the digital economy where people put their time and effort in exchange for money.

The interesting fact is that you can’t reach higher tiers without going through the implementation phase.

Since it’s an executive step, you should master it as quickly as possible and focus on climbing the I-Pyramid.

If you run a small affiliate blog, sell freelance services, or work on different projects, then you’re in the implementation phase.

Many people get stuck here and earn less than their potential. 

Don’t worry!

Still, you have a chance to earn more than $1000 per month in the implementation phase by working on your core strengths.

2. Integration

Once you understand the implementation process, you can start leveraging the 3 Ms to multiply your revenue.

Please note that excellent communication is essential for winning the integration phase.

Apart from that, you must learn four core principles of integration to conquer this stage.

  • Expertise: Excel the niche you’re working in. Know all the ins and out better than anyone.
  • Authority: Market yourself as an authority figure. This is where expertise helps you.
  • Trustworthiness: When people see real value in the content or services that you offer, they will more likely to trust you. While building trust among the audience is a difficult task, the results will surprise you. 
  • Automation: In this competitive world, you can’t survive without automation. Let it be a part of your online business.

Since the revenue potential and growth opportunities are pretty high, you would definitely love to be in the integration phase.

Most e-commerce sites, drop-shipping stores, and agency businesses fall under this category.

3. Innovation

While you can copy the money-making strategies of other businesses and integrate them into your website, this is not a viable option in the long term.

You should develop new ideas and frameworks to create useful products for people.

No, it’s not an easy task.

Innovation needs lots of resources and intellectual power.

Find the pain points of people and build a product that gives them relief.

Since your product has a unique selling proposition, you’ll always have a competitive advantage over the traditional players in the market.  

For example,

ThirdLove, a new lingerie brand for women, developed an innovative concept of “Fit Finder” to provide the right fit undergarment products to its customers.

ThirdLove Fit Finder
ThirdLove Fit Finder

This idea of personalized lingerie shopping experience is helping ThirdLove to compete with legacy brands and earn more sales.

While other lingerie brands are offering sizing charts to help buyers, ThirdLove’s Fit Finder has created a win-win situation for the customers as well as the company. 

How to Monetize a Website (8 Methods Explained)

You will find hundreds of methods to monetize your website.

However, I have discussed only a few actionable strategies to create a reliable income stream for you.

Keep reading!

How to monetize a website best ways
How to monetize a website best ways

1. Advertising 

If your website generates a large number of hits per day, then you can sign up for a publisher account on popular advertising platforms, including Google AdSense, Media.net, Infolinks, and Propeller Ads.

Google AdSense is the most popular ad network, and millions of publishers are using it.

Since Google has a large amount of data about the people visiting your site, including their demographic, geographic, and psychographic data, it shows highly-targeted ads to those people.

It means that your AdSense site can achieve a better ad CTR than competing ad platforms.

You may also use popular AdSense alternatives if you see better results with these networks.

Here are a few examples of AdSense websites that get massive traffic and revenue.

 1. WikiHow

  • Website URL: https://www.wikihow.com/
  • Niche: Online How-to Guides
  • Monthly Traffic: 30.9M
  • Monthly Revenue: 24.6M

 2. SmallPDF

  • Website URL: https://smallpdf.com/
  • Niche: Online File Converter (Web App)
  • Monthly Traffic: 43.6M
  • Monthly Revenue: $12.8M

 3. Digital Inspiration

  • Website URL: https://www.labnol.org/
  • Niche: Technology
  • Monthly Traffic: 626K
  • Monthly Revenue: $576K

 4. FreshersLive

  • Website URL: https://www.fresherslive.com/
  • Niche: Government Job News
  • Monthly Traffic: 13.5M
  • Monthly Revenue: $2.3M

 5. TrainsPNRStatus

  • Website URL: https://www.trainspnrstatus.com/
  • Niche: PNR Status
  • Monthly Traffic: 2.9M
  • Monthly Revenue: $206K

(Data Source: Ahrefs)

How much can I earn from Google AdSense?

You can earn money by displaying Google’s CPC ads as well as CPM ads on your website.

The CPC ads pay only for valid ad clicks, whereas CPM ads pay when the ad is served and viewed by the user.

Since CPM ads contribute very little to your AdSense revenue, we’ll only discuss how much money you can earn from Google AdSense CPC ads.

Suppose your website generates 5000 page views per day and has an average ad CTR of 2%. 

It means you’ll get 100 ad clicks.

Considering the average CPC of $0.10, you can make $10 per day or $300 per month.

Please note that the above calculation is only for giving you an idea of how much money you can earn with Google AdSense.

The metrics like CPC, CTR, CPM, and RPM change frequently, and your earnings may differ accordingly.

How to Make Money with Google AdSense

In today’s competitive world, getting huge traffic to your AdSense site is quite tricky.

Don’t worry!

I’m going to discuss a couple of ways to build a profitable AdSense website.

Method 1: Creating a Web App

Brainstorm a few ideas where you can develop a custom web app.

E.g., Document converter, media converter, image compression tool, image resizer tool, background remover, or anything that helps people.

Pro Tip: Visit Google Play Store, Apple App Store, or Google Chrome Web Store and find apps that need improvements or replacements to get new ideas for your web app.

You can use keyword research tools like Semrush or Ahrefs, to know the necessary metrics, including monthly search volume, CPC, competition, trends, and top competitors. 

The next step is to create a web app yourself or by hiring a developer, perform basic optimization for achieving better UX, and monetize it with ads.

Remember, you may need to promote your website to get initial traction.

Method 2: Creating Authority AdSense Site

If the first method isn’t suitable for you, then you can build an authority AdSense site by following the step-by-step tutorial below.

Pick a keyword with significant search volume and put it into the Semrush Keyword Magic tool.

Semrush Keyword Magic Tool
Semrush Keyword Magic Tool

Rinse and repeat the same process for a few more keywords.

It will give you a list of relevant keywords to target on your website.

Publish a good number of high-quality articles by targeting these keywords and interlinking them properly.

Perform some promotional activities to get initial traffic to this site.

Later, you can add more content, perform advanced on-page as well as off-page SEO activities, and use viral marketing tactics to grow your website into a comprehensive resource on a particular topic.

Once your site starts getting enough traffic, you can apply for Google AdSense or any other ad network to monetize it.

Please refer to the following resources to gain more knowledge on how to monetize a website with Google AdSense.

  1. How to Make Your First $100K From Google AdSense (Source: reliablesoft.net)
  2. How RJ Weiss Grew a Personal Finance Blog to 250K Pageviews and $10K/Month in Under 24 Months (Source: RankXL)

As I mentioned earlier, making money with Google AdSense or other ad networks requires considerable traffic.

You need to find low-competition, yet high-volume search terms, and create share-worthy content to win the AdSense game.

Off-page SEO, social promotion, and some advanced traffic generation tactics like Display Ads Arbitrage can boost your traffic and revenue in no time.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing allows you to promote third-party products or services and earn a commission for each qualified purchase.

The affiliate commission ranges anywhere from 1% to 300% of the initial payment, while some companies pay recurring commissions for the lifetime of the customer you refer to.

The commission rates vary with the product type, niche, market demands, and many things.

For me, affiliate marketing is love.

When I started my journey in digital marketing, I wasn’t aware of how to monetize a website effectively.

Like any beginner, I placed some ads on my blog.

However, that didn’t work well.

Later, I shifted my focus to affiliate marketing and never looked back.

Today, affiliate marketing contributes to a major portion of our monthly revenue, along with freelance services and training programs.

If you have excellent copywriting skills and a great sense of marketing, then affiliate marketing can bring awesome results for you.

How Much Money Can I Earn with Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based monetization method, and you can earn $50 to $50,000 per month or even more.

Here are a few examples of top-earning affiliate websites.

1. SmartPassiveIncome

Income Report smartpassiveincome.com
Income Report smartpassiveincome.com

2. ShoutMeLoud

Income Report shoutmeloud.com
Income Report shoutmeloud.com

Physical Products vs. Digital Products: What does work best for Affiliate Marketing?

Many people are confused about whether they should promote physical products or digital products.

You can promote anything which is helpful for people and legal by law.

Please go through the pros and cons sections to decide what suits the best for your affiliate site.

Pros of Physical Products

  • Tangibility
  • Reorders for Consumable or Breakable Goods

Cons of Physical Products

  • Low Commission Rates (Typically 0.1% to 20%)

Top Affiliate Merchants for Physical Products

  • Amazon
  • Flipkart
  • Walmart
  • Myntra
  • eBay

Pros of Digital Products

  • Instant Delivery 
  • No Inventory
  • Higher Commission Rates (Typically 20% to 300% of initial payment)

Cons of Digital Products

  • Refund Frauds to get free products
  • Lower Conversion Rate (Due to less perceived value and free information available on the web).

Top Affiliate Merchants for Digital Products

  • Shareasale
  • Clickbank
  • JVZoo
  • CJ
  • Impact

How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

The above affiliate websites are great examples of how much you can earn with affiliate marketing. 

However, they haven’t achieved this success overnight.

If you analyze these sites carefully, then you’ll notice that these sites have put lots of time and effort into building their audience and authority.

Do you want to build a similar website that will give you $1000 or more?

Here is a small tutorial to help you understand the process.

Step 1: Finding a Profitable Niche for Your Affiliate Site

Monetization opportunities in all niches aren’t equal. 

That’s why picking a profitable niche is necessary to generate maximum affiliate revenue.

See the following diagram to understand the points to focus on while picking an affiliate niche.

how to find a profitable niche
How to Find a Profitable Affiliate Niche
  1. Evergreen: The evergreen niche allows you to create useful content once and make recurring income for the next few years. 
  2. Expertise: Whenever you create an affiliate site, you must possess a certain level of expertise in that particular niche. Being an expert enables you to quickly identify pain points, brainstorm content ideas, and answer user queries when they interact with you. 
  3. Demand: You’re nothing without customers. Find if there is a demand for the niche or products you are promoting. If the particular niche is losing its importance, then it’s better to choose or switch to another niche. Please note that this formula does not apply to seasonal niches like Diwali or Christmas Shopping, or Valentine’s Day Shopping. 
  4. Money: It’s a primary reason behind building an affiliate site. Ensure that the niche you are working in has enough advertisers or products that pay well.

Here are a few tips for finding a profitable affiliate niche.

  1. Go to popular website-selling platforms like Flippa or Empire Flippers and search for the sites that are sold recently.
  2. Visit Amazon, Flipkart, Walmart, or any e-commerce marketplace and filter products by “bestsellers” or “maximum positive reviews” to get a list of profitable niches and winning products.
  3. Visit Quora to generate some niche ideas by most-followed categories, topics, or questions.
  4. Search the Clickbank Marketplace for products with Gravity more than 30.

12 Most Profitable Niches to Quickstart Your Affiliate Website

  • Health and Wellness
  • Fitness
  • Beauty
  • Fashion
  • Investments
  • Loans
  • Insurance
  • Outdoor
  • Travel
  • Hobbies
  • Pets
  • Gadgets

Step 2: Picking a Domain Name

You’ll find hundreds of articles and video tutorials on how to pick a domain name for an affiliate site.

Still, I have mentioned a few points that you need to consider while choosing a domain name.

  1. Brandable
  2. Shorter (Maximum three words)
  3. Avoid numbers and hyphens
  4. Only popular TLDs, including .COM, .NET
  5. Must have scope for expansion and adding future products
  6. Expired domains with good SEO metrics and clean backlink profile

Step 3: Picking a Web Hosting Service

Site speed plays an important role in achieving a better user experience and top rankings in the SERP.

That’s why you should choose a web hosting service that provides a solid foundation for your website.

Consider the following points when you’re buying web hosting for your affiliate site.

  1. Superfast Speed
  2. Uptime Reliability
  3. Robust Security
  4. 24/7 Technical Support
  5. CMS Support. E.g., WordPress
  6. Latest Technologies. E.g. HTTP/2, PHP 8.1

If you are a beginner, HostArmada is our #1 recommended web hosting service for your affiliate sites.

Advanced users can choose between Cloudways, WPX Hosting, or Kinsta, depending on their budget and technical expertise.

Step 4: Building a Beautiful yet Conversion-focused Affiliate Site

Once you purchased domain + hosting, you can start building an attractive site that helps people achieve their goals and earn a commission for you by referring relevant affiliate products to them.

Follow the simple tutorial below to create an affiliate site.

  1. Set up nameservers in your domain account.
  2. Install SSL Certificate.
  3. Install WordPress on your hosting. It’s the most popular CMS powering 35% of total sites on the web.
  4. Set an appropriate permalink structure.
  5. Install a fast-loading, mobile-responsive theme. GeneratePress Premium and Astra Pro are a couple of excellent WordPress themes.

You may also customize the different elements of your site to give it a unique look.

Step 5: Keyword Research

Although you have collected some keywords during the niche-selection process, you need to find a few more keywords to target in your articles.

You can use different methods, including the DQR (Double Quotes Results), KGR, (Keyword Golden Ratio), or competitor’s analysis to find profitable search terms.

You can also use the affiliate search modifiers to extend your affiliate keyword database.

List of Popular Search Modifiers

  • best
  • cheap/cheapest
  • vs.
  • review
  • under $50 (or any other price points)
  • in [current month/year]
  • how to
  • discount/deal
  • and of course many others

In this article, I’m going to discuss the easiest method for keyword research that anyone can start using today.

Stealing a Competitor’s Keywords

Analyzing top competitors and stealing their high-traffic keywords is the best strategy for building a profitable keyword list. 

Search your niche or primary keyword on Google to create a list of top-ranking websites.

Analyze each website to uncover its keywords, backlink profile, traffic stats, and much more.

Collect all keywords with low competition and significant traffic. 

If you’re starting, then pick keywords with an SEO difficulty of less than 50 even though the search volume is only 50 per month.

Unlike AdSense websites that need massive traffic, affiliate sites need targeted traffic with high buying intent.

Check whether the first page of Google includes any weak sites for your target keywords.

If you find one, then it’s a green signal for you.

Step 6: Content Creation

Depending on the number of keywords you want to target, create a content structure for your website.

Add relevant categories to organize the site structure.

Create a pillar article for each category and a few supporting pages. Interlink relevant pages under the same categories to direct visitors as well as search engine crawlers to reduce page bounce and increase dwell time.

Eye-catching visual media, including images, and videos, draw the attention of users and trigger emotions.

Structured data markup also plays a vital role in an affiliate site by providing additional information about the web page or affiliate product you’re targeting.

Step 7: Lead Generation

Adding a lead-capturing mechanism allows you to build a list of targeted subscribers and generate traffic or sales on demand.

Usually, leads are captured in the form of email subscribers, chatbot subscribers, push notification subscribers, and SMS subscribers.

You can use any free or premium tools to build a list of targeted people.

I recommend using the following tools for lead generation.

  1. ConvertKit (Email Marketing Automation)
  2. MobileMonkey (Facebook Messenger Automation)
  3. OneSignal or PushEngage (Mobile Push Notifications)

Step 8: Promotion, Promotion, and Promotion

You can’t reach the full potential of affiliate revenue without actively promoting your content and affiliate products.

“Create once, publish everywhere!” is the formula for being successful in affiliate marketing.

You can use SEO, Social Media, Email marketing, Viral marketing, or any method that drives potential buyers in your affiliate sales funnel.

Advanced users can use PPC ads to create integrated sales funnel to scale their affiliate marketing business.

3. Sponsorships

Once your website starts growing, many advertisers will reach you to promote their products or services by offering sponsorships.

Usually, they ask to place sponsored content, including articles, videos, infographics, or advertisement banners on your website.

Depending on the site metrics, organic traffic, content quality, and subscriber list, you can charge $100 to $2000 or even more for sponsored content.

E.g., DA 60 sites in CBD niche charges approx. $1800-2000 per sponsored post.

If your website is giving a satisfactory conversion rate, then advertisers may ask you for a sponsored ad placement in a prominent place on an MRR basis.

Creating an advertising page and a media kit will help advertisers to know more about your website and contact you for a sponsorship deal.

theCHIVE media kit, media kit examples, media kit images
theCHIVE Media Kit

Your advertising information page or media kit should include:

  • Website name/URL
  • Traffic stats, including organic traffic share
  • Total number of email subscribers
  • Social media following/push notification subscribers/chatbot subscribers
  • Community members if any
  • Third-party metrics, including DA, DR
  • Available advertising options
  • Previous projects and results if any 
  • Contact details

On the flip side, you can outreach the merchants for sponsorships.

Please note that you should craft a pitch that talks more about the benefits to the owner of the product by signing this deal.

How to outreach for sponsored content?

You can ask the product owners to sponsor your site if it aligns with their interests.

Many people do outreach for sponsored content, but the conversion rate is extremely poor.

That happens for a couple of reasons:

  1. Not building relationships
  2. Not showing the benefits

Whenever you reach product owners asking for sponsorships, follow the simple steps mentioned below.

  1. Buy or use the product(s).
  2. Write a genuine review.
  3. Share your opinion on social media tagging the product owner.
  4. Get some engagement on your review article as well as social media posts.
  5. Send a personalized email asking for sponsorship.

You can use the following email template in your outreach campaign.

[name], 

I’m [your name] from [your site URL], a popular [product niche] publication.

Recently, I came across your product [product name]. I’m impressed with its performance.

Do you know this product has [benefits] by [%]?  

I really loved what it does for [solving the problem].

That’s why I have written a review article/published a video on YouTube sharing my experience with [product name].

My audience and many other people are also loving it.

You can read/watch it here: [article link]/ [YouTube video link].

Now, I want to create a comprehensive resource (how-to guides and video tutorials for people who are interested in [product name], and promote it to my 9.3K email subscribers, and 10.9K chatbot subscribers.

Let me know if you are interested in taking this opportunity.

Cheers,

[your name]

This email can grab the attention of the product owner, and there is a high probability that he/she will revert with a positive reply.

Since I have presented an irresistible offer stating the benefits for the sponsor and a small demonstration of my work, he/she can’t refuse this offer. 

Please note that your pitch should create a win-win situation for product owners as well as yourself.

Although sponsored content and ads are a great way to monetize your website, you should remember a few things.

  1. Accept the sponsorships only for the products or services that align with your site’s niche.
  2. Know your site’s worth and charge accordingly.
  3. Don’t break the law of the region where your site is operating.
  4. Promise deliverables. Think about long-term relationships to create a sustainable revenue stream. 
  5. Add disclosure about the sponsorship to comply with FTC guidelines.

You can read my article “How to Get Sponsored Posts for Blogs” for more information.

4. Selling websites

A money-making website is a valuable online property that many people are interested in buying. 

If your website is making a decent income every month, then you can sell it at a higher price to generate quick money.

Website selling is a little different than domaining where you sell only high-value brandable domains.

Website selling often means transferring all assets to a new owner.

The following assets are included in the sale:

  • Primary Domain Name 
  • All Content/Files along with all rights as specified in the deal agreement
  • Social Media Accounts
  • Email List.

How Much Money Can I Make by Selling Website?

You can make from $100 to $1M or even more by selling a website. 

The final price of the website depends on many factors, including:

  • Niche
  • Monetization Method and Future Scope 
  • Revenue for the Current Month
  • Average Revenue for the Past 6 Months/1Year/2 Years
  • Revenue Trends
  • Traffic
  • Domain Name and its Brandability
  • Content Quality
  • Total Money Articles
  • Email List/Social Media Followers
  • Site Age and other Third-party metrics
  • Total Number of Keywords Ranking in the SERP and Their Positions
  • Backlink Profile (Clean Backlink Profile vs. PBN/Spammy, Black Hat Links)

Individual buyers have their own criteria for deciding the website’s worth. Depending on the above factors and your negotiation skills, you can make 15X to 30X of the average website revenue per month.

Here are a couple of examples to give you an idea of how much you can earn by selling a website.

  1. Luqman Khan sold his popular Amazon affiliate site – 10Beasts.com for $570K (Source: Diggity Marketing)
  2. Akshay Hallur sold his affiliate site earning $500/month for $11K (Source: BloggingX)

How to Make Money Selling Website

Almost everyone has an emotional attachment to their first website, and they don’t want to sell it.

That’s understandable!

However, you can start growing other websites if you plan to sell them in the future to generate quick revenue.

Since averaging the maximum revenue before listing a website for sale can boost the final selling price, you must apply the right monetization strategies. 

The primary focus of this website should be building a stable revenue stream using genuine/white hat methods.

Building a website from scratch requires lots of energy. 

You need to build a premium-looking website, find profitable keywords, create high-quality content, perform on-page and off-page optimization, set up a lead generation system, and promote aggressively to generate tons of hits.

If you have a limited budget for this business, then this could be the best way.

On the other hand, you can invest some money in buying pre-built, un-optimized websites, improve them, and flip for a decent profit.

You can refer to the following resources to know more about website flipping.

  1. How Chris Guthrie from UpFuel made around $55K in profit by flipping a website.
  2. Doron Wolffberg, a guy who flipped websites worth over $136K, has documented his journey in this article

You can join popular website-selling platforms like Empire Flippers and Flippa to list your website(s).

Alternatively, you can connect with individual buyers if you find a good deal.

If you see a high ROI in this business, then you can outsource some tasks or hire a team to scale it to the next level.

5. Offering Services

The projected gross volume of the freelance work industry (the gig economy) is expected to reach $455.2 billion. (Source: Statista)

Today, companies are looking for freelancers for short-term projects instead of hiring an in-house team.

If you have built authority in a specific field, then you can start offering freelance services that suit your profile.

For example,

1. Kulwant Nagi, a famous blogger from India, offers various digital marketing services on his website Afflospark.

Afflospark Digital Marketing Services
Afflospark Digital Marketing Services

2. Elna Cain has established herself as an elite content writer by working on her core strengths.

Visit her portfolio website InnovativeInk.ca to see how she is leveraging previous work and testimonials to generate leads for her content writing services.

InnovativeInk Content Writing Services
InnovativeInk Content Writing Services

If you are interested in providing freelance services, then you’ll find hundreds of gig ideas to start your business, such as:

  • Logo Design
  • Branding 
  • Website Design
  • UX Design
  • Content Writing
  • SEO
  • Social Media Marketing
  • PPC Ad Management
  • CRO
  • Backlink Outreach
  • Business Blog Management
  • Video Editing
  • Product Photography
  • Voice Over
  • Virtual Assistance

It’s better to learn a new skill that is in demand and master it to close some high-paying deals.

How to Start Selling Services

People often ask me how to start freelancing with no experience and make $1000 per month. 

While top freelancers charge more than this amount for a standard logo design gig, many freelancers struggle to make even $100 per month.

That’s why I have written a step-by-step tutorial on how you can start selling your services at premium prices.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: First of all, find a niche that intersects the market requirements, your passion, and your core strengths.

You can use the SEMrush keyword research tool to find which services are currently in demand.

Video Editing Services – Semrush.com
Video Editing Services – Semrush.com

Step 2: Learn the relevant skills and master them so that no one can beat you.

Step 3: Create a portfolio website and add some of the best pieces of your work to it.

Step 4: Outreach to some popular websites in your niche to contribute as a freelancer. 

Even if you don’t get paid, it’s okay.

Your primary goal should be getting exposure to your services and generating maximum leads instead of getting a few bucks as a gig fee.

Step 5: Ask for feedback about your submission. 

If the feedback is negative, then thank them for pointing out the mistakes, ask for suggestions, and improve your skills.

On the other hand, if the response is positive, then ask them for a testimonial.

This way, you can decorate your portfolio website, promote it using organic as well as paid channels, and land more high-paying clients.

Once you start getting a good number of projects regularly, then you can scale it up to agency business.

At this stage, you may need to hire some talented people to form a team.

By aligning these people to a common goal of delivering the best quality services on time, you can grow your service business to the next level.

For example,

Matthew Woodwards has worked hard to establish himself as an authority figure in the SEO vertical.

Now, he is leading a team of SEO professionals that offers various SEO services, with prices starting at $1997.

6. Selling Products

The digital revolution has influenced traditional businesses tremendously.

Today, almost every product is available to buy online, including electronic gadgets, books, fashion items, and much more.

Not only physical products but also digital products contribute to a large percentage of e-commerce sales.

If you’re looking for the best website monetization strategy with a full-control and flexibility, then selling your products should be at the top of your list.

You can start selling products through three different methods.

  1. Ecommerce Store (by owning inventory)
  2. Drop-shipping 
  3. E-commerce Marketplace (in collaboration with third-party vendors)

Depending on the available resources and management skills, you can choose any of these methods to start your e-commerce website.

1. Creating an E-commerce Store

While many people prefer selling on e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon or Flipkart to leverage their advanced marketing automation technologies and massive customer base, the profit margins are usually thin compared to selling products on your own e-commerce store.

If you are a tech-savvy person and have in-depth knowledge of marketing, inventory management, and customer support, then creating an e-commerce store is much beneficial for you.

For example,

Bare Anatomy, a Gurugram-based personal care brand is offering personalized hair care products by listening to the needs of the hair profile of individual customers

Bare Anatomy Business Model
Bare Anatomy

Due to their USP and JIT (Just In Time) business model, Bare Anatomy has achieved the mark of 20K customers organically within 9 months. 

And that’s by selling products only on its own e-commerce store.

Not only physical products but also digital products such as software applications and informational materials can be sold via an e-commerce site.

You might know Tom Usborne, founder and lead developer of the GeneratePress WordPress theme.

Tom Usborne Founder and Lead Developer at GeneratePress WordPress theme and GP Premium
Tom Usborne

He created problem-solving products, i.e., a lightweight, SEO-friendly, and easy-to-customize WordPress theme + add-on plugin for people who don’t know much about code.

No wonder GP Premium has more than 50,000 happy customers.

2. Dropshipping

The main difference between an e-commerce store and a drop shipping website is inventory management and fulfillment. 

Dropshipping allows you to list third-party products on your website for sale. 

While you take care of marketing and customer support, the supplier manages the inventory and fulfills each order that you send to him.

See the image below to understand the dropshipping process.

How does dropshipping work, drop shipping process
How does dropshipping work?

The supplier offers you wholesale pricing. 

You can add the operational expenses+marketing costs+profit margin to decide the final product price.

Let me clarify that dropshipping isn’t as easy as it looks.

You need to test multiple products, marketing channels, and fulfillment partners to find your winning combination.

If you are interested, then you can create your dropshipping store by using hosted platforms such as Shopify or self-hosted WordPress + WooCommerce.

3. E-commerce Marketplace with Third-party Vendors

See how Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, and many other e-commerce marketplaces are leveraging technology to create a sustainable business model. 

They invite third-party vendors to sell products on their e-commerce website to create a virtual marketplace.

The same concept applies to digital products too.

Clickbank and JVZoo are the best examples of digital marketplaces.

7. Online Coaching 

The e-learning industry is expected to reach $325 billion by 2025 (Source: Forbes).

In India, the value of the online education market has been set to grow from $0.25 billion in 2016 to $1.96 billion by 2021. (Source: Statista)

You would definitely love to be part of this industry and generate a passive income by sharing your knowledge with other people.

You can enter the e-learning market in different ways.

For example,

1. Creating an Ebook, Premium Training Program, or Podcast

2. Membership Sites

3. Personalized Coaching

4. Consultation

Subject experts can repurpose their knowledge on multiple channels to grow their earnings.

Let’s see how to monetize your website by teaching other people.

1. Create Ebooks

Creating an ebook requires less time and resources compared to other e-learning products. 

If you’ve in-depth knowledge of any topic, then you can create an ebook for your audience.

Usually, ebooks are sold in the price range of $4.99 to $199 depending on the uniqueness of the information, research quality, and marketing skills.

Ryan Biddulph of BloggingFromParadise has written more than 100 ebooks on blogging, online business, self-help, travel, branding, and similar topics.

Ryan Biddulph
Ryan Biddulph

He is selling these ebooks via Amazon to get the advantage of a massive customer base of Amazon. 

He has created a special page on his blog to promote ebooks.

2. Premium Training Programs

Many bloggers ask me whether creating online training programs is a profitable idea or not.

Their primary concern is that a ton of free information is available on the web, and no reason for people to buy a premium training program.

It doesn’t work like that.

Otherwise, popular e-learning websites, including Udemy and Udacity, would not exist today.

Although the internet has enabled quick access to free information available across multiple sources, most of the time, this information is outdated or scattered.

On the opposite side, premium training programs offer proven and actionable tactics to solve problems.

If you have extensive knowledge of any subject and you love teaching that to others, then you can develop a premium training program for your audience. 

For example,

Gaurav Madaan is a famous affiliate marketer who has spent over ₹1 crore on Facebook ads and generated over 45,000 leads.

Now, he is offering a 77-day Facebook Ads training for digital marketers, small business owners, and students.

Gael Breton and Mark Webster, a duo behind Authority Hacker, have several premium training programs for building white-hat links and money-making authority websites.

They charge around $997 for “The Authority Site System” training.

The Authority Site System
The Authority Site System

Similarly, you can develop your training program to make a significant amount of money.

How could you do that?

Step 1: Gather the necessary information on the topic you want to teach.

Step 2: Perform market research activities to understand the earning potential.

Step 3: Pre-launch your training program to see how many people are interested in buying your course. It’s the best option to validate your idea instead of developing a training product first and trying to sell it.

Step 4: Create a beta version of your product for limited number of people and ask them to give feedback.

Step 5: Based on the feedback and your research, improve your training, and sell it at a more premium price.

That’s a crazy idea! 

Want to know the best part?

You don’t need expensive tools to create a training program.

You can use a smartphone with decent camera quality or screen-recording tools to create video content. 

Additionally, you can include some case studies, checklists, cheat sheets, planners, and private community access to improve the conversion rate.

You can host your training program on third-party platforms such as Udemy, Teachable, and Invanto, or make use of LMS plugins to create a self-hosted training website.

3. Membership Sites

While premium training programs are great to generate quick money, you need to focus more on lead generation to sustain the business.

On the other hand, a membership site allows you to earn a recurring income that adds stability to your business.

You can connect with your audience at a deeper level, ask for feedback, gather social proof, and have more flexibility due to predictable recurring revenue.

Membership sites give exclusive access to premium content, services, or software products.

A few membership sites sell complementary products as add-ons to existing customers who have subscribed to their membership plan.

Here are a few examples of successful membership sites.

1. BodyBuilding.com

BodyBuilding.com offers fitness training and workout plans via its membership plans.

The pricing starts at $12.99 per month.

BodyBuilding.com Membership
BodyBuilding.com Membership

It also sells supplement products and clothing accessories in more than 180 countries worldwide.

2. LadyBoss

Kaelin Tuell Poulin, a.k.a. LadyBoss has built a multi-million dollar empire online by helping thousands of women to lose weight through her weight loss membership program.

LadyBoss
LadyBoss

LadyBoss also has a premium product lineup for women, including digital personal training programs, live events, health supplements, lifestyle apparel, and customized weight loss coaching.

Do you want to know the hidden secrets behind her success?

Kaelin is offering 100% free training for a limited time that shows you how she achieved this massive success as a newbie entrepreneur with no product and zero experience.

3. NicheHacks Insider

NicheHacks Insider is another example of a successful membership site. 

Stuart Walker, the founder of NicheHacks, teaches some fantastic lessons on how to monetize a website with affiliate marketing and niche blogging by applying his ERA Process. 

He has helped hundreds of marketers to find and validate untapped niches and build profitable online businesses.

After $1 of the initial trial, the members are charged $69.99 per month.

With hundreds of premium members, this community adds a great chunk of money to Stuart’s account every month.

4. Medium

Medium.com is one of the most popular online publishing platforms developed by Evan Williams.

It’s also asking its free readers to upgrade to a premium membership plan.

Medium Membership
Medium Membership

Medium Membership enables you unlimited access to member-only content, including original reporting, news analysis, and stories shared by smart writers all over the world.

If you have a website with a loyal readership, then you can also build a community for premium members and deep-feed problem-solving content to them.

You’ll find some amazing tools such as Podia or Ultimate Membership Pro (WordPress plugin) to create your first membership site.

4. Consultation

If you publish valuable content on your website or social media channel, then some people may have questions in their mind, i.e., where to start, how to achieve the same or better results than you, and much more.

As a publisher or content creator, you can’t respond to each comment, email, or private message.

In such a case, you can offer a consultation gig for the people who are genuinely interested in knowing the topic and process, and ready to take action.

Here is a simple step-by-step tutorial to sell your consultation program.

Step 1: Find some profitable keywords in your niche using modifiers such as “consultant” “near me” or “city name” and target these keywords on your website.

Semrush Keyword Magic Tool – Insurance Consultant
Semrush Keyword Magic Tool – Insurance Consultant

Step 2: Publish valuable content that attracts leads.

Step 3: Offer them a free consultation or tripwire and upsell the more premium gig.

Please note that you should have excellent communication skills and niche expertise to offer consultation services on your website. 

Mention everything clearly why people should hire you, e.g., your expertise level, previous experience, social proof, and mindblowing results, if any, along with the consultation fee.

Your website or blog plays a crucial role in promotion and lead generation for consultation gigs.

You can use WordPress plugins such as WP Booking System or cloud apps like SimplyBook.me to enable bookings for your consultation services.

Later, you can expand your services to a public speaking gig or corporate consultation. 

Being an authority figure, you can charge somewhere between $1999 to $100K for 1-2 hours of talk.

For example,

Jon Morrow, from SmartBlogger, charges a minimum of $10,000 to speak at a conference, and this price can go up to $100,000 when the client counts product sales resulting from the speech.

8. Donations

If your content appeals to your audience, then they will start supporting you by donating some money.

You might have seen that famous YouTubers or Twitch creators are accepting super chats from their fans.

Similarly, you can add a donation button or page on your website.

Use reliable payment apps or third-party services like Ko-fi to accept donations on your site.

Ko-fi Donation
Ko-fi Donation

Non-profit organizations and institutes involved in uplifting the lives of people get maximum donations.

Change.org is an excellent example of a website monetized by donations. 

Change.org Donation Page
Change.org

It’s Time to Take Action

In this article, I have listed some of the best ways to monetize your website.

Now, it’s time to take action!

Pick one or two methods that may give you the best returns and stick to them for at least 6 months.

Meanwhile, improve your skills, gain additional knowledge by interacting with industry experts or reading books, and work smartly to achieve your goals.

Once you start earning a stable income from one source, you can scale it or try other methods to make money online.

Do you need help starting your first money-making website?

Leave a comment below or send your query using the contact form.


One small request,

I’m sure that you’ve liked these monetization strategies 

Please share this article on social media channels so that more people can start making money online.

SHARING IS ❤️

21 thoughts on “How to Monetize a Website Like a Pro: 8 Proven Ways to Boost Your Revenue”

  1. A detailed impressive guide for newbies who wanna start earning through blogging. Thank you for tips!

    Reply
    • Hi Vishal,
      I visited your blog and I found that you haven’t applied proper monetization methods for short term revenue generation. Two months are still less and you should be patient to see results. Focus on a particular topic first, publish useful yet share-worthy content, and try to get targeted traffic to your blog. Applying some innovative monetization ideas may bring you amazing results and boost your online income.

      Reply
  2. What a great, informative post! Yes, I have started my first lifestyle blog a few days back. I bought a domain and web hosting during the Black Friday sale and installed WordPress by watching YouTube tutorials.
    Currently, I’m using Pinterest to drive people to my blog. I’m getting a few people per day. You have given more tips on how to be more successful with it. Thank you for sharing!

    Reply
    • Congratulations on starting a new blog. I’m glad that you are learning and taking action.
      Yes, Pinterest is an excellent source for driving visitors to your lifestyle blog. I’m sure that you’ll get good results with it.

      Reply
  3. Hi,
    I’m Mery and I run Mery’s Street Kitchen.
    Currently, I own a food truck and my income is good. But I read your article before a few days and created a simple website to get online orders. I’m also using Facebook and Instagram to post my recipe photos.
    I have started getting 2X more orders from the nearby areas. Since I’m a mom of two baby girls, I’m hiring an assistant to see after Mery’s Street Kitchen.
    I want to redesign my website. If you offer this service or have a reference, please let me know.
    Thanks in advance.

    Reply
  4. Hi Ankit, I’m a silent reader of this blog. As soon as you published this post, I read it and started working on my brand new AdSense website.
    Currently, I’m getting around 80-150 visitors per day. I haven’t applied for Google AdSense yet. I’ll write a few more articles before moving ahead.
    I’m planning to generate a good side income with this blog, and your method seems to be working.
    Thanks for your article.

    Reply
    • Great! I liked that you took action. I’m sure that you’ll get good results too.
      If you need any assistance, then feel free to reach out to me.

      Reply
  5. Thank you Ankit for such an insightful article. I have launched my blog a few months back and didn’t generate any considerable revenue.
    After reading your post I got some amazing ideas that I can implement on my blog.
    It’s was a very long read by the way. It took me 25 min to read the entire article.
    But it’s the time spend in the right way. Wish me the best luck.

    Reply
    • Hi Erica,
      Thanks for visiting our blog and taking the time to read it.
      If you understand the monetization strategies mentioned above and correctly use them, then you will get a good ROI.
      Happy blogging to you!

      Reply
  6. What a great article, Ankit! Monetizing a website or blog needs commitment and consistency. It’s a business, and you should treat your website like that. Your skills, knowledge, and niche expertise are assets that you can always use for growing your website, to make it valuable. That is a great way to contribute something to the internet.
    Grateful to read this valuable post.

    ~ Manessa

    Reply
    • I’m glad you liked it. ?
      You’re right. Commitment and consistency are more important to be successful in the IM industry.

      Reply
  7. Making money online isn’t as easy as people think. I am working for the last 3 years and earned $1K per month a few times. However, I loved the unique ways that you’ve described here.
    I think affiliate marketing works great if one can build a good audience base.

    Reply
    • Glad you liked it.
      You are right. Affiliate marketing is a popular passive income source, and anyone with a sense of marketing can earn good money. You can also try other methods mentioned in this article and scale up your online business.

      Reply

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