There are many ways to make money on the internet, but they boil down to 4 distinct ways.
The four key ways to make money from a website are advertising, affiliate marketing, selling sponsorships and selling something, which can be a subscription to gated content or a product. Arguably, these approaches are listed in order of easiest to hardest but it's subjective to your strengths and the site you're building.
Some websites are able to make money from multiple sources, but most will focus on one or two of these key ways. A website that sells products will likely not also be trying to sell sponsorships, for example.
Display Ads as a Way to Earn Money (Advertising)
Selling ad space is one of the most common ways to make money from a website. You can sell ad space on your website or participate in ad networks such as Google AdSense. Specifically, these are display ads, which means you're being paid for impressions. Generally speaking, you should think of buying or selling display ads through a Cost Per Mille (CPM) lens. That means, you're being paid for every 1,000 unique impressions of that ad. That means each time a unique visitor comes to your site and the ad loads, that is an impression. One thousand of those will get you a specific dollar amount.
Outside of Google's ad network, there's also other ad networks you can join like Mediavine and Ezoic that are popular with website creators. You can also directly sell ad space on your website, which you'll need to do if you're not in an ad network, but that's a more advanced approach that's not recommended if you're just starting off.
Generally speaking, you can expect CPM rates of a few dollars, perhaps $1 to $3. While this vary based on a specific niche, the value of an impression on a website is relatively low to advertisers, so they are not willing to pay a high amount for it.
When you look at Click Through Rates (CTR), which is how many people actually click an ad, you'll see it averages between 1% to 2%. That means that for every 1,000 impressions of the ad, only 10 to 20 people click on the actual ad assuming a 1% to 2% CTR. For an advertiser, they care less about the display impressions compared to how many people actual click the ad and land on their site.
At a high level, the most important thing to know about making money from display ads is that it's very volume based. The more traffic you have, the more money you can make. And because it's based on unique impressions, you need a lot of return visitors to make a decent income from advertising.
Because of the relatively low rates websites can earn from display ads, sites that focus on monetizing through display ads need to be able to drive traffic cheaply or for free. For most websites, this means being really skilled at search engine optimization (SEO), which is basically getting your site to show up when someone searches on Google. The sites that show up below the ads are organic results. Sites that want to profitably earn money from display ads need to be really good are ranking on Google to be able to get a lot of traffic that they can show ads to.
While there's a lot to it, this is just a quick overview of display ads as a way to monetize. It might sound complicated but it's easier to start with display traffic than any of the other opportunities.
Making Money with Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another popular way to earn income from a website. You can promote products for other companies and earn a commission on each sale.
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which an advertiser rewards you, an affiliate, for each sale or customer you drive through your site. That means, unlike display ads where you are being paid every time a unique visitor loads your site, to make money from affiliate, you need to drive an actual sale.
Let's talk a bit more about how exactly affiliate marketing works.
Every affiliate program has 4 key players.
- Merchant (also called the Brand or Advertiser)
- Network or Platform
- Publisher (also called the affiliate, can be any creator with a following)
- Customer
The merchant is basically the brand that's willing to pay you for driving the sale or lead.
There is the network or platform, which can be something like Impact Radius, Commission Junction, or ShareASale. These platforms are where you sign up to apply for a program, get your links, and see how much you've earned and withdraw. Different brands using different platforms, so you'll have to find out what platform your desired brand is on and sign up for it. For instance, Canva's affiliate program is managed on Impact Radius whereas Sephora is on Rakuten. There's around 4 or 5 top platforms where 90% of brands are running their program on.
There's the affiliate, which can also be called the publisher or partner. It's the site that's publishing content to convince a customer to make a purchase or sign up.
Finally, the last player is actually the customer him or herself. This is the person that's interested in learning more about the product you're promoting. They're likely doing research on a topic and ended up on your blog, or they follow your content because they trust your perspective.
Overview of Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing
Now that we understand the 4 key players in an affiliate marketing program, let's talk about how it actually works. Affiliate marketing can be generally broken down into 4 high level steps:
- Finding a program to join
- Applying to the program and getting accepted
- Getting your unique affiliate links
- Promoting the products or services to make sales
The first step is finding a program to join. You can do this by going on Google and searching for something like "[brand] affiliate program." For example, if you want to find Canva's affiliate program, you would search "Canva affiliate program." This works about 80% of the time. However, not all programs are publicly accessible. You'll have to do some digging to see if it exists and isn't public. Unfortunately, there are some awesome programs that you wouldn't be able to find publicly like Robinhood; often, financial services or fintech brands are usual very careful of who they let into the program.
Thankfully, if the brand you want to work with has a public affiliate program, the Google search should bring up their website. From there, you can read more about the program and see if it's a good fit for you. Here are examples of what the affiliate page might look like on a brand site: Canva, Jasper, and Webflow.
The second step is applying to the program and getting accepted. This process looks different for every brand but generally involves filling out a form and waiting to hear back from the brand. For trickier programs, you'll have to try and find the affiliate manager or agency for that brand and email them or try to find the brand on one of affiliate networks.
The third step is getting your unique affiliate tracking link. Once you're accepted into the program, you'll be given a unique link (or code) to share with your audience. This is how the brand will track how many sales or leads come from your site. Depending on the platform the program is run on, you may have to sign up to a network. For instance, if you're already on Impact Radius promoting Canva, you may have to join Commission Junction to promote Blue Apron.
The fourth and final step is promoting the products to drive sales or sign ups. This is where your creativity and knowledge of your audience comes in. You'll need to create high value content focused on convincing your readers to convert. This means including a Call to Action (CTA) telling your reader that they should click your link as that's the only way you'll get credit for driving an affiliate conversion.
Affiliate marketing can be a great way to earn income from your website. It's important to do your research and make sure you're promoting products that are a good fit for your audience. If done right, you can make a significant commissions. Even more so than just affiliate commissions, the great thing is you can earn affiliate commissions on top of whatever you're earning from display ads. A lot of website owners will earn equally from both monetization approaches allowing them to double their earnings.
Getting Brands to Sponsor You
Sponsorships are when brands you pay you a lump sum in order to sponsor an article or a post or even a podcast. They are a great way to earn money from your website, but it's trickier than monetizing through display ads and affiliate content.
While you can sign up for a display ad network or join a brand's affiliate program relatively easily, to get sponsorships, you have to pitch a brand directly (or have them reach out to you). Since you'll be emailing or on a call with someone from the marketing department at a brand, they'll want to understand your site and audience really well before committing a flat amount of money.
Unlike affiliate commissions where a brand is paying you only once you've driven a sale or a sign up, with sponsorships, the brand has no guarantee of performance.
Let's say you offer them an opportunity to sponsor your next email blast. Your email list is 1,000 subscribers and you have 25% open rate normally. That means 250 people will see the ad. However, what if this email only has a 10% open rate leading to only 100 people to see the brand's ad. As a result, brands prefer working on an affiliate basis to minimize risk. Of course, you'd prefer to be paid on a flat sponsorship basis instead of having to worry about your readers actually clicking a link and making a purchase.
So, if both parties have different incentives, then what?
This is where understanding the audience comes into play. Even if you had a newsletter with 1,000 followers and a 25% open rate, if that audience is highly relevant and targeted to a brand's goals, then the brand may still be open to sponsoring. In these cases, the brand has to analyze what they expect to get using estimated data. For instance, if 5% of people who open an email click the ad, then of 250 people who open an email, about 12 or 13 people may visit the brand's site. If these 12 people are the brand's ideal customers, it might be worth it.
To make it easy for brands, website will often have media kits explaining stats about what the brand gets if they sponsors the company.
One of the most important things to realize before you even build your site is that if you're able to create a true brand that people in your niche are familiar with, then you'll be able to convince brands to sponsor. Brands want to be where their ideal target audience spends time. Even if the open rate and click through rate for an email sponsorship was low, if everyone who spends time on your site and reads your emails is a perfect audience match, brands may be open to it.
If you build with this in mind, you'll likely want to focus on things that you may not have worried about as much if you are monetizing through just display ads and affiliate earnings. Namely, you'll want a memorable brand name, a memorable logo, a slick website design, and so on. Doing these things well can position you as a leading site in your space that brands want to sponsor.
Getting Started with Brands Sponsorships
There are 2 ways of getting sponsorships. You can either reach out to brands or when you're big enough, brands will come to you. In both cases, you'll want an updated media kit that tells more about your site and your audience.
Additionally, it's vital that when looking for sponsorships, you find brands that are a good fit for your website and your audience. You don't want to promote a product or service that your audience isn't interested in as this will reflect poorly on you and make your readers doubt you as sponsorships are more front and center. While you're suppose to have affiliate disclosures, a sponsorship is very visible and so readers will know you're being paid by the sponsoring brand.
If you're reaching out to brands, build a list of target brands. Once you've found a few potential sponsors, reach out to them and explain why you think their product would be a good fit for your audience. If they're interested, they'll provide you with more information about their goals and how you could work together. You might want to share a media kit at this point if you have it.
Generally, sponsorships involve the brand providing you with a sum of money or product in exchange for you featuring their product on your website. This could be in the form of a banner ad, a sponsored post, or even just a mention in one of your blog posts. The deal can also include you writing a full feature article about them.
Be Wary of Brands that Ask for Too Much
There are some brands that will want way too much for a sponsorship. They may want you to write a full article about their product, share it on all your social media channels, put up a banner ad, and so on. You may not want to do this as it takes away from the value you offer your audience by being an authority in your niche. Additionally, it could turn off your readers if they feel like you're becoming too commercialized by having too many sponsorships.
It's important to only work with brands that you're comfortable promoting and that will be a good fit for your audience.
On the other hand, often, you're able to add affiliate links in a sponsored posts that can increase your earnings from a post. Likewise, depending on the exact sponsorship, you may even be able to have multiple sponsors.
Building a Membership Site or Product
Most websites don't monetize through selling a membership or even a product unless they are an ecommerce business, but it's still worth including here.
The general idea with selling a membership is that people pay you a monthly or yearly fee to access exclusive content, courses, webinars, and so on. This could be content that's gated behind a paywall or it could be an entirely separate website that only paying members have access to. Some times, becoming a member gives followers access to a Slack or Discord group. Some websites may use a community platform like Circle to run a separate community. You may even set up a Substack account and charge people to join your premium newsletter which could be an extension of the content on your site.
This type of monetization can be very successful if you have the right audience and you're providing them with exclusive content or access that they can't get anywhere else.
To get started, you'll need to create the exclusive content or product that people will be paying for. Once you have that, you can set up a gated platform like Substack, Patreon, or Circle based on what your exact membership plan is. Then, you'll have to promote it to your audience and get them to sign up.
Memberships are only one category of selling something on your site. Memberships may be recurring where someone is charged monthly. However, some sites may also sell one time ebooks or access to courses. Creators can use sites like Gumroad for selling one-time content.
While memberships is included here as a way to make money, it's one of the hardest ways to make money because it requires a big lift to create something you can directly sell your audience. This could be easier for some creators than others depending on your niche.
Concluding All the Ways You Can Make Money from Your Website
There are a lot of ways to make money from your website. You can sell memberships, use affiliate marketing and sponsored posts, or place ads on your site. The best way to make money from your website depends on your niche, your audience, and the type of content you produce.
Creating a website that makes money takes time, effort, and consistency. However, if you stick with it, you can make a good income from your website. Just remember to always put your audience first. Monetization follows creating value for your audience. By doing this, you'll build a loyal following that will be more likely to support you and buy from you in the future.
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