Whether you’re interested in selling products, providing informative content, or entertaining subscribers, chances are there’s a way to earn money by launching your own website. Even if you’re not selling anything directly, you can monetize your work by selling ad space, creating sponsored posts, or asking for donations. Explore different ways to earn money from your own website.
Table of contents
How to make money from your website
- Physical products
- Digital products
- Services
- Affiliate marketing
- Sponsored posts
- Banner ads
- Donations and crowdfunding
Even if you’re not selling something directly on your website, there’s a way to monetize your work and generate revenue. Here are some ways you can make money online:
Physical products
Creating an online store where customers can find your products is an essential part of starting a business (even if you have a brick-and-mortar store as well). You can create your own ecommerce website using a platform like Shopify or set up a store on an online marketplace like Etsy or Amazon.
Digital products
If you have unique expertise, consider selling digital products like ebooks, online courses, video tutorials, or design templates. If you’re a content creator, like a videographer, photographer, or artist, you can also sell licenses to your digital assets on your ecommerce store. Digital products have low overhead costs—no shipping or recurring expenses—which removes some of the hassle of running a business. Still, develop a strong digital marketing strategy to ensure that the right customers find your products.
Services
If you’re a specialist in your field—for example an experienced web developer, copywriter, visual artist, etc.—you can create a portfolio website where potential customers can see examples of your work and commission you for their projects. You can create your own website from scratch or create a profile on platforms like Upwork.
Affiliate marketing
If your website generates content, a good way to monetize it is by participating in an affiliate program. Affiliate marketing means promoting the products or services of a brand on your own website. This includes sharing an affiliate link on your website or social media channels. When a visitor to your website clicks on the affiliate link you posted and makes a purchase, you get paid by the brand, usually in the form of a commission.
Many companies—including eBay, Amazon, and Shopify—offer their own affiliate programs, so content creators and website owners can simply copy and paste a link to promote a product. You can choose to market products that are related to your business (related affiliate marketing), ones that you’ve used and vouch for (involved affiliate marketing), or even products and services that you have no experience with (unattached affiliate marketing).
Sponsored posts
Sponsored posts typically involve influencers, bloggers, or content creators collaborating with a company to promote their products or services. Sponsored posts can come in many formats, including YouTube videos, Instagram posts, and blog posts. They often offer a call to action (CTA) to encourage viewers to visit a website, sign up for a newsletter, or subscribe to a channel.
If you’re a content creator with your own website or popular social media channel, you can make money partnering with brands that your audience is likely to be interested in.
Transparency is crucial when it comes to creating sponsored content. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has guidelines that make it mandatory to disclose all sponsored content, so site visitors know that you (the content creator) are being paid for the recommendation.
Banner ads
Banner ads are a popular way for websites to make money—especially if they don't have a direct way of monetizing (i.e., they aren’t selling a product or service). If you have a popular website that many people visit for its content, you have real estate that’s valuable to marketers.
A banner ad is typically a rectangular or square ad, featured prominently on a website at the top, bottom, sides or between sections. If you want to post banner ads on your website you can either go through an ad display network like Google AdSense that places the ads for you, or sell ad space directly to a company you have ties with.
Banner ads can be either animated or static. The price you charge and the effectiveness of the ad depends on a number of factors, including design, placement, size, relevance, and overall appeal.
Donations and crowdfunding
If you’re creating content on your website that isn’t easy to monetize, another way of earning money is by seeking donations or crowdfunding your projects. Whether you’re an artist, podcaster, singer, or inventor, asking your audience for support is one way to keep your passion project going. You can have a section accepting donations on your website or you can create a page on a platform like Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee.
You can incentivize supporters to donate by offering exclusive premium content to those who donate. You can also offer other perks like merch, shoutouts, and early bird event tickets to donors.
Ways to increase organic traffic to your website
In order to make money with your website, an essential part of your marketing strategy should be finding ways to get visitors to come to it. Once they’ve arrived, they might buy products, click on ads and affiliate links, or become patrons. Of course, you can pay for ads on other websites and social platforms to generate more traffic, but here are two ways for website owners to boost traffic organically:
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital if you want relevant visitors to find your website. When you optimize your content for search engines such as Google, those search engines are more likely to serve your content to the right website visitors.
Here are a few ways you can use SEO to get more traffic to your website or online store:
Quality content
You can enhance your website's visibility and optimize product pages with relevant content, interesting descriptions, quality images, customer reviews, meta descriptions, and tags. This not only helps search engines know what your website is about, but ensures that website visitors get quality content and keep coming back.
Keywords
Search engines scan content looking for words to understand what a web page is about and whether it’s relevant to a user’s search query. Having a strong keyword strategy can help you rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs) so relevant users can find you easily.
Analytics and tracking
Using programs such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console can help identify opportunities for improvement through a comprehensive analysis of user behavior, traffic sources, click rates, and more.
Social media marketing
Social media platforms can boost organic traffic to your website if your social media content is fun, creative, engaging, and fits your audience’s interests. To direct people back to your website, craft high-quality content, showcase your products and services on multiple channels, and engage with online communities. Social media channels provide their own free analytics tools (such as Meta Business Suite) to help track visitors, views, and click-throughs. As you scale your content marketing operations, you can browse more robust, paid social media analytics tools.
Make money from a website FAQ
Do small websites make money?
The size of a website does not necessarily determine the amount of money it generates. You can make money from a website that's small—especially if you know your target audience and routinely optimize opportunities through analytics, affiliate networks, quality content, and other advertising and marketing strategies.
Can a website make money without ads?
Yes, a website can make money without ads if it provides value to its audience. Consider selling physical or digital products (such as merchandise, an online course, or ebook) or customized services. You can also seek donations through crowdfunding or set up a subscription model where premium content is behind a paywall.
Are there any legal or ethical considerations I should know when monetizing my website?
You must disclose all affiliate links, paid third-party links, and advertisements to avoid potential conflicts of interest and to adhere to FTC guidelines. There are also laws in place any time you’re collecting user information including monetary information and personally identifiable information (PII). Consult a legal professional specializing in internet law if you’re unsure whether your website follows all legal requirements and guidelines.
