I don’t know about you, but the 9-5 grind is just not for me. I mean, waking up early and working hard to make money for someone else?
It just doesn’t make sense.
Fortunately, in the era of technological wonder that we live, there is no shortage of ways to make money. In fact, all you need is a laptop, a half-decent wi-fi connection, an idea, and you are good to go.
It starts with an idea
Like all good things, making money online starts with an idea.
You need an idea on what your website is about. What content you are going to deliver, and who you are going to deliver it too. Whether you are going to sell a product or a service, or simply start by offering up free information to readers on an area of interest.
Then, once you have that sorted, you need to set it up.
First you need an ecommerce platform, you will likely be thinking of Magento enterprise, Big commerce or Shopify Plus. You might find a site theme that perfectly suits your niche audience. Hell, you might even make one from scratch!
And next, it’s time to make some money.
So, without further ado — the top 7 ways to make money from a website.
1. Promote products as an Affiliate
Affiliate marketing is simply the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s products. In short, you find a product that you like (and that suits your audience), and then promote it.
When people buy these products through your site, you earn a piece of the profit.
As simple as this sounds, it is actually extremely effective. In fact, it is hands down one of the most common ways people make money online.
There are a couple of different ways you can get started with affiliate marketing.
Some products or services already offer an affiliate program. You can easily find this out by googling the name of the product followed by the word “affiliate”. This should bring up their affiliate page (assuming they have one).
Conversely, if a product you believe in does not have an affiliate program, you can always get in contact with them directly to organize a deal. More often than not, this will actually yield you a better return.
When it comes to affiliate marketing there are two things I really want to hammer home.
Firstly, you need to truly believe in the product. If it is no good, you will lose the trust of your customer base, which is a disaster.
Secondly, the products you are promoting should be as targeted as possible to your content. This means only showing relevant products on relevant pages, rather than the same few products on every single page.
Once you have built up an audience and established yourself as a reputable source of information, you have the opportunity to create a digital product.
This could be a 30 page ebook, an educational video series, or even an online course.
Whatever angle you choose to take, it doesn’t really matter. This is a fantastic way to develop a passive income stream that will last you a lifetime. As long as you keep people coming to your site, then you will keep making sales.
The key with a digital product is it needs to offer your customers fantastic value. It should be slightly underpriced, and provide them with expert information.
You want to go above and beyond here.
1. Sell advertising space
Selling advertising space is an extremely common way to make money online — especially with bigger websites.
While this is an effective way to make a bit of extra money, it does come with a bit of a downside. Namely the fact that most people dislike ads, and in turn, avoid clicking them.
But you can mitigate this issue by approaching it the right way.
See, when selling advertising, you typically have two choices:
You can go out and find advertisers yourself. Or you can work with a middle man who takes a cut for bringing you advertisers.
I strongly recommend that you go out and find advertisers yourself. This generally means that you get more choice in the products you advertise, get paid more, and build better partnerships.
When it comes to online advertising, there are three common ways to make money:
- Pay Per Click
- Pay Per 1000 Views
- Pay Per Time Frame
These are all viable options, and are often dictated by your situation.
Obviously if you don’t get a whole lot of traffic to your website, but have a very engaged audience, then pay per click might be the way to go. Conversely, if you get heaps of people to your site, but not many actually engage, opt for pay per 1000 views.
While advertising won’t make up a heap of your income, it can offer a constant stream of money that slowly grows with your audience.
2. Review products as an affiliate
Building on the affiliate marketing approach mentioned above, you can also review products as an affiliate.
This ultimately means getting an affiliate program together with a particular company, and then reviewing their products on your site. This could be a written review, an audio review, or a video review.
This not only creates content that draws people to your site, but it also allows you to make money every time they buy a product you review.
Talk about a win-win.
However, I strongly recommend limiting yourself to 1-2 product reviews per month. Keeping it small ensures that you will only review good quality products. Moreover, it highlights to your audience that you only recommend products that you truly believe in.
1. Offer premium content
This is one of my favourite ways to turn a profit online.
More often than not, people come to your website because they want to read your content. You are a reputable source of quality information — so you choose to offer them even better content for a small price.
First you need to work out what you are going to offer up.
It could be a weekly video covering information on a specific topic. It could be a monthly newsletter. Hell, I know some people who include access to a private facebook group that hosts an amazing community.
Then you go ahead and create a membership area on your website. Those who pay their monthly fee can login get access to all the ‘premium’ information.
Obviously this content needs to be exceptional. You will also need to market it on your website and via email — make sure people know what they are missing out on.
2. Host webinars
While access to premium content and digital products are great options, webinars take it to the next level.
The reason I say ‘next level’ is because they sell at a much higher rate — which means your potential for profit increases exponentially.
Like everything else discussed throughout this article, your webinar needs to deliver. It needs to meet a need dictated by your target market, and it needs to be of a very high quality.
A great option to get people on board is to set up a free webinar that you replay weekly — at the end of which you advertise 2-3 of your premium webinars. This gives people a taste of what to expect, while also allowing you to demonstrate your knowledge.
The best thing about this is once you have recorded a few webinars, you have the potential to turn it into a home study course.
This essentially doubles their profit potential.
3. Sell your website
And lastly, once you have a profitable site, you can also sell it.
While it may be hard to sell something that you have put so much time and effort into, it may be the most profitable option on this list.
See, websites generally sell for around 12 to 24 months revenue. However, if your site is one of the most popular in a niche market, you can literally demand whatever you want.
And even if you did ‘only’ sell your site for 2 years revenue, you would still get a decent return.
Say it is currently making you $5000 a month. You would then get around $120,000 — which, once you account for expenses, is probably around 6 years income.
With this in mind, there is definitely merit in creating a profitable website with the intent to sell it down the track.
Take Home Message
Something that needs to be considered with all these great options is the fact that you still need to work hard. Building a profitable website takes time, effort, and a whole lot of work — but once it is up and running, the possibilities are endless.
So, take the time to build a high quality website, and then start implementing the tips listed in this article.
You will be out of the 9-5 grind in no time.
