Now that we have some content on our website it’s time to think about monetizing it, or making money from it. If you’ve chosen affiliate marketing as a monetization method from the beginning then I suggest adding in links as you write, other ways can come later.
On this page we’ll go over the main ways that people make money from niche websites. However there are really endless ways to make money from these types of websites.
1. Affiliate links
Probably the number one way for beginners to monetize their websites is through affiliate marketing, Amazon Associates to be precise. Affiliate links are special links that you place on your site that link to a product page. When a visitor to your site clicks the link and makes a purchase, you get a commission from that purchase.
That commission can be really small, or in some cases quite significant. With the Amazon Affiliate program most commissions are on the small side, so a few dollars for each sale give or take. Because Amazon is such a massive powerhouse of an e-commerce site, there is potential to make a lot of money here. And you don’t even need a lot of traffic to start making sales.
Aside from Amazon, there are dozens of other affiliate networks that you can sign up for. There are many options with this method of monetizing your site.
2. Display ads
Once you have enough traffic to your site you may want to consider adding display ads to your website. You can get payed from display ads by impressions and clicks. An impression simply refers to when an ad on your site is shown to a visitor, so they don’t even have to interact with it in any way. The amount you are payed for impressions is usually referred to as RPM, or “revenue per mille”. This gives you an estimated amount that you are payed for each one thousand impressions. Clicks simply refers to when a user clicks one of your ads.
This method of monetization takes a lot more traffic to start making some decent money but is a path that I personally like a lot. The income is more passive than affiliate marketing and can still make a lot of money with patience and good content.
3. Info products
Info products are another popular way to monetize your traffic. An info product can be many different things, a couple of the most common info products for website are e-books and online courses. Both of these are things that you can create yourself and sell digitally on your website. If you are very knowledgable about your niche or even considered an expert, then both can be lucrative for you. An e-book can be written once and sold over and over forever. A course will likely need to get regular updates and be less passive, but have the potential for much higher revenue.