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9 Ways To Monetize Your Blog Or Website | Monetizing Website Series

By / 29 April 2022 /

Monetization! Monetization! Monetization!

Something that is on the mind of every new Website Owner or Blogger

unless that person is creating content just for the fun of it.

In this article, i’ll be going through various ways in which you can monetize the content on your blog

and if done correctly, earn a substantial amount of income to live on.

For those who just want to know the ways, i’ve given the list below

  • Display Ads
  • Affiliate Links
  • Sponsored Posts
  • Pay-Walled Blog Content
  • Host Your Own Videos and Monetize Using Video Ads
  • Donations
  • Selling Digital Product like eBooks and Quick Start Guides
  • Selling Physical Merch for your Blog
  • Sell Courses on Your Website

While for those who want more explanation

Well, without further ado, Let’s get started!

Oh and please make sure you understand that – Nothing in this article or any other article on this website is financial advice

The information is provided “AS IS” with no warranties or liabilities. For further details please refer Disclaimer.

So, always do your due diligence before using any information you find anywhere not only on this website.

This article is part of a 3 part article series on Monetizing Websites

Optional Articles Based On Your Monetization Strategy

Ways To Monetize Websites - Thumbnail

Monetization Model 1 | Display Ads

Display Advertisement is one of the most common ways of earning revenue from your blogging activities.

The concept is basically that you are renting out parts of your webpages where advertisers can display ads of their products and services to the audience of your blog or website.

And then you will earn revenue based on the Ad’s Revenue Model and the way that your audience interact with the ads on your webpages.

Now there are various sort of Revenue Models that you usually see with ads like

  • CPM – Cost Per Mille (Cost Per Thousand Ad Impressions)
  • CPC – Cost Per Click
  • CPA – Cost Per Action

If you want to know more about how each of these Revenue Model works

then you can look at this detailed article that i’ve written on

Digital Marketing Revenue Models – CPM, CPC, CPA, CPL & CPI

where i’ve explained each of them in detail.

Next, you might be thinking that,

“Where the hell am i gonna find Advertisers, who would want to advertise on my blog?”

And that is where the companies like

come into play.

These companies basically act as intermediaries who connect Advertisers with Content Publishers like you.

They take care of everything that has to do with the

  • Auction of your ad inventory
  • Keeping track of the impressions and clicks on ads by your audience
  • Giving you robust real-time analytics
  • Collection of money from the advertiser
  • and much more.

This allows you the content publisher to stay focused on what really matters for your blog i.e. Awesome Content.

Of course, all this work done by these companies is not for free and they take a substantial amount of cut for their services.

For example, Google Adsense which is used by millions of publishers take 32% cut

and leaves you the Publishers with 68% of the revenue generated.

So, if we consider a really hypothetical example

if your ad inventory was auctioned for a $20

then Google Adsense will keep $6.4 and will send you the Publisher a payout for $13.6

If you want to know more about companies like Google Adsense, Ezoic, Mediavine, etc

and the requirements you need to fulfill for getting approved with them

then take a look at this article on Ad Platforms & Their Minimum Approval Requirements. (Not Uploaded)

With that done, let’s move on the next way to monetize your blog.

Monetization Model 2 | Affiliate Links

Affiliate Links are unique links that if interacted with by a visitor of your website in a pre-decided manner

then it will lead to you the publisher earning revenue.

The concept is basically that an Advertiser wants to generate a lead, a sale, an app install, etc for their product or service

Now the Advertiser could spend a lot of money and slap banner upon banners of their products everywhere

and market their product to everyone regardless if these people are interested in their product or not

But doing it like this is really inefficient, expensive and hard to track.

So the marketing industry came up with a solution

Allow people who talk about products like theirs,

who already have an audience who trust in their opinion,

get registered and approved

and let these people directly market their products and services.

Then provide these approved Affiliates with unique links which can be used to track if a website visitor from their website got converted in a lead, sale, app install etc

and if a lead, sale, app install or whatever the criteria of the Advertiser is, gets generated within the time limit which is also predefined

then these approved Affiliates will get

  • a fixed amount of revenue,
  • a percentage cut of the sale / cart
  • or even a recurring payment for years or even lifetime in some scenarios

Now an Affiliate that would be you the publisher, will create content piece that will help promote the product or service of the Advertiser

but though it might look easy, your job can be quite difficult.

Your job as the publisher is to walk a thin line in promoting the product of the advertiser

while keeping your integrity and the trust that your audience has put in you

without completely going against the advertiser’s interests

Always remember that your audience comes first, everything else is secondary.

If you do this correctly, then based on the Affiliate Program’s Revenue Model,

that you will know before applying to become their Affiliate

you can earn a really substantial amount of money.

For example, if you became an affiliate of a company like Logitech, whose

  • Standard Commission is between 4-10% (Varies based on product)
  • Average order value of $125
  • and a 30 day cookie

then if your generated 50 sales a month

and let’s say you are getting an average of 5% commission overall

with an average order value of $100 (You had bad luck and you visitors ordered a bit less then the $125 mentioned)

then you will generate a revenue of

= 50*100*0.05
= $250 / month

and this is just from this single affiliate program with a relatively low traffic site.

If you want to understand more on how to make a good revenue from Affiliate Marketing,

you should definitely continue reading this article series on Monetizing your Blog Content as in the next article i’ll be going over

the Audience Intent of your Blog visitors

and how understanding it thoroughly can help you in modeling your content strategy to increase you blog’s traffic and revenue.

Other than that if you want to know how to find Affiliate Programs to join,

i’ve written this article on Affiliate Program Vendors (Not Uploaded)

to list down some Affiliate Programs that you can check out.

And finally if you want to understand why Affiliate Marketing works so well,

you can look at this article on Affiliate Marketing and Why it Works. (Not Uploaded)

Monetization Model 3 | Sponsored Posts

Just like Sponsored Videos that you see on channels with a relatively large subscriber base on YouTube,

Sponsored posts are posts that you have received direct monetary incentive to make with a one on one deal unlike the affiliate programs.

In this case either you approach the company or the company approaches you to write a sponsored piece

and if both the sides are interested and the negotiations go well, you move on with the sponsored post.

Again just like in Affiliate Marketing, you the publisher need to walk a thin line and should always think about your Audience first

as they are your bread and butter.

If you lose their trust in you, it will all be for naught.

Monetization Model 4 | Pay-Walled Blog Content – One Time Payment Or Subscription

Unlike Display Ads that you can put on your website as soon as you meet the traffic requirements and get approved,

Pay-Walled Blog Content can take some time as no one is going to pay you for content unless they have trust in you.

So first you will need to create this trust using supplementary content

and then once you have created a reputation as a good source of information,

you can start creating premium content that only those that pay for it can access.

Monetization Model 5 | Host Your Own Videos and Monetize Using Video Ads

Yes this is absolutely true!

You can in fact monetize self-hosted videos on your blog directly with companies like Ezoic or other companies that provide in-stream video ads.

I personally have never done it but with the increase in privacy regulations like GDPR

and YouTube thoroughly ignoring visitor’s right of not accepting data being stored on to their devices

in form of Cookies or in Local Storage, Indexed DB, etc on the Web Browser to track visitors

by preloading tracking scripts before visitor consent is given on embedded videos,

it might be a good idea to look into it if you make video content.

This is one of the main reasons why i don’t embed YouTube videos on this website.

It can be a secure investment to self-host videos if you can afford it as self-hosting videos can be quite expensive.

On top of that if your ad fill rate is good enough for the self hosted videos then you might be able to get better revenue as now you are not giving the 45% cut to YouTube.

Monetization Model 6 | Donation – Patreon or other donation softwares

Accepting Donations is something you should be doing even if it’s not your primary mode of income

as this will help you in creating a community of people who truly love your brand.

For accepting Donations, you can either use services like

Or if you are using a CMS like WordPress

then you can search for plugins that you can directly integrate into you blog or website

and accept donations directly on your website, like GiveWP.

I personally think that you should be pretty cautious about taking payments directly as you will need to take a lot of care in processing payment details.

if anyone of you is going the plugin route

then i hope you do your due diligence in understanding all the risks it would bring in doing so.

Also, services like Ko-Fi and Buy Me A Coffee don’t collect taxes,

so you the publisher will be liable in collecting and remitting VAT or any other tax as required

Now to someone like me this can be a pain in the ass and i would rather go with Patreon which does all this itself,

even if it takes a larger cut of the donation.

Monetization Model 7 | Selling Digital Product like eBooks and Quick Start Guides

Selling Digital Products is something that a lot of publishers do on their blogs as it is quite easy to them to do so

Publishers have already researched vastly on their subject of choice when they were making blog posts

and they also have a relatively high expertise in that subject matter because of constantly working in that particular field.

Sharing that wealth of knowledge with people new to the field for a reasonable amount of money

can be beneficial to both the publisher and the buyer of such digital products.

This is why this model can work but for this method to be a success,

you will need to know how to pitch you digital goods in a way that is enticing yet not fraudulent.

‘cause again your audience comes the first and foremost.

Digital Products can also be something like 3D Models, Softwares, etc

that would be helpful to the visitors of your blog.

Monetization Model 8 | Selling Physical Merch for your Blog

Physical Merch is one of those other things that is quite popular with Youtube Content Creators as it helps expand their brand.

In the same way as this Merch Shelf on YouTube, you can use POD (Print On Demand) Drop-Shipping Services like

to create custom Merch for your own brand and show / sell them on your own blog.

This can be a worthwhile endeavor and can earn you a decent side income,

if you have achieved a decent amount of loyal following and traffic

who are interested in not just the information you provide on your blog but your brand as a whole.

Also, it does not need to be a Print On Demand service or even a Drop-Shipping Business

but Drop-Shipping something is much easier and let’s you focus your energy into making content

without worrying about logistic details of your Physical Goods Business.

Monetization Model 9 | Sell Courses on Your Website

And Finally we have the final yet one of the most popular way in which informational and education blogs earn decent revenue from their blogs

and that is to Create and Sell an awesome course.

You can either do it by creating an

  • LMS (Learning Management System) on your on website,
  • by selling your course on Udemy, Teachable, etc
  • or by using service like Skillshare that has a subscription model and will pay you based on the watch time of your courses.

Though Selling courses on Udemy, Teachable, Skillshare etc is technically not on your website,

you can promote the courses on your website and also gain traffic from these websites if your courses are good.

Creating courses can also be really helpful in solidifying your own understanding of the subject matter in question

So it is one of those things that’s like a Win-Win situation no matter what.

If you are using WordPress then there are some LMS plugins that may help you out a lot, like

Conclusion

And That’s It.

Now of course there would be other ways that geniuses have developed to earn money from your blog directly

or ways to expand your blog into a physical entity and start a physical business of some sorts like a Consulting Agency or Service.

But all in all, these 9 Points are tried and tested solutions used by thousands of publishers worldwide.

I had a great time writing this article and i sincerely hope you have success in your endeavor as a digital publisher.

Now as i said at the start of this article, this is the first article in the 3 part article series on Monetizing Websites

so if you are interested you can move on to the second article

Optional Articles Based On Your Monetization Strategy

With that i hope that this information was helpful to you

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Articles In Monetizing Websites Series

Ways To Monetize Your Blog

Understanding Audience Intent Of Your Blog Traffic

Building a Monetization Strategy (Not Uploaded)

Digital Marketing Revenue Models – CPM, CPC, CPA, CPL & CPI

Affiliate Marketing & Monetizing Your Blog Using It. (Not Uploaded)

How is your Ad Inventory Auctioned (Not Uploaded)

Affiliate Marketing and Why it Works. (Not Uploaded)

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