7 Ways to Monetize Your Website and Grow Your Business While You Sleep – Really!

Have you been posting so much to your loyal followers that you forgot you can make money from these activities — in a way that feels subtle and right to you? One of the best ways to do that is by monetizing your website. The good news is, you don’t have to be an expert in business or marketing to get your website off the ground and make some good money, even while you sleep!

Before we get into the meat of HOW to monetize, be sure you have a good grip on the following. Having the following items set up BEFORE you start monetizing your website will bring you greater success.

Your Money Ready Website Checklist

1. Have an optimized website
2. Add value-added content to your website
3. Research and analyze the right SEO to attract the right visitors and traffic
4. Don’t forget about promoting your website on social media (yes, it still works)
5. Build and grow a robust email list
6. Get some faithful followers and readers of your content

With that housekeeping out of the way, let’s jump in to the how of this conversation.

The 7 ways to MONETIZE your WEBSITE:

#1 PPC ads or sell ad space on your website

This method, or model, is where you display banners or textual ads on your website. Anytime a visitor clicks on these ads, you get a very tiny amount of money.

If you have a lot of traffic and a lot of clicks, this can add up.

Two outlets that come to mind are Google Adsense and EZOIC.

The two programs above (Google AdSense and Ezoic) approve new sites with limited traffic. There are others who require at least 100,000 page views/month before they will bother with you.

Now I know what you are thinking. Like many other people, you probably feel having ads on your website are too distracting and that a website needs to have a very large amount of traffic before it can earn a decent amount.

I personally discourage this type of model if you are running a business that is reflected on your website. For example, if you have a services page, selling digital products or are an ecommerce site.

This model is perfect though if you are a blogger. One of Mark’s best friends used to make $100 a month in 2007 using this mode.

However, at Mark of Approval Web & Marketing, we serve primarily coaches with highly creative websites. And as such, we encourage any existing \”ad space\” to be utilized using either promoting the website owners products or their strategic partner’s affiliate programs.

And that is up next!

#2 Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is where you earn a commission by putting a link to someone else’s product on your website. There are many systems out there to track these links. The special links will be provided to you by your affiliate partner.

Just be transparent and disclose that you will make a commission if someone clicks your affiliate link.

We personally use WordPress to track the links by creating a url that looks like it is part of our website. If you need help setting up a tracking system, just reach out!

Unlike PPC, the affiliate only cashes out if your click results in a sale. But if they have a nice converting offer, it can be a lucrative pay day for every customer who buys their product from your link.

Only promote those goods and services that you have used and believe in if you want to maintain your reputation.

One good tip is to put affiliate banners for tools you use on your blog post. Your followers will likely check them out because of their trust in you. Your competitors too because they are trying to do their competitive research – why not cash in on their research? 😁

#3 Sell a product or service

A lot of entrepreneurs get their start online by working as a freelancer. They offer up their skills as services online.

In turn, they gain in the field marketing experience experience as they navigate the realm of digital marketing.

Some common service based disciplines include:

• Administrative Assistance
• Web Design
• Video Editing
• Graphic Design

• Web Development & Programming
• App Development
• Blog Writing
• Copywriting

And of course you can also sell digital products like Mark’s colleague, Fern Chang of Planner Ideas. While selling physical and digital items like these planners is usually attractive to those into craft, Fern has further proven how you can take the knowledge from your corporate career (she is a project manager) and create lower cost products to give people a low priced piece of your knowledge.

Almost every professional service industry has a way of productizing their services.

If finding ways to productize your knowledge is of interest to you, be sure to request a 20 min no obligation chat through our contact form here.

#4 Sell your Expertize as a Coaching Service

If you are an expert in your field, why not monetize your knowledge and education. There are so many people who would benefit from the trials you’ve already gone through to get where you are today. Never underestimate the power of your knowledge. According to SEO guru, Neil Patel, a good way to show your expertise is by creating case studies and posting them to your website blogs.

Professional Service Based Niches can really turn on the coaching angle and help their clients get results. Here is just a small list of niches we’ve seen successfully transition into coaching.

• Web developers
• Writers
• Graphic designers
• Photographers
• Organizers
• Fashion designers
• Health & Wellness Coaches
• Online Courses

#5 Create a Membership

One method I highly recommend is building a free community first. And then setting up a members’ only group where you can sell your VIP information, service, etc.

But just because you have a free community, doesn’t mean you cannot sell them as individual products or even free memberships via a membership site.

We have helped a few clients build their starter memberships and scale them as needed with affiliate platforms or landing pages for advertising.

Certainly check that option out if you feel it is something that would benefit you.

#6 Partner with others (especially influencers in your niche) in a Product Launch

It can be tough when getting started. And it can be tough to grow if you are relying solely on organic traffic sources.

Pumping out content day by day might seem like a fruitless task when very few eyes seem to catch it.

While we cannot control who the search engines and Facebook (or other platforms) choose to give the most love to, we can certainly have multiple traffic sources.

One great way for building awareness of a great product or program is to partner with other influencers in your industry. You can build relationships with them through their Facebook groups, forums (yes they still exist) or even by investing money to be part of their circle.

This gives you a chance to both connect with them and your peers who follow them. Which can result in beautiful partnerships.

Mark of Approval Web & Marketing’s membership sites actually come equipped with an affiliate platform to sweeten the deal and incentivize those influencers to promote you.

We will be releasing more information on how to work with affiliate partners to get them to say yes and make the promotion a win win in future post.

#7 Webinars & Online Summits

While we officially launched our first small, one day summit in 2019 in partnership with our colleague and friend, Marie Mason of Liberty Virtual Solutions, we also launched our biggest summit (at time of writing) in 2021.

It was called the Freelancer Process & Workflows Symposium 2021.

Our intention was to create an event to promote awareness of our membership site – WP Study Group.

I was personally involved in this campaign alongside our partner, Marie Mason and founder, Mark Hunter.

While it was a lot of work, it was a lot of fun and created many loving opportunities between attendees, speakers and the panel.

Putting on an event is no small feat. And while we assist with the technology such as the landing page, event management is not something we focus on.

But should you wish to run your first online event, contact us and we’ll discuss how we can partner with Marie Mason to make that happen for you.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, we’d like you to take action and implement one or all of these 7 ways to monetize your website. We hope by following the processes we have outlined in this blog, you will see a positive change in your website traffic and revenue.

No one wants to work forever on their business, so mix up your strategies!