10 Best Ways To Make Money With a Website in 2024

How do websites make money?

When it comes to making money with websites… we recommend using a variety of strategies.

You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket!

Here, we list 10.

You don’t have to implement them all.

Focus on 3 or 4 main methods and to a lesser extent the rest. Do this correctly and one day you will be able to sell your online business for a lot of money!

If you’re looking to monetize your website, there are a variety of ways to do so. In this article, we’ll explore 10 different ways to make money with a website. Whether you’re a blogger, entrepreneur, or just looking to earn some extra cash, these methods can help you turn your website into a profitable venture.

Before I start, I should mention one important thing. If you want to double your income from a website, you could either monetize your website better or double traffic.

In my experience, the easiest way to make more money is to focus on traffic, assuming you have monetized your website relatively well. 

When it comes to traffic, the most important things to focus on are:

• Create amazing content that gets lots of traffic
• Get lots of backlinks to your traffic 
• Optimize your content for search engines

Ok, with that in mind, if you want to focus on making more money from a website rather than driving more traffic, my 10 top ways to make money from a website are below: 

How to make money with your website

Below are the 10 best ways to make money from a website in 2024. Currently IncomeDiary is using email marketing, affiliate marketing, advertising sales and we also have the intention to sell the website one day soon.

I have listed them in order of convenience and ease to get started.

1) Sell advertising
2) Sell services
3) Sell on commission (affiliate marketing)
4) Email marketing
5) Host webinars and sell something
6) Create and sell your own products
7) Publish a book
8) Offer live training and workshops
9) Offer membership areas
10) Sell your website

10 Best Ways To Make Money With A Website

1. Sell Advertising

Monetizing your website can be a great way to earn some extra income, and one of the most popular methods is through placing ads. Google AdSense is a widely-used platform that allows you to display ads quickly, but be sure to follow their rules and avoid clicking on the ads yourself.

There are various ways ads can function, such as Pay Per Click, Pay Per 1000 Views, or Pay Per Time Frame. However, one of the most significant downsides of website advertising is that many people recognize them and tend to refrain from clicking on them.

When selling advertising, you have two options: finding and working with advertisers or a company or broker who will take a cut for bringing advertisers to you. Which option you choose depends on your preferences and goals.

Personally, I prefer finding advertisers myself. This approach has allowed me to build better partnerships and earn higher payouts for my efforts. While advertising sales only make up a small portion of my earnings, it’s nice to have a consistent source of income.

It’s important to note that Google does not like the practice of buying and selling text links for SEO purposes. While links can help improve your search engine rankings, Google prefers that they occur organically. If you’re caught buying or selling links, your site may be penalized, and your rankings could suffer.

Advertisers often go looking for websites to advertise on. Adding a section to our contact page telling visitors that we want to sell advertising has dramatically increased the number of companies we hear from. I recommend giving some instructions to reduce the time it takes to negotiate a deal. See below how we have achieved this:

Benefits:

• Often guaranteed income.
• Little effort to monetize.
• Saves you a lot of time.
• Great way to connect with others in your industry.

Drawbacks:

• Takes away from the user experience.
• If you set a set price per month, you can’t make any more even if you double your traffic.
• Advertisers come and go, you have to spend time editing, adding, deleting, and finding more advertisers.

2. Selling Services

Selling services is a very popular technique for making money from a website and is often the reason people build a blog in the first place. They want to attract more clients, and to do that; they need to increase traffic. Blogs are great for that!

The easiest way to start selling your services on your blog is to create a new page within WordPress and call it services. Here, you can put in information about what you offer, testimonials, and a buy now button.

When it comes to collecting payments for your services, two popular options are PayPal and Stripe. These platforms offer secure and convenient payment processing, making them ideal for small to medium-sized businesses. However, if you’re running a larger operation like an agency consider using SamCart as an addition. This software is designed to increase the percentage of people who make a purchase from you, thereby boosting your revenue. 

Benefits:

• High converting, they see your blog and want more!
• Highly profitable.
• Easy to deliver.
• Low refunds.

Drawbacks:

• Exchanging time for money.
• Customers are always right (which we know isn’t true).
• Can be periods of time where you have no customers!

3. Sell on commission (affiliate marketing)

I have tried selling ads and using advertising banners on my website to sell as an affiliate. Both converted poorly for me.

Why are banner ads not a great way to monetize your website? In 2024, everyone knows what an advert is. 

What someone visiting your website wants is an answer to a question. They will buy something if it resolves a question or problem. That’s why I focus on creating great content and then promoting affiliate products within it. 

About 50% of our income comes from promoting products as an affiliate. Essentially, this means we receive a commission if a visitor clicks on an affiliate link and buys something. 

However, we only promote products that we believe in and that have worked for us rather than solely for the sake of earning a commission. It is crucial to have faith in the products you promote. Fortunately, almost all products have an affiliate program, and you can search for one by typing the product name followed by “affiliate” into Google. 

In my experience, email and affiliate marketing are the most effective ways to generate revenue. The top marketers consistently agree that email marketing is their primary income source. Depending on your industry, several approaches exist to finding a product to promote. For instance, if you have a fitness blog, you can visit Clickbank to find a product about six-pack abs and use an advertising banner from their resources section on your website. You can also write a blog post, such as “7 Best Exercises To Get Six Pack Abs,” and promote the product at the end.

Product reviews are another great way to earn money as an affiliate. They offer higher conversion rates than banner ads and email promotions, and companies may send you free products to review. Writing reviews also allows you to connect with industry leaders and establish your credibility as an expert. Remember to remain fair and impartial in your reviews and always disclose when you received a free sample.

Check this post out about How To Start a Review Blog.

Special Note:

Occasionally, especially when your blog becomes more popular, you will get sent products free of charge in the hope you will write a positive review. If that happens it is important to declare that you received a free sample. Frankly, your reader may well think that in any case – and I find it best policy to always be transparent in these

Benefits:

• Can earn you big bucks!
• Easy to set up and doesn’t require much support.
• Passive income.

Drawbacks:

• Earnings are not guaranteed, can earn $100 one month, $1000 the next.
• Great products can have low-converting sales pages.
• High-converting sales pages can have rubbish products.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most effective strategies for making money with a website. It not only helps build a solid brand but also encourages readers to come back to your site. With an email list and a reasonable offer, you are always in business, irrespective of fluctuations in website traffic.

Email marketing can make you money in various ways, such as email promotions that deliver free reports monetized with affiliate links. Offering a free report, eBook, or access to a video in return for the reader’s email address is an effective way to build an email list, referred to as a lead magnet. However, it’s essential to offer something of value, not low-quality lead magnets that might be outdated and poorly produced.

Popups and squeeze pages, when used tactfully, are effective in getting visitors to subscribe to your website. Lightbox popups that seamlessly integrate into the page you’re on, rather than opening in another browser window, are less intrusive and can lead to a significant increase in subscribers.

Squeeze pages are dedicated pages on your site designed to encourage a visitor to sign up for your mailing list. To collect and manage emails, you can use an email delivery service like Aweber and popup software like OptiMonk, ensuring a comfortable and non-intrusive user experience.

63.9% of our email subscribers come from our popup.

Benefits:

• A direct way to market.
• One email can make you thousands.
• You can do it.
• Considered by most to be the no1 way to make money online consistently.
• Can work on autopilot, if you set up an autoresponder series.

Drawbacks:

• If subscribers don’t like your emails, they will unsubscribe.

Recommended: 10 Little-Known Email Marketing Tips for Bloggers

5. Host Webinars & Sell Something

Webinars are great at selling high price products, either as a product owner or as an affiliate.

Alternatively, you could set up a free webinar that you replay once a week, teach something, and then at the end, you sell them into 4 more webinars. Once you complete the webinar series, you now have a product that you can sell as a home study course

Here is a great introduction to how to sell with webinars.

Benefits:

• High priced, low amount of customers, so low support.
• Readers want to connect with you.
• Highly beneficial to those who buy.
• Great way to teach.

Drawbacks:

• If you’re doing live webinars, your exchanging time for money.
• Investment for software.
• People have to turn up at a specific time, hard for different time zones.

6. Create and sell your own products

This is something I’m experimenting more and more with and I’m not sure if it’s just me.

Physical products include items like books, toys, clothes and white goods. They make up the bulk of online sales.

If you are selling physical products we recommend the Shopify Platform. It is by far the easiest way to get started online selling physical products. Our Shopify Tutorial will help. If you’re looking for help with outsourcing manufacturing orders to maximize efficiency, it’s definitely worth looking into how contract manufacturing software can help.

Digital products include eBooks, software, online courses, etc. This is what we will focus on in this section.

In the past, the simplest version of creating a product was to create a 30+ page word document about a NICHE or IDEA and turn that DOC into a PDF and sell it. It is still possible to do that, but it is more likely you will create a digital training course (inc videos) these days.

Personally, I think your first steps would be to ask your audience what they want to know more about and then create a product around that and sell it!

Next time you email your list include a survey of potential product ideas and ask for feedback.

When it comes to selling any product of your own, I recommend using SamCart for your checkout page, upsells, and affiliate program. They have a free trial, so make sure to try it out.

Benefits:

• Affiliates send you traffic, build your business.
• Passive income because of affiliates promoting it.
• Great for building your brand and authority.
• Big Money Earner.

Drawbacks:

• Time-consuming to set up.

Recommended: How to set up a Shopify Store

Want to include video in your digital package?

Then Movavi Video Editor is a must-have tool!

Use it to trim video and produce the best possible video production. 

Special Note:

At IncomeDiary we make most of our money by selling our own online courses and software, plus other people’s products as an affiliate. But there are lots of different ways to make money online.

It can take a while to work out how to best way for you to make money with your website. Patience is a virtue. If something doesn’t work, try something else. Don’t give up.

The main reason people fail at blogging and website creation isn’t that their idea or website is no good but because they give up too soon.

7. Publish a Book

A lot of people want to write a book, however, they have no audience.

A blog can bring you branding, can help you connect with other people in your industry, help you understand what people like to read about, more importantly, what people don’t like. Here is an article we published on writing a best-selling book.

A lot of people don’t consider a book because you only get a couple of dollars a book but that’s not just what you earn.

Publishing a book can allow you to then launch a product because people always want more, also a more exciting prospect is being paid to speak. If you are published, you’re automatically seen as an expert, it doesn’t matter if you never sell more than a dozen books, this means you can charge to speak and charge a lot more for consulting.

There are so many different ways to go about publishing a book, most choose self-publish but if your blog is successful, either they will find you or in my case, a friend connected me with his published and told me I should write a book. Someone in your industry who blogs will also have published a book, help them and they will help you.

Benefits:

• Authority.
• Long-term earnings.
• Increase your charge for consulting.
• Paid to speak at events.

Drawbacks:

• Timely or expensive if you have a ghostwriter.
• Doesn’t make you a lot of money on its own.

8. Offer Live Training and Workshops

Just like selling consulting and services, you could also use your blog to sell live training, workshops and seminars.

People read your blog but I wouldn’t be surprised if over 80% don’t act on what you say. Having a workshop means they learn from you and implement with you, this is a very attractive offer to some people and they are willing to pay high prices to do it.

You don’t just make money from the price of the ticket but you can also make money from selling follow up workshops and masterminds. If you bring in speakers, then you also collect 50% of everything they make if they sell from the stage at the end. Another thing to consider is recording the event and then selling that as a product on your blog.

Putting on an event is a daunting thing, however, it really isn’t to hard. Ring up a hotel, book a conference room, now you have a date, write a blog post and send everyone on your mailing list to that page.

Mention your event everywhere and keep hustling! Apart from that, all you NEED to do is create your slides and turn up. Some of my friends even hire people to run everything for them so they don’t have to worry about the event side of things.

Benefits:

• Can make you a lot of money.
• Can be made into a product.
• People will invite you to speak at their events so that you can sell yours.
• Makes you an authority.

Drawbacks:

• Time-consuming.
• Selling can sometimes be hard.
• Stressful for first-timers and often the pros. You think the deal is done and then it falls apart at the last minute.

9. Offer members only areas

This technique has become more and more popular over the last few years.

The idea is simple, people come to your website because they want to read your content. They love it and want more. So you offer them even better content, for a price.

Your first step should be to work out what you’re going to offer. Then, you will want to go ahead and create a membership area for them to log in and see the information you’re selling.

Once you have set it up, you will want to focus on marketing it. For best results, I recommend focusing on email marketing and adding an advert at the bottom of every page, mentioning that if they liked what they have read so far, they should take a look at your even better-paid content.

Another option would be to release an affiliate program for your membership site. This not only will increase sales but will bring you even more traffic.

For billing, checkout pages, upsell pages, and affiliate program software, I recommend you use SamCart.

5 Ways To Make A Membership Website Great

Below are my 5 top tips for those thinking about creating a membership website or already have one: 

1) Engage Your Members Through Multiple Forms of Media (Video, text, email)

To build high levels of engagement, it’s best to avoid relying on only one form of media. Although creating videos is a great start, keeping your members engaged is not enough. You need to cater to the preferences of all your members. Experiment with written articles, text transcripts, and audio versions of your content to give them options.

People love options, and providing them with different forms of media can help you stay in tune with their needs. You never know; some members may prefer audio content over video, and vice versa. Giving them options can create a stronger bond with your members and make them feel like you care about their needs.

2) Make yourself accessible to your members

Making yourself accessible to your members is crucial for building a solid and lasting relationship with them. By creating a membership site and neglecting to communicate with your members, you risk losing their interest and engagement. 

To increase the perceived value of your membership, consider being active in your forum, personally responding to emails, and offering webinars or conference calls to make your members feel like they have personal access to you, the expert.

3) Set Milestones for Your Members

Milestone-based incentives can be an excellent way to keep your members engaged and interested in your membership site. Offer bonuses to your members once they’ve been members for sixty days, six months, and one year. The bonuses should be worth sticking around for and cater to your members’ needs.

You can offer hour-long consulting calls, access to full products outside your membership, physical versions of your content shipped in the mail, or even purchase cool toys for them. Offering these incentives will encourage your members to continue and pay attention.

4) Lower Your Barrier to Entry

While charging $97 monthly for a membership site is a standard price point, it’s too high for some people. Instead, offer a more accessible price point, such as $1 or $5 for the first month, to attract more people to join your site. This gives them a chance to test-drive your content and see the value you offer.

Once they see the value, they are more likely to stick around and pay the standard membership fee. By offering a lower barrier to entry, you can attract more members and retain them for the long term.

5) Reactivate Cancelled Members

The easiest person to sell to is an existing customer, followed by someone who was once a customer. Instead of letting cancelled members walk away and never hear from you again, add them to a list and follow up with them. Offer them bonuses, discounts, and special access to you for returning and giving your membership another shot.

You will be surprised at how responsive this tactic can be. Reactivating cancelled members can help you retain more members and increase your revenue in the long run.

Benefits:

• Continuity income, keep making money, month after month.
• Can be set and forget, if you time release.
• Affiliates will send you traffic!
• Can be a huge earner, it accounts for over $90k a month for Tutsplus.

Drawbacks:

• Can be a lot of work to set up.
• Regular work to release more content.

10. Sell Your Website – The Ultimate Way To Make Money Online

My favorite of all the above and also the one that pays the most.

Typically, websites sell for about 3 years revenue in 2024, however, if your site is old, has something unique about it, or is the authority in your industry then you can expect any figure you want. I have seen some blogs go for over 200 years of revenue and it didn’t even make $100,000 a year.

When it comes to valuing a website, it’s important to focus on assets like your domain name, traffic, and customer database, as well as potential areas for growth.

Finding the right buyer can also make a big difference in the sale price, and it’s often better to target strategic buyers who can benefit from the synergies of your website. The first website I sold was through an auction site. The second time I sold a website was through a website broker because it was the largest website, and a lot of work was involved. Working with a website broker was the best way to sell a website. It did not involve much work, and it gave me the best price for the website.

Work hard and it will pay off.

It is important to remember if you sold your site for 2 years revenue and it made $5000 a month, you would get $120,000. To earn that amount of money it could take you 6 or 7 years because of expenses and taxes. You also have to factor in how long it took you to build your business. If it took you two years and you sell for $120,000 – then it would be like earning an extra $60,000 a year.

Benefits:

• A large amount of cash.
• Can be sold within a month.
• Enough money not to need to work for years.
• Reclaim Your Time
• Money to invest in other projects

Drawbacks:

• You lose an asset.
• You lose an income stream.

If you are already at the stage where selling your website is an option, read this post on selling your website.

That’s it.

Our top 10 ways to make money from a website.

Here is a quick recap of what I recommend you do:

• Create a free report or eCourse to give away as an incentive for joining your list.
• Create your own online training to sell to your subscribers.
• Find highly rated products to promote as an affiliate to your list.
• Reinvest earnings to make even more. [That includes training]
  
• Get Samcart to increase checkout and upsell page conversions.
• Use Samcart to release your own affiliate program to get other bloggers and competitors to promote your stuff.
• Expand, expand, expand!

And here are some more posts on monetization that I recommend you read:

• The Best Ways To Grow Your Email List
• 10 Ways SamCart Will Increase Your Checkout Page Conversions
• How I Get Over 100,000 Visitors a Month With Top List Articles
• If you want to make money online, these Keyword Research Tools are essential.

Get started make money from a website today!