This guide won’t teach you how to make loads of moolah in a few clicks, but it can show you how to get tangible ROI from all the work you pour into your website.

Here are 11 proven ways to monetize your website in 2021:

1. Experiment with affiliate marketing

As an affiliate marketer, you earn a commission from every referral you make to another business.

For instance, if you are apart of the Webflow affiliate program, you’ll receive a revenue share from each person who clicks your affiliate link and sets up a paid account.

Book bloggers can earn some extra cash if a reader buys a book through the blog’s affiliate links (often through Amazon). If you buy a jacket recommended by a fashion blogger, they might receive a percentage of that sale too. You get the picture.

Seems simple, right?

But here’s an important caveat: To succeed with affiliate marketing without damaging your integrity and reputation, you need to:

• Properly disclose any affiliate links or relationships you have (no one likes a sleazy pitch)
• Recommend products and services your audience cares about
• Don’t go on a frenzy of promoting anything and everything (without testing the product or at least checking its reviews)

Keeping all of the above in mind, let’s take a look at the different types of quality content you can create to earn a good commission.

Product reviews

As many as 78% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. And loads of us browse reviews before making a purchase. As an affiliate, you can fill in that information gap and publish reviews of the products you’ve tried and liked.

Tom’s Guide specializes in reviewing consumer tech and has earned a strong reputation for detailed, unbiased reviews (that do contain affiliate links).

Tutorials

You can deliver tons of value to your audience, and pitch a product at the same time, by creating a tutorial around it.

This type of affiliate marketing content works best for recommending:

• Software and online tools
• Beauty and makeup
• Kitchen appliances
• Hobby-related products

WebsiteSetup created a +10,000 word guide explaining all the nuts and bolts of setting up a WordPress website for beginners. Nick Schäferhoff provides a detailed step-by-step walkthrough and recommends a host of free and paid (affiliated) tools along the way. Now imagine doing this, but for Webflow!

Recommended tools and resources

Create a dedicated page on your website where you list all your favorite tools, apps, books, and anything else you genuinely enjoy. Include affiliate links when relevant and say your readers can support you by purchasing from the affiliate links.

For example, on my website, I list my favorite books (can vouch for every one of them!). Smart Blogger recommends different blogging tools their team swears by.

Or take Jan Losert for example, who became a top Webflow affiliate in 3 months by creating UI kits for Webflow users.

2. Create and sell a product (digital or physical)

Selling a digital product is an excellent monetization method if you’re short on time because it doesn’t require continuous content creation work (like blog posts do). You create the product, then invest time in promoting it to your audience and new readers.

Physical product sales require a bit more attention. But you can delegate inventory management, fulfillment, and shipping to a third-party provider and focus on customer service and marketing above everything else.

Let’s take a closer look at the types of products you can create and sell.

Ebooks and audiobooks

Pack your expertise into an actionable guide and attach a price tag to it. Yes, you’ll need to put in a ton of work beforehand and:

• Become an expert in something
• Sit down and type those words
• Transcribe them to audio (optional)
• Design a cover
• Prep a marketing campaign

But once you are done with all those steps, you can sit back and earn some passive income from your books. Mridu Khullar Relph from The International Freelancer packed her decades of journalism and content marketing experience into a series of ebooks, retailing for $4.99 each.

Launch an e-course

Online courses are another way to productize your expertise and earn a recurring income whenever you launch or (relaunch) your course.

Marie Forleo and her signature B-School training program is a prime example of how you can earn 8 figures per year by “creating a life you love and teaching others to do so.”

The e-learning market is climbing toward the $325 billion mark, so you won’t be short on students if your e-course is good!

Build and sell an application, plugin, or other software

Use your website as a launchpad for a new software product. Survey your readers to find a problem an app or a plugin could solve. Test a minimum viable product with a small group of beta users. Launch with Webflow to a warmed-up audience.

Sell digital downloadables

If you have some graphic design skills (or resources to hire a designer), put a digital product on sale on your website. Here are some product ideas:

• Templates, checklists, trackers
• Blog graphics
• Stock photo bundles
• Photoshop presets
• Illustrations
• Website themes (including Webflow templates)
• Premium design elements (icons, fonts, etc.)
• Video effects or stock footage
• Audio elements (jingles, brand tunes, etc.)

Sell merch

Add an ecommerce CMS to your website, connect a third-party fulfillment service, and start selling branded merch.

For example, the popular Wait But Why blog has a quirky store featuring tees, toys, posters, and other doohickeys with recurring blog characters like the panic monster.

The best part? You can sell your own products without the headache of logistics and shipping by connecting your store to an on-demand printing platform. Such services take care of product customizations, fulfillment, and logistics.
Some of the popular options are:

• Teespring: on-demand apparel printing
• Spreadshirt: apparel, phone cases, and accessories
• KITE: over 250 product types supported

This monetization strategy works best for creative, personality-driven blogs in the lifestyle niche.

Related reads: 6 proven ecommerce business models thriving in 2022

3. Start a paid membership website

Set up a private thematic area on your website and pack it with extra value that justifies the price tag. You can use something like MemberStack to easily bring this functionality to your website.

The most popular types of membership sites include:

• Paid communities featuring private forums, discussion boards, members directory, masterminds, special discounts, and more. Example: Traffic Think Tank
• Education buffets sell access to a bundle of courses, webinars, podcasts, and other educational resources. Example: Game Arts Academy
• Mastermind and accountability groups organize group coaching and mastermind sessions with a small-knit group of students. Example: Mark’d Women

Spinoff idea: Paid job board

Got a lot of industry connections and more freelance work than you can handle?

Create a paid job board or referral group to exchange those jobs with others. That’s how Carol Tice, a veteran freelance writer, monetizes her website.

4. Monetize access to your email list

Do you spend hours meticulously curating your newsletter and creating content for it?

Ask your readers to chip in for the effort. Most will gladly agree because they already know how great your content is.

The Economist (Espresso) has been running a paid newsletter since 2014, and since it’s still up today, we can assume this monetization strategy pays off.

You can use Revue or Substack to set up a paid email newsletter and protect your content from public sharing.

5. Publish sponsored posts and product reviews

Another way to leverage your website audience is to negotiate sponsorship deals with other companies. You can charge for:

• Publishing a post on a relevant topic with a link to the sponsor website (advertorials)
• Reviewing one of the sponsor’s products in your article (sponsored reviews)
• Including their content in your email newsletter (newsletter sponsorship)
• Any bonus promotion on social media

While sponsored content isn’t a scalable website monetization strategy (unless you want to turn your blog into an advertising board), it can yield you some extra cash.

Alexis from Fitnancials says she charges brands $750–$1,500 per post and an extra $100 for social media promotion.

Important: Always properly disclose any advertising relationships you have and mark all such content as “sponsored.” To avoid SEO penalties, add rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” attributes to such links per Google recommendations.

6. Gate some of your content

Take a page from news publishers and restrict access to some of your content to premium subscribers. You can place a paywall for some of your longer, deeper, and more researched posts like Mark Manson does.

Most of his personal essays are free to read. But if you want to enjoy audio versions of all articles and “new perspectives and poop jokes” (in Mark’s words), you can pay $4 per month for access. Again, you can use MemberStack to bring this functionality to your website.

7. Accept donations

There’s no shame in asking your readers to support you (instead of pestering them with ads). Pro gamers, comics writers, artists, and other creative types will often have a cohort of raving fans ready to donate some cash.

Maria Popova, the author of Brain Pickings, is completely honest with her readers and says: “Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free (and ad-free) and is made possible by patronage.” On the sidebar, she has 2 separate donation buttons for recurring sponsorship and one-off donations.

You can accept donations via an on-site PayPal donation form or through a third-party patronage service like Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee.

8. Monetize your expertise

Use your website as a portfolio to promote your skills and services online. Freelancers with personal websites tend to charge 65% more per hour than folks without one.

So set up that Hire Me page! With the freelance economy growing year over year, you won’t stay long without a gig.

Not sure what services to pitch?

Here are some ideas:

• Website design and development (you can pick up this skill in Webflow University)
• App development
• Graphic design
• Virtual assistant services
• Copywriting and content marketing
• Editing and proofreading
• SEO and digital marketing
• Transcriptionist services
• Recruiting and career services
• Any other service you can do remotely

Spinoff idea: Advertise in-person services

Can’t fully deliver your service online? You can still use your website to find clients in your area and pitch other in-person services such as:

• Workshops
• Retreats
• Speaking engagements
• Face-to-face consulting

For example, Smashing Magazine, one of the most established resources on web design and development, runs regular conferences and workshops around the world.

Another spinoff idea: Provide one-on-one coaching sessions

Offer your readers an opportunity to pick your brain and receive proactive mentorship on the thing you are truly best at.

Private coaching is a good alternative to in-person workshops and requires less upfront investment than online courses.

According to Forbes, some of the fastest-growing coaching niches right now are:

• Women empowerment
• Employee engagement and satisfaction
• Chronic illness
• Sexuality
• Sales

But if you are an expert in something else, chances are high someone out there will want to pay for your advice and mentorship.

9. Start a premium certification program

If you are an established authority in your industry and have a strong personal or business brand, you can launch a certification program. Think of it as an advanced training program or e-course with homework, exams, and grading.

Copyblogger has its Authority program (soon to be Digital Commerce Academy) for content marketers and writers. Joanna Weibe from Copyhackers runs a Copy School for conversion copywriters.

Both blogs (and the people behind them) have undeniable credibility within their industry, which gives their programs a stamp of approval.

10. Set up a dropshipping store

Inventory management, fulfillment, and shipping are the 3 least exciting aspects of ecommerce. Dropshipping is a fulfillment method that eliminates these.

As a dropshipper, you don’t keep any stock. Your supplier does. And they ensure that everything is packaged with care and shipped to the customer on time while you are working hard to keep those orders coming.

According to Niche Pursuits, as a solo business owner, you can make $1,000 to $5,000 per month if you put in the work. That is:

• Set up a nice ecommerce storefront
• Find reliable suppliers
• Invest in pay-per-click ads to promote your products
• Provide good customer service
• Look into other ways of growing your store traffic

If you get tired of running the dropshipping store, you can easily sell it to someone else for 20–30 times your monthly revenue. Speaking of selling …

11. Flip websites

If you’re good at building websites, you can make a good living by selling them for an attractive price to others. Affiliate, membership, ecommerce, and dropshipping sites usually go for the highest price. But you can also flip personal blogs, news sites, or any other “digital estate” that you own.

Your website valuation will depend on several factors:

• Niche
• Monetization model
• Monthly revenue to expenses ratio
• Amount of traffic
• SEO metrics
• Conversion rates
• Social media follower count

According to Greg Elfrink from Empire Flippers, you can expect to make 20-50 times of your monthly revenue for a well-maintained, growing website.