31 Ways to Monetize a Website or Blog in 2024 (Updated)

There are countless ways to make money online, far more than anyone can imagine. One, and perhaps the most popular, is making a website and monetizing it.

I’ve listed 31 ways you can use to monetize your website or blog. You don’t have to implement them all at once. I strongly advise choosing two, three, or at most four from this list to make sure you are getting the most out of your website without hurting the user experience of your visitors.

How to Monetize a Website or Blog?

There are several ways to monetize a website. Listing out 31 best ways to make money from a website or blog. Monetize your website using these 31 ways in various combinations to see what works best for you –

1. Sell Your Website

I was once offered $15000 for this website you are currently on. You might think about selling your website if you decide not to keep it up or if you want to launch a new one in a different niche. Empire Flippers and Flippa are the two most popular website brokers you can list your website with. Interested buyers place bids on your website, and you get the best possible price for it. Buyer deposits funds with the broker/Escrow, you transfer website and broker releases money to your account. That’s how easy it has become to sell a website online.

How much money your website is worth? Website brokers also offer valuation tools you can use to find the realistic value of your online business. Most websites are sold for 20x to 40x of average monthly profit (last 6 months’ profit divided by 6). Say you are making $100 a month then the expected selling value of your website will be somewhere between $2000 to $4000.

2. Display Ads (Ad Networks/Adsense)

Advertising using ad networks is one of the most common ways, website owners use to make money. You just have to join different Ad networks and place ad codes on your website to display ad banners at different locations on a website like sidebar, header, footer, etc. Relevant ads are shown to your visitors and you make money every time they click on ads. Not every click earns you the same amount of money. Also, you make money even when no one is clicking on your ads as many advertising networks pay for impressions too.

Adsense is the most reliable and popular ad network you should try first of all. No other ad network matches their pay per click. Media.net is another good contextual ad network you can consider.

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3. Monetize Your Email List

An email list is considered one of the most valuable assets to any website. There are several ways you can use your email list to your advantage and make money out of it. Here’s how to make money from your email list –

Use Email List to Drive Traffic to Your Blog – The best way to get people to find your website is, of course, through search engines. However, you are probably losing out on a good chance to earn some extra cash if you are not using your email list to drive indirect traffic to your website. To encourage your readers to visit your blog, send them a weekly or monthly newsletter. Let your website handle the rest. Ads banners and affiliate links are already in place to make you money.

Place Affiliate Links in the Email – Your subscribers are loyal readers who trust your recommendations. Recommend them products and services through emails and they might buy using your affiliate links earning you some commission.

A piece of advice – Never ever flood your subscribers with unnecessary emails. Instead, try to give them something valuable. Recommending products/services through emails only works when you do it occasionally. Be careful while adding affiliate links in the emails because some affiliate networks like Amazon Associate Program don’t let you place affiliate links in emails.

4. Use Ad Optimization Platforms

Google has a number of publishing partners who can assist you in boosting ad revenue and enhancing the user experience on your website. How does an advertising optimization platform increase your ad revenue? It runs hundreds of tests on your website, including experimenting with various ad formats in various ad locations; determining when and how many ads should be displayed to users; and other tests to figure out what is most effective for your website. A publishing partner also helps you connect to premium ad exchanges and increase your ad revenue by placing the highest-paying ads on your website.

An Ad optimization platform handles all of this testing in the background so you can concentrate on producing higher-quality content. In other words, a managed ad network boosts advertising income by striking a balance between user experience, monetization, and content.

You must have an AdSense account to register with a publishing partner. I currently use Ezoic, which is my favorite because it not only boosts ad revenue but also provides a variety of tools to improve your website as a whole. The percentage increase in advertising revenue varies from website to website. Mine was increased by nearly 60%.

3 Best Ad Optimization Networks to Boost Ad Revenue

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5. Publish Paid Posts

A sponsored post is when you are paid to publish a post on your website. As your website gets more traffic, many SEO agencies get in touch with you and offer you money to publish their content on your site. Just make sure you follow Google’s quality guidelines about paid links and add rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” attribute to <a> tag. And never bother your subscribers with irrelevant content.

How much do you get paid for a sponsored post? The price is often determined according to various matrices of your domain like domain authority and page rank. More the DA/PA, more the money you can charge for a paid post. Your traffic is also a factor.

6. Add “Buy Me a Coffee” Button

If you are running a tutorial website that helps people get their work done then simply adding a ‘buy Me a Coffee’ button can make you some extra money. Your visitors may donate money to support your work and research. Although it won’t bring in a lot of money, small donations can help with costs associated with running a website, such as hosting and paid plugins.

Adding a ‘donation’ or ‘buy me a coffee’ button to a website is very easy with a plugin and can be done in minutes. PayPal also allows you to add a donation button to your website.

7. Add a Paywall to Content

I am sure you have come across such a situation while accessing some exclusive content –

Numerous websites, particularly news websites like the New York Times, the Economic Times, and Livemint, already use it. Adding a paywall makes content inaccessible by locking or hiding it until the reader pays or subscribes. If you are publishing exclusive and high-quality content, adding a paywall can be a great way to monetize your website. It’s entirely up to you how you go about it. Some websites use paywalls to grow their email list. Others charge one-off payments to give access to all paid content.

Adding a paywall to posts is very easy with plugins, and you get all kinds of useful features. You can choose the number of posts a user can read without paying or subscribing to your newsletter. It’s up to you whether you want to lock some or all posts.

8. Affiliate Marketing (via Affiliate Marketplaces)

Let me explain affiliate marketing in simple words. You sign up for various affiliate marketplaces, such as Commission Junction, Share a Sale, Clickbank, etc., where you can find a range of products and services relevant to your niche. Recommend those products and services by writing posts around them and adding your affiliate links. Whenever someone makes a purchase using your affiliate link, you either get a fixed amount or a commission, generally ranging from 15 to 70 percent of the sale value.

Affiliate marketing, without a doubt, is one of the best ways to monetize a website. The best part of affiliate marketing is that you don’t even need to create your own products. You just have to find suitable and relevant products and promote them on your website to earn a passive income. Reviewing a product and including an affiliate link in the post would be the best course of action. Every time you discuss a relevant product or service in a post, include affiliate links.

How much does your website make with affiliate marketing?  It’s difficult for me to give you a precise figure, but from what I have observed, most bloggers make more money by recommending products and services than by running ads. The two biggest variables influencing affiliate earning potential are traffic and a website’s niche. Some niches that may do well with affiliate marketing are- expensive products/equipment (like cameras and drones), health products, software, and expensive courses and services(like hosting).

9. Sell A Stake in Your Website

You can offer a stake in your website for money like startup owners do on the TV show Shark Tank. Use a website valuation tool to determine the worth of your website. Determine the stake you can offer and for how much money, such as 10% of a website for $1,000, and the stakeholder roles. Find investors. You can pick someone from your family or neighborhood. Look for someone who can add value to your website, like a person who can improve your website, write articles, manage it when you’re busy, or add value in other ways. Sign a contract with the investor and receive funds.

Selling a stake in a website can be a great way to monetize it, especially if you can find someone who can work with you to grow and expand your website.

10. Write Paid Reviews

You can get paid to write reviews of products and services related to your niche, just like with sponsored posts. You are approached by SEO companies or product/service owners who want you to try out their products or services and write reviews about them on your website.

In addition to money, there can be other monetary advantages too, like free products to try, lifetime licenses, and extra items for offering giveaways to your readers. You can also speak with relevant businesses and inquire about writing reviews for their products.

11. Sell Ad Slots

When you place ads through Adsense or other ad networks, they decide what ads to display, pay per click, and other aspects. You can avoid this and decide to sell ad spaces on your website for a flat fee or a price based on per thousand impressions(CPM). Selling ad slots directly allows you to have full control over ad spaces and decide your own pricing. This can be done in two ways –

Create “Advertise Here” page on your website describing the price for each ad space such as – $xxxx per month for a banner in Sidebar, $xxx for Header right, etc. Add traffic stats, banner sizes, and other vital information to this page. You never know if a potential advertiser might land up on this page and make you an offer.

Sell Ad Spaces With BuySellAds.com – Buysellads connects publishers with advertisers. List your available ad spaces on Buysellads with pricing. Buysellads will let you know if an advertiser wants to show ads on your website. If you approve the request, the ad will be displayed automatically on the sold ad space.

How much can you make by selling ad spaces on your website? Well, this entirely depends upon the traffic on your website. Let’s say you have priced an ad slot at $10 for every 1000 impressions and your website gets 50000 impressions a month then you make $500 a month with that single ad slot. The best thing about privately selling ad spaces is that you still get paid even if no one clicks on the advertisements.

12. Monetize Website With Web Push Notifications

Web push notifications have made it simple for a user to subscribe to a website just by clicking on the “Allow” button without entering personal details. Web push notifications are typically used by websites to notify users of new posts, offers, and discounts, but did you know that you can also make money by sending web push advertisements?

Web push advertising campaigns are generally geo-targeted and relevant to subscribers. You get paid each time a subscriber clicks an advertisement on a pay-per-click basis. Additionally, you can manage the frequency of web push notifications, such as twice daily or three times daily, to ensure a positive user experience.

You can monetize your website by sending push notifications to users by signing up with a few marketing solutions, such as Sendpulse, Pushassist, and Rollersad.

13. Monetize Commerce Links With SkimLinks and VigLinks

Skimlinks and Viglinks are two unique affiliate marketing platforms that can turn all normal commerce links on your website into affiliate links and that too all at once. Sign up with them and install their plugin or place their code on your website. They will automatically detect non-monetized commerce links and convert them into affiliate links ensuring no clicks go waste and increasing your overall revenue.

Utilizing Skimlinks and Viglinks to monetize commerce links can be a great way to boost and diversify your income. Both can be used alongside other monetization programs without hurting the user experience. You cannot sign up for every affiliate program in existence. However, you can begin earning commission from more than 48500 merchants worldwide with Skimlinks and Viglinks.

If your website contains a significant number of unmonetized commerce links, you may want to think about using both networks to generate additional income.

14. Host Webinars

Do you have valuable knowledge and expertise in a particular area that you could impart to others to foster their growth? If so, you can make good money hosting webinars. A Webinar is a live online event where the speaker shares his expertise with the audience and responds to their questions at the end generally. A webinar can be free or paid but you can make money with both.

Paid Webinar – You charge your audience to attend the event. How much you should charge depends on the hosting expenses, the subject of the conversation, your expertise, reputation, and industry. The more people attend your webinar, the more money you make.

Free Webinar, Paid Product – You can make money hosting a free webinar by offering a relevant product at the end. Free webinars draw larger audiences for obvious reasons, and given that your pitch was compelling, it is more likely that some of those viewers will purchase your product.

There are many plugins and software you can use to host webinars with your website.

15. Sell Online Courses on Your Website

Another profitable thing you can do with your website is selling online courses on it. You can create online courses and offer them to your readers if you have a strong command of a subject and want to demonstrate your expertise. Although selling a course through an online marketplace has its benefits, selling it on your own website will save you from paying the high commissions that these marketplaces charge.

There are two main steps involved in selling a course online: building the course and selling it. Building a course includes creating lessons and supplementary material. Selling a course includes setting a price, marketing, figuring out how to deliver the course to the audience, and accepting payment.

LMS (Learning Management System) plugins like Memberpress can make it simple for you to go from creating a course to earning money from selling it. Memberpress is a one-stop solution for lesson planning, visual course creation, paywall addition, subscription management, payment gateway management, and more.

16. Create a Q&A Community Or Forum

A forum or question-answer community is a place where users can interact, assist one another by answering questions, and solve problems. A forum can be either public or private.

Public forums are free to access and anyone can become a member. Users engage in discussions, share their opinions and assist each other by answering questions. You can monetize a forum by placing ads and affiliate links. On the other hand, if you start a private forum, users may pay you to join so they can consult you privately and get access to other exclusive services.

Whether you create a free or paid forum, both need rigorous moderation, and you must keep your forum tidy.

A question-answer community(like Quora) is quite similar to forums, and you can monetize user-generated content with banner ads, affiliate links, and sponsorship deals. Convincing people to join your community and engage in conversation requires a lot of work.

How to Make Money On Quora?

17. Add an Offerwall To Your Website

Another way to monetize your website is by adding an Offerwall to it. Do you run a website that lets users play games or do other things that require virtual currency? If so, putting up an Offerwall can help you monetize users who aren’t willing to pay. Let’s understand how an Offerwall works.

An Offerwall is, as its name suggests, a wall or widget with offers or tasks, such as watching a video or completing a survey. Your non-paying users can earn virtual currency by completing those tasks. You get paid for every offer they complete. Your users are happy as they can use the virtual currency they have earned to play games or use any other service you offer on your website. You are happy as you get paid. A win-win situation for everyone.

You can get in touch with an offerwall provider, such as Appsflyer, Tapjoy, or IronSource, to deploy an Offerwall on your website or app and monetize it.

18. Offer Consultations Or Technical Services

Consultations and technical services are two different things you can offer through your website to monetize your expertise and skills. For instance, a WordPress expert can provide technical services like creating and designing a website for a client, migrating the site to a new host, providing SEO services, enhancing the website’s performance, and fixing bugs.

There can be different services in different niches. You offer these services as a freelancer and get paid for every task you complete for your client. You can promote offline services on your website to reach more people easily and get paid for helping someone get their work done.

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On the other hand, if you launch a website for your consulting business, you are expected to offer your expertise, opinions, analysis, recommendations, and strategies to assist a business in coming up with a solution, resolving a challenge, achieving a goal more successfully, and improving the business as a whole.

19. Make a Paid Local Business Directory

You can create a business directory just like Yelp and Justdial and monetize it through paid listings and advertisements. Making a local business directory for just your neighborhood can help you stand out and avoid competition with industry giants. Or you can create a niche directory focusing on a specific category of business.

You can contact shop owners in your area and ask them for a fee for listing their shops on your website. Businesses would want to place their ad banners on your website once it became popular.

20. Create a Paid Job Board

Another way to make money from a website is by offering a job board on it. Companies may want to advertise an open position to your readers and pay you to list it, especially if you have a popular blog in a particular niche.

Alternatively, you could launch a specialized job portal like Indeed, Naukri, or Glassdoor and monetize it using different strategies like advertising, charging employers to post jobs, and charging readers to browse job listings.

There are many plugins, such as WP Job Manager, that make it simple to create a job board on your website and manage payments.

21. Sell Ebooks On Your website

Thanks to the internet and e-books, you no longer need a publishing house, printing press, distribution facility, or even a bookstore to publish and sell your book. Publishing and selling an ebook online through your own website is now simpler than ever and can earn you a substantial income.

Including all of the articles in a particular category on your website as chapters for an ebook won’t be a bad idea. You can write an ebook on your own with various writing and editing tools, or use freelancing websites to easily hire someone to handle everything for you.

Ebooks can be easily delivered to anyone online, and you can sell them directly on your website to earn good money. A variety of e-commerce tools and plugins can be used to handle orders, payments, and delivery of ebooks, and the whole process is pretty much automated nowadays.

22. Start an Online Shopping Store

The number of online shoppers keeps climbing every year. In 2020, over two billion people purchased goods or services online, and during the same year, e-retail sales surpassed 4.2 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. This trend is expected to continue and starting an eCommerce website thus can be very profitable. But aren’t there too many online shopping stores already? Yes, there are too many but you can stand out if –

• You have your own products and sell them exclusively on your website
• Make offers shoppers can’t refuse
• Make a spectacular eye-catching website
• Choose untapped market
• Deliver exactly what your target audience needs
• Identify USP and promote it

Starting an online store is very easy today with e-commerce platforms like Shopify and great plugins like Woocommerce.

23. Create a Marketplace Website

A marketplace website connects buyers and sellers. The best thing about building a marketplace website is the abundance of ideas and themes you can build a website around. You could, for instance, create a used-car marketplace where sellers could list their vehicles and find buyers. You can create a marketplace for phones, laptops, or other items. Similarly, you can create a job marketplace to connect employers and employees. Another option is to create a website where people can buy, sell, or rent unlisted properties.

Simply look into the issues people are facing in selling and buying, and see if you can build an online marketplace that can address those issues.

Once your marketplace website is up and running, you can monetize it in a variety of ways, including by adding advertising banners, charging sellers for listing their goods, establishing a fixed commission for each transaction between buyers and sellers; and more.

24. Run a Dropshipping Website

Dropshipping, a form of retail business, allows you to sell a product even without having it in store or inventory. When an order is received, your supplier will send the product to the customer’s doorstep without you having to worry about storage, packing, or shipping. You can set your own prices and sell products with your own branding.

Choosing a dropshipping business idea, researching the competition, locating a supplier, and marketing are some of the steps involved in setting up a dropshipping store. Shopify and Automizely can help you turn your website into a dropshipping business website. With the right supplier, running a dropshipping website can be extremely profitable.

Other Ways to Monetize a Website/Blog

Here are some more ways worth mentioning to monetize a website –

25. Join CPL Networks and Generate Leads

You can redirect your visitors to other websites or generate leads for other businesses and get paid per lead. There are some CPA(cost per action) and CPL(cost per lead) networks like MaxBounty you can join and find companies you can generate leads for.

26. Add ‘Hire Me’ Page to Your Website

Creating a dedicated website around freelancing services and consulting is a different thing. If you are running a simple blog but have skills you can offer for a fee, simply adding a ‘Hire Me’ page to your website can bring you a lot of projects you can complete and make money.

27. Display Pop-Up and Pop-Under Ads

Not all websites get Adsense approved. In this situation, you can register with a pop-up or pop-under ad network like Popads. They approve almost every website. Although pop-up and pop-under advertisements may annoy your website’s visitors, they help you earn money from your website.

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28. Run Coaching Classes

Pandemic has made tutoring and online coaching even more popular. If you are a teacher or have in-depth knowledge of a subject, you can create a website and get paid for running coaching classes. There are other ways to monetize a tutoring website besides charging students, such as advertising and sponsored ad banners from coaching institutions.

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29. Conduct Polls on Your Website

Opinions matter. If your website gets a lot of traffic, you can make money by conducting polls for clients. You might come across a media company, government agency, or non-profit organization that sponsors a poll on your website. They would want data, analytics, and feedback on what people think about a certain topic.

30. Sell Photos on Your Website

If you love taking shots on your camera, you can upload your photos on your website for selling. You might find buyers, especially from the magazine industry.

8 Websites to Get Paid for Selling Photographs

31. Make an Auction Website

An action website is similar to any marketplace website, but with a unique twist. Of course, it is a place where buyers and sellers meet, but the buyer with the highest bid gets the product. You can monetize an auction website with advertising, a commission model, and a subscription model.

As of April 2022, there were five billion internet users globally, representing almost 63% of the world’s population, and this number keeps rising every year. The potential is thus enormous if you are passionate about producing helpful content for people and making the internet a valuable space. You can turn your passion into profit with a website.