Once you start churning out SEO-optimized articles, it’s only a matter of time until you start receiving organic search traffic.
But you don’t want to stop there. You want to actually earn money from that traffic.
Imagine that your website is a shop in your neighborhood. SEO is the key to getting customers to notice your store and walk in. But if your store has nothing for sale, you won’t earn any money from those customers.
This is where monetization comes in. There are three basic ways to monetize a website:
1. Place advertisements on your site.
The most common way that websites make money is through ads. The idea is simple:
- There are thousands of companies out there who want to advertise their product or service online.
- If your website receives enough traffic each month, these companies will be interested in placing advertisements on your site since they know people are looking at your site.
- By agreeing to place ads on your site, you can earn money based on impressions (people simply seeing the ad) and clicks (people actually clicking on the ads).
The good news is that there are plenty of ad platforms out there that will do the hard work of connecting interested companies with your website.
Once you’re a member on an ad platform, they’ll place the ads on your site automatically so you can sit back and receive a direct deposit each month based on your ad revenue.
2. Place affiliate links on your site.
Another common way that websites earn money is with affiliate links.
An affiliate link is simply a link that you place on your site that points to a product or service. If a reader clicks on that link and proceeds to sign up for that product or service, then you get paid a commission.
3. Sell your own digital products.
Another way to earn money from your site is to create and sell your own digital products. This includes things like:
- Downloadable documents
- E-books
- Online courses
- Custom software
This form of monetization takes the most work, but it doesn’t require you to work with any third-party companies and it can offer massive upside if you’re able to create a product that readers in your niche actually want.
How to Combine All Three Sources of Monetization
The best way to earn money from a website is to use all three of the methods mentioned above. An example of a site that I currently do this with is Four Pillar Freedom:
- I have ads on almost every article on my site.
- I have affiliate links for different financial products sprinkled throughout most of my articles.
- I sell downloadable templates that I made myself.
By earning income from each of these sources, I’m able to monetize my traffic in several different ways.
Referring back to the neighborhood shop analogy, imagine these three forms of income in the following ways:
- Each time a customer even walks in your store, a few cents get deposited into your cash register. Those are ads.
- Each time a customer buys a product that you sourced from someone else, you earn a commission. Those are affiliate links.
- Each time a customer buys a product that you personally made, you earn a sale. Those are digital products.
In the next sections, we’ll dive into how you can effectively use all three of these sources to earn income on your site.
Full Disclosure: Nothing on this site should ever be considered to be advice, research or an invitation to buy or sell any securities, please see my Terms & Conditions page for a full disclaimer.
