13 Practical Steps to Make Money with your Website

Are you looking for alternative ways to monetize your website and make money online regardless of your location?

One of the easiest ways to make money online as a beginner is to own a website or a powerful digital platform. This is the first step that will lead you to achieving this goal.

If you already have a website as you’re reading this, then you have some advantage because instead of starting from the ground up, you can start with monetizing your already existing website.

That said, in this tutorial, I’ll be taking you through the verifiable steps and business ideas you can use to make money online in Nigeria, Africa or any other part of the developing world.

These ideas are time tested, practical and straight to the point ideas that have worked for others. And can also work for you.

But before we proceed, I want to point out that the first three steps to make money online is firstly, having a clear idea about the goal you want to achieve, understanding what you’ll give in return as value to achieve th and creating the strategies that will help you to achieve those goals.

So, at this point, I implore you to pause and ask yourself the following questions, “how much money do I really want to make with my website? and what strategies can I use to achieve that?”

Again, i want you to ask yourself, What am i willing to offer in return as value for the money and how much effort am I willing to put in so I can get to achieve my goal?

These questions are very important to your success. As soon as you get your answers, write them down somewhere, they’ll form a part of your business plan.

Alright. The following are the practical steps you can use to make money online with your website…

Sell Merchandise

Selling merchandise on your website is one of the easiest ways to make money online with an existing website. This is what ecommerce websites do all the time and you can extend your website to sell goods related to your niche.

To make money with a website selling merchandise, you will need to set up a blog on the website. For instance, if you want to sell baby products, you’ll get a niche blog and start creating content around babies and baby stuff.

The reason for this is because a well written and search engine optimized posts in your niche area will get Google bots to index your site regularly.

This will in turn make your website more visible in search engines for people searching for the things you sell. 

With this, you’ll be able to attract potential client to your website.

Join Affiliate Marketing

If you do not have a product, sell other people’s product. This is the idea about Affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a system that allows you to earn commission while promoting the products or services of other businesses. It is one system that’s enabled a lot of people to make money online.

As an affiliate marketer, you promote the product or services of other businesses either on your website or else where and whenever anyone buys the product via your recommendation, you get a commission.

It’s a pretty straight forward passive income system. A lot of online entrepreneurs started making money online using affiliate marketing. And there are lots of affiliate programs you can join both locally and internationally.

Use Display Ads

Do you have a high traffic website? Display advertising is one of the ways you can easily make money online with your website.

With display advertising, you create ad spaces or banners on your website where people can pay to display ads targeted at your readers.

A lot of successful websites like lindaikeji.com, Nairaland, Punch and many others are using display advertising as one of their top money making models. You can also key into this model if you have a decent traffic on your website/blog.

PS: While setting up ad spaces on your website, be sure you do not fill your website with excessive ads in a way that your readers find it inconveniencing.

Use Google Adsense

Google Adsense is another advertising program that’s given a lot of businesses the chance to earn passive income online.

Unlike Affiliate Marketing, Google Adsense is owned by Google itself. But like Affiliate Marketing, you’ll also need some decent traffic, to earn money online using Google Adsense.

With Google Adsense, Google places ads on your website and you get paid, each time a reader clicks on your ad.

To get started, all you need is to register with Google Adsense, after your website is approved, you’ll get to paste the codes on your website and then ads will be displayed on your website.

PS: AdSense approval can be difficult sometimes. Before applying for AdSense, ensure you have a blog with a decent number of valuable content. Also, ensure that your content is not copied from other websites.

Create Sponsored Post

A sponsored post is a blog post or content written for another company or entity, in order to promote their product or services. It is usually a paid post. And sometimes you can be the one to create the sponsored post for the client or they can create it for you.

If you’ve seen folks showcase other people’s products or write about other people and what they are doing on the social media, then you’re close to what we call sponsored posts.

Writing a sponsored post doesn’t take a lot… You could have been doing it free on the social media as you’re reading this. So going forward, all you’d need is to get more serious with it, set up a price. And perhaps reach out to people to get them or their stuff featured on your website. And then get paid for it.

While doing this too, you’ll have to be concerned about your readers… Don’t just feed them with sponsored posts all of the time. You want to mix things up, here and there.

Use AdSense Alternative Ads

Like i mentioned above, sometimes AdSense approval rates can be very low and their eligibility requirements very stringent.

Also, AdSense has a minimum payout limit of 100 USD. And at 68% of ads revenue, there are still a handful of alternative advertising platforms paying better than AdSense.

If you’re having approval issues with AdSense or you need an alternative platform to make money online with your website, there are a handful of these platforms you can conveniently use. You can check out some AdSense Alternatives here.

These programs also use a system where the website owners get paid each time an ad is clicked on the website.

Write and Sell your Books

Are you an expert or a recognized thought leader in any field of endeavor with an existing audience? You could use your expertise to write books and sell online via your website.

This doesn’t have to be too hard. All you need is research your audience, find out what they want and find a way to put this together for them as a book, using your own expertise.

After this is done, you can use your blog to create content around the niche area in a way that further builds your expertise.

On the other hand, if you already have your book published elsewhere, you can get it online and promote it across to your audience via your website.

Now, doing this does not stop you from selling on sites like Amazon and so on. Instead, it expands your audience, giving you the chance to reach a larger market and make more profit.

Besides the above listed ideas, there are many other ways to make money online using your website. I am going to list some of them below…

Set up Agency Services

Now, another easy way to make money online is to set up agency services on your website.

So, if you own a real estate agent website for instance, you can display your product and real estate agency services on the website, create content and promote the site

Over time, you could also get other agents to display their services on your site free or for a token, depending on the popularity of your website.

Photo Editing Services

If you are a photographer with photography skills and a flair for editing pictures or graphic design then you can set up photo editing and graphics design as some of the services you offer on your website.

Doing this, you’ll leverage the increasing need of social media users to capture great moments to share online, to monetize your website and make money by creating a photo editing or graphics design business with your website.

There are people making it in this niche. And with a combination of your social media and website as marketing tools, you can create content that will bring in the leads.

Offer Virtual Assistant Services

If you have multiple skills that can be useful in the virtual world then welcome to the world of virtual assistance. This is one niche that can help you make money online with ease.

In this niche, you can make money online doing anything from managing websites for busy people, managing forums, guest posting on other blogs, managing social media accounts, writing specific emails and newsletters to project management etc.

In fact, using your website you can display your portfolio or even bid for and get virtual contracts outsourced to you from companies and individuals.

Software Development Services 

Are you a software developer or programmer with diverse skills in website development? You can turn your website into a client generating machine.

Instead of creating a static website where you display your portfolio alone, you can add a blog to your website, and then create well optimized and valuable content on the blog from time to time.

What this does is that it will increase your visibility, build your brand as a thought leader and bring in quality leads and traffic to your website.

With this in place you’ll increase your chances of making money online either directly with this service alone or a combination of other strategies

Content Creation Services

If you’re a blogger with a flair for content writing, one of the easiest ways to make money with your website is by creating content for other people.

With the surge in the number of online platforms, there’s an increasing demand for quality content creators.

Instead of creating all the content for your website alone, with your experience you can also offer content writing services for other clients and get paid for it.

Use a Donation Button!

Lastly, adding a donation button to your website can serve as an easy way to monetize the site.

With a ‘donate button’ on your site, you can ask people who appreciate what you’re doing to make donations towards supporting you and your cause.

This works well if your site is doing stuff that’s really affecting people positively.

Sites like Pavlina.com among many others do this and it’s working for them.

Conclusion

Do you remember the questions i asked you at the opening of this tutorial about how much effort you want to put in return for the money you want to make online?

If you didn’t answer that question, I want you to go back and think about it. Because, the effort you’re willing to put in and the smart strategies you’ll use are some of the things that will determine whether you’ll really make money online with your website or not.

Whether you’re offering writing or graphics designing services, or selling a product online, to really stand out and achieve the result you need, you’re going to put in the work and effort that will complement the result you want.

From building your website, to expanding your capacity and growing your skillset, to really make money online in Nigeria, you’re going to bring in your A-Game. That’s what works.

So, are you willing to put in the work and evolve a website that will help you make money online? The choice is yours! And yes, I can help you to get started, if you’ll get in touch with me today.

So, it’s over to you now. Which of these strategies would you like to use to make money online with your website?