Day 5: Make Money from Home through a Pandemic through a website!

Making money from a website is doable by anyone, which means you can easily start a website and turn it into a reliable revenue stream.

In this article, we’ll share tips and strategies that'll answer the question of how to make money off a website.

How to Create a Website That Makes Money

Before diving into the specifics of making money off your website, there are a few things to keep in mind.

The obvious requirement is having a website that you want to monetize. Making a website is easy nowadays, thanks to numerous templates and content management systems like WordPress that require no coding knowledge.

The type of website you create will depend on how you plan to make money from it. If you want to sell services then a static website built with HTML templates is a great place to start.

HTML templates, such as those found on Envato Elements, can give you a head start when you set up your website.

However, if you want more functionality and plan on selling physical products then using WordPress as a starting point is a great choice. All you need is a great looking theme and the right set of plugins and you can have an online store up and running in a matter of hours.

Envato Elements WordPress themes can help you make money from your website by helping you to set up an online store.

No matter which route you decide to go with, once your website is up and running it’s crucial to drive traffic to it. You can start driving traffic to your site by being active on social media.

Or a Podcast ( what, you knew it was coming).

At the same time, be sure to start your email list so you can turn visitors into subscribers and continue nurturing them. You can easily do this by sending a regular newsletter that educates them on the topic related to your products and services.

There's no shortage of email service providers that'll allow you to collect email addresses and stay in touch with your subscribers. If you’re looking for a budget-friendly email service, we recommend starting with MailChimp.

Not only do they make it easy to email your subscribers, but they also allow you to use custom email templates. This means you can customize and brand each newsletter campaign that you send to your subscribers will have an easy time recognizing an email coming from you.

Now that we’ve covered the basics of creating a website that makes money, it’s time to dive into money making tips.

There are two ways to make money from your website: the active way and the passive way.

When it comes to actively making money from your site, this usually refers to selling your services. You get paid every time you do the work. It can also refer to selling products that are a direct result of your services such as photo prints or one of a kind items or physical products that you have to produce each and every time. A few examples include unique jewelry, custom-made wood carvings or paintings.

Passive income, on the other hand, is the income you make after creating a product once and selling it over and over again. This includes printable workbooks, courses, and more.

Active Ways to Make Money From Your Website

As mentioned earlier, active ways to monetize your site involve trading time for money. Here are a few ideas and tips on making that happen.

1. Sell Your Service

The easiest way to get started making money online is to sell your services. Think about what you love doing, what you’re good at, and what's missing from your industry. The perfect service will be at the intersection of those three criteria.

For example, do you have excellent attention to detail and love organizing things? Then offering your services as a virtual assistant for small business owners could be the perfect way to monetize your site.

2. Sell Works of Art or Hand-Made Products

If you love art and are good at it, you can sell your artwork directly from your website. This includes handmade products such as jewelry, paintings, wood-carvings, knitted or sewn products, calligraphy or hand-lettering prints, and more.

3. Create a Membership Site

If you’re passionate about a particular topic and have a lot of knowledge to share, you could create a membership site around. For example, if you’re passionate about yoga and know all about yoga exercises, lifestyle, and benefits, you can create a membership where members pay for exclusive content and yoga exercise programs.

4. Create an App or Software

An app or a software takes a lot of work upfront and regular maintenance after it’s released but if your app solves a common cause of frustration, you’ll reap the benefits for years to come according to an article from NicePursuits.

The best part about creating an app or software is that you don’t have to have coding or programming knowledge—only the right idea.

You can outsource the actual programming to an experienced developer.

5. Offer Consulting

Another way to make money is to offer paid consulting, either as a one-time service or an ongoing consulting over the course of a few months. If you’re knowledgeable on a particular topic, you can present and sell that to people who are looking to improve in that area. This can include life or business coaching but also tutoring in school subjects or consulting in various business areas such as marketing, systems, public speaking, and more.

6. Create a Directory Website

Similarly to a membership site, you can create a directory website that lists information about other websites, places, or resources for a particular industry. This can include a list of local businesses or businesses in a specific industry, a directory of must-see tourist locations, restaurants, and similar. It can also be a directory of niche-specific resources, blogs, tools, and websites.

The way to monetize the website is to charge visitors to submit their link or information. You can even offer different tiers where a higher price gives perks such as featured listing or longer duration.

7. Create a Drop Shipping Website

You can create a dropshipping website. A drop shipping website allows you to sell products from other websites like Amazon or AliExpress on your site and make a profit from the marked-up price. Alternatively, you can use other companies to create t-shirts, phone cases, or mugs.

The basic idea is that a company like AliExpress is responsible for product fulfillment, shipping, and delivery so you don’t have to worry about producing the items, stocking them or delivering them. The only work that’s required on your part is to regularly sync your store with new interesting products and sending the order information to the merchant.

8. Launch a Job Board

Lastly, start your very own job board site. Essentially, you’ll charge businesses who want to list their job openings on your site. Similarly to a directory site, you can offer different price points so businesses who need to find someone urgently get better visibility or have their ad featured above all the other job ads.

Passive Ways to Make Money From Website

While there's nothing wrong with active ways of making money from your website, the truth is that they can be time-consuming. If you’re working a regular 9-5, the money-making methods above might not be feasible.

Luckily, there are quite a few ways to make money from your website using passive income-generating methods.

1. Sell Courses

Similarly to consulting, if you’re an expert in a particular topic or industry, you can create online courses on the topic and sell them from your site. An easy way to do this is to create a WordPress site and use a plugin to protect the contents of your course.

2. Write and Sell eBooks

The Booker theme for selling ebooks from Envato's ThemeForest is just one great option to help you monetize a website.

If you don’t like the idea of selling courses, you can take your knowledge and sell it as an eBook. Another idea is to combine courses from the idea above and also turn them into eBooks as an added bonus.

3. Sell Webinars or In-Depth Training

Another way to monetize your knowledge or expertise is to sell longer, in-depth training. This can be packaged as exclusive webinars where you deliver the presentation live or it can be sold as a recorded class.

4. Use PPC Advertising

With PPC advertising, you’ll place ads on your site and get paid based on the number of clicks those ads receive. In most cases, the ads that display will depend on the content found on your site. Popular PPC networks include Google AdSense, Infolinks, Vibrant Media, and GumGum.

5. Join CPM Networks

CPM Networks work similarly to PPC advertising, only in this case, you're paid by the number of views the ad receives. Popular options include networks such as Conversant Media, Exponential, and Criteo. The downside is that you need a fairly established site with a significant amount of page views.

6. Use CPA Advertising

CPA advertising networks are another way of getting paid by serving third-party ads from your website. With this method, however, you get paid per action which means a visitor has to do something like submit an email form or a contact form. Popular networks include Clickbooth and PeerFly. 

As well as the other two methods above, are great ways to make money if you like generating leads for various businesses.

7. Sell Ad Space

The downside of using ad networks above is that you've got very little control over what ads display. If you prefer more control, then directly selling ad space is a great alternative. In this scenario, you're essentially allowing businesses and other websites to advertise their website in your sidebar, header or in your content.

8. Accept Sponsored Posts

Once you’ve built decent traffic to your website, you could start accepting sponsored posts. This means that companies and businesses will pay you to write about their products. Products can include physical items as well as digital products such as plugins, themes, apps, software, and more.

9. Accept Donations

If you’re absolutely stumped for ideas and have no clue what to create in terms of products, you can simply ask for donations that'll help keep the lights on your website and motivate you to continue producing content.

Lastly, I will be creating a post on each and every one of the above but start thinking about

1. what suits you best - as a way to make money
2. do you have a blog or website - which is better for you
3. do you have a funnel, is a funnel better than a website - we will explore

Come back for more tomorrow on each day we will explore one of the above and together we WILL find a way to help you.