Our Guide on How to Monetize Your Website and Increase Earnings

At this point, you’ve already chosen great products, created and launched your website, and have some website traffic.

(Haven’t created your website yet? Get started with systeme.io’s free plan.)

The first part of learning how to monetize your website is finding ways to get more website traffic.

It’s important to know how many people visit your website — the more website traffic you get, the more opportunities you have to convert users.

More website visitors = more profit.

After all, it’s pointless putting monetization strategies in place if no one’s seeing your content to begin with.

If you don’t know what your current website traffic is, just click here to use SimilarWeb to find out for free — all you need to do is enter a URL.

The aim is to get more organic traffic to your website — paid traffic will cost you more money than what it’s worth.

We’ll go through the top 5 strategies to drive more traffic to your website and how to implement each strategy.

We’ll also give you a breakdown of the tools that’ll make the job a lot easier.

(If you already have loads of web traffic — feel free to skip to Phase 2 to learn ways to use it to generate more revenue.)

Our very first strategy is to implement content marketing on your website.

This means you create online content (such as videos and blogs) to stimulate interest in the products that you have to offer.

It’s all about offering your customers useful, valuable resources that help solve their problems.

You need to consistently create high-quality organic content.

Why is this important?

If your customers find useful content on your website, they’ll be prepared to pay for your products or come back looking for more content.

Remember to make your content highly valuable to your customers.

Not sure how to get started? See our step-by-step guide below.

We’ve listed the top 7 tips to help you implement content marketing:

We all like scrolling through social media — and every now and then our attention gets caught by an interesting post that takes us to a website.

This is called referral traffic, and it drives more than 30% of all website traffic.

More than 3.4 billion people spend a lot of their time actively scrolling social media — which is why your website should get a slice of all that action!

How?

Simply add backlinks to your website when you share your content.

Just follow these easy steps:

Implementing SEO strategies will improve your online traffic by helping your website rank higher on organic search engine results.

The majority of online traffic is driven by search engines.

What do you do when you’re looking for something, you Google it, right?

So do your customers!

They’re definitely not going to go to the third or fourth page of the search results to find what they’re looking for.

This is why SEO is the most important strategy for driving traffic to your website — people believe that if it isn’t on Google’s first page, it doesn’t exist!

Not sure what your ranking on Google is yet?

Use KeywordRankChecker to quickly check your website’s ranking in Google’s search results.

If your ranking on Google is very low, your site is not optimized enough.

It’s crucial to make sure your website is mobile-responsive.

Did you know that over half of all internet traffic globally now comes from mobile devices?

In fact, 54.8% of all traffic is mobile as of 2021.

If your webpages aren’t optimized for mobile, visitors will simply leave your website and find a more suitable alternative.

More people will visit your website on their mobile devices, instead of desktop computers — so it’s crucial that your website looks good on mobile too!

Mobile-responsive websites are no longer a luxury or a nice add-on — it’s crucial to use responsive design features to drive conversions at every step.

After you’ve nailed the first phase, it’s time to get into the real stuff.

Monetizing your website comes with some major benefits:

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to monetize a website.

This strategy lets you promote other companies’ products or services on your website that are relevant to your audience — all for a commission.

You promote their products on your platform to get them sales.

When you add affiliate links to your website, you’ll receive a commission from each person that clicks your affiliate link and completes a conversion action.

It’s a win-win for both parties!

Simply because the higher the product’s price, the higher your commission.

Follow these easy steps to implement affiliate marketing for your website:

Not sure where to get started? Look at these affiliate marketing tools:

Creating and selling products is one of the oldest strategies to get an income from your business — both digital and physical products work.

Sell an ebook, an online course, or even limited-edition t-shirts!

All of these will help monetize your website and increase your earnings.

This is especially useful if you don’t feel comfortable with advertising on your website — and with the right product, you can make a lot of money per sale.

You also have the potential to make maximum profit per sale, because there’s no middleman taking a cut of your earnings.

Remember that product sales can either be digital or physical:

Not sure where to get started? Let’s break it down:

Paid memberships are when your website has restricted sections only available to paying subscribers — giving your readers incentive to pay.

For example, think of a news outlet that only shows you half an article before asking you to pay or subscribe — after already reading some content you’ll be hooked and likely to seriously consider subscribing.

The content of your membership site can include online courses, articles, industry insights, digital products, and even community engagements.

Paid memberships offer loads of benefits for you:

Not sure how to get started? Let’s break it down for you.

Now we’ll dive into how to monetize your email list and newsletters.

We know that you’ve spent a lot of time and money building your email list (and keeping it up to date!) — now it’s time to make that list pay for itself.

If you sell products or services, it’s easy to see how monetizing an email list would work — simply promote what you already have available to buy.

Your email list and newsletters are some of the only ways that you’re in contact with your customers when they’re not actively busy on your website.

And a well-maintained list of targeted customers will yield paying customers — it’s all about the right offer for the right person at the right time.

Sponsored posts can be another steady source of revenue for your website.

Many companies go out of their way to look for websites and blogs that’ll feature their sponsored content or review their products.

If their products are relevant to your audience, this monetization strategy works well — it lines up with your site’s primary content, and it comes across as relevant and transparent.

Sponsored content is also known as native advertising or paid promotions — and it should offer as much value to readers as any other piece of content.

Ordinary product reviews or informational pieces that subtly promote a product or service can be just as effective as full-out sponsored posts.

As long as they feel authentic and are aligned with your site and audience.

But how does it work? Just follow these steps:

This is one of the most popular monetization strategies — and it can be quite profitable if you use it correctly and in moderation.

It’s in your business’ best interest to run ads that perform well.

Why? Because you want to get people clicking, so you can earn those advertising revenues.

But this means that you’ll have to find companies within your niche and provide them with space on your site where they’ll display their ads.

These ads should be highly relevant and useful to your audience.

Simply because running invasive or irrelevant ads will ruin your customer’s experience when they are browsing your website.

A poor choice of ads will slow down your page loading speed, tank your SEO, and send your visitors running straight into the arms of your competitors.

So how will you know which ads will work best? Basically, you should be testing your ads and using the right tools.

While there’s a goldmine of monetization strategies that you can pick and choose from — you’ll need to know the dos and don’ts.

For example, your customers don’t want to be bombarded with ads, and links to RSS feeds should be left in the past where they belong.

These things might’ve gotten the job done a few years back.

But simply put, there are just some strategies that won't work in 2023.

To put you on the right track, we’ve compiled a list of the 3 most common mistakes people make that counteract efforts to monetize their websites.

Like with everything in life, there’s a proper time to monetize your website.

There’s a reason why we dedicated the first half of this blog post to ways you can drive more traffic to your website — a tiny amount of traffic is not the go-ahead signal you need to start monetizing your website.

People will only convert into customers when they trust your brand — earning it takes time and work to maintain the value your website offers.

Look at it this way: If visitors (who’ve never heard of your brand before) come to your website, it won’t make a good first impression if you greet them with a lot of ads or bombard them with too many affiliate links.

To earn your target audience’s trust, you must first focus on traffic and lead generation campaigns, like blogging, basic SEO, or building an email list.

You also need to publish value-packed content and ensure that your website is secure.

Only once you’ve got a good-sized audience with lots of engagement can you start rolling out your chosen monetization strategies.

So how are you supposed to know when it's the proper time?

Using a tool like Google Analytics can help — all you need to do is make sure that your website has a solid stream of organic traffic coming your way.

One of the most common mistakes is when websites show way too many ads — to the point where it’s driving customers away.

And you don’t want that because the point of your website is to make money.

We know that you’re thinking: more ads = more opportunities to sell.

But there’s no point in having ads on your website if there are no customers around to see them.

Your customer’s experience should come before anything else— and loading up too many ads will drive them away.

Plus, it'll also increase your website’s bounce rate and downgrade your search engine rankings and website traffic — meaning fewer sales for you.

Imagine you’re shopping for a new printer, and your favorite website shows you an ad for real estate — Not what you’re looking for, right?

This could also shake your faith in your favorite website a bit because you’re wondering if they really know what you want.

What can you do? It’s easy. Don’t overwhelm your customers with monetization strategies, simply keep it moderate.

Only show your customers relevant ads for products or services that you really believe in — After all, it’s your brand’s reputation you’re gambling.

We know you’re excited to get started,

But before you do, we have a word of caution you should keep in mind.

And that’s to put your website’s audience first.

They’re your more valuable asset — and you don’t want to lose your customers or readers in the long run because you got a little too excited and implemented lots of monetization strategies that didn’t apply to them.

Plus, none of these strategies will really be effective unless you invest your time in making sure you grow and maintain your website’s audience.

Not sure where to get started? Here’s how:

Website monetization is no easy task — and there are quite a few traps and mistakes you have to look out for.

But if you power through the launching phase, build up your audience, regularly publish content, and put in the work to get a solid email list — there’s no reason why you won’t succeed.

There’s a lot of different strategies you can use to get more earning.

Make sure to pick the ones that’ll resonate with your audience in ways that are relevant to their lives — the point is to get their attention.

Making money from your customers simply means you have to keep them satisfied with the experience and services your business brings to the table.

The possibilities (and monetization strategies) are endless — but only if you remember the golden rule: Put your audience first!

All you need is a profitable niche, a great marketing plan, and an even greater monetization strategy — and we’re here to help!

Try systeme.io’s Free plan today for all the tools you need to create, launch, and monetize your website — all in one place!

We can’t wait to get started! How about you?