How do websites make money without ads? In this post, I’ll reveal 7 unique ways you can earn money from your website or blog, without having to sell ad space.
Whenever people think of earning through online means, one of the first things that strike their mind is advertisements.
Many people consider it as an opportunity to activate premature monetization on their site.
Even though using ads to earn online isn’t a bad idea when you have an established site with dedicated members but is not the only option to pursue making online.
Ads prove to be an inefficient way to monetize your online existence. Usually, the targeted traffic gets distracted from your content when an ad pops up.
It results in a loss of focus and the necessary interest. This way, ads might even prove to harm your traffic conversion rate.
Moreover, it has been estimated that about 60% of clicks on banner ads are actually done by mistake. So, those clicks are not going to earn you any revenue after all.
Some users feel put off when they see too many ads on a website or an app. They start looking for alternative ways to find the information they need and leave your website.
Today, there is a lot of competition for ads in almost every niche. It has been estimated that to make around $100,000 a year through ads, you will need more than 20,000 visitors a day. Now, that’s too much!
No matter what topic or niche you choose and your level of expertise, it is impossible and impractical to reach that level soon enough.
If someone brags about how much money they are making through their blog (by merely having ads), they have most likely been in business for more than ten years.
Does all this sound disappointing and disheartening? No need to worry!
There are tons of other ways to generate revenue from your blog or website without even signing up for programs like Google Adsense.
This article will provide detailed information on these “other” ways to earn online revenue.
So, let’s get started!
How to Make Money Without Ads
Here I will explain each aspect of earning online through different means that have substantial value. The following are some ways to earn online:
1. Selling Digital Products
A digital product is something that you offer to download from your online marketplace, either free or through a minimal fee. It is not something that requires ongoing services often given by the software as a service (SaaS) web platforms.
Digital products are products related to educational or informational segments. Such products include eBooks, online courses, solution manuals, etc.
The psyche behind these products provides limited knowledge for free and holds the product containing the advanced knowledge behind a minor fee barrier that customers need to pay to access.
To find the right balance between the information to offer for free and the information to provide as a charged product is a skill that you need to master.
Once you find the right balance, you are on your way to destined success.
If you are looking for an example site that sells courses, eBooks for money, Udemy is ideal for you to visit.
One thing to look for while offering digitals products on your online market is to provide the targeted person with the targeted product.
Someone interested in technology should get direct access to the product with a technological taste to it.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the process through which you can promote a different company’s product through online links.
You get a commission on every sale made with that particular link. As an affiliate marketer, you act as a salesperson for the company and enjoy a commission on every sale made through your marketing link.
All this gets done from the comfort of your home.
Another advantage of affiliate marketing is that you do not need to remain loyal to a single company. You can promote products of different companies and can make commissions from all at the same time.
You get a unique affiliate link that helps the company to recognize the person responsible for the sale.
The link has a cookie that gets stored on the user’s device. The cookie works in 2 ways:
- It helps the company locate the person responsible for the product sale.
- It offers an expiry duration even if the user delays purchasing the product.
An affiliate marketer even gets paid for a product sale that he was not promoting in the first place.
Imagine if a user clicks on your link that redirects him to a site selling a fleece jacket, he reads the description and doesn’t like what he sees.
Afterward, he goes through the site and buys another jacket from the same link affiliate marketer still gets paid for the sale.
To become an affiliate marketer, you need to register for an associate program.
If you are looking for a site to register as an associate? Visit Amazon Associate Program.
Affiliate marketing has turned into a booming industry that currently handles almost an $8 billion business in the United States.
3. Flipping Websites
If you are a person with the required technical skills of design and development, flipping sites can be a great source of online revenue for you. You can buy, improve, and sell websites online for a considerable profit. By buying sites, you can optimize site response, incorporate traffic, and then sell them by keeping a good cut. At the same time, you may have reservations about selling a website after making the necessary tweaks. It can result in a fortune of higher proportions.
Even if you are reluctant to sell your website, you can buy and sell websites on different online platforms. One of the flipping website platforms is Flippa that handles website sales worldwide. It is a trusted platform where thousands of registered users do business daily. Put your site up for sale, and you will soon start receiving attractive offers, especially if your website is well-made and has excellent content.
4. Accepting Donations
One of the newer ways to earn online is by providing creative, quality content and asking for donations from the dedicated community willing to play their part. If you are a person that has a community of followers around you? You might get surprised by the number of people ready to chip in with the dollars to help you run your site.
The websites that generally ask for donations are either charity based or non-profit. These sites offer a service for a good cause and ask the community or members to fund the cost required to perform the necessary action.
You can use different ways to connect and attract your site users to compel them for a targeted donation. It gets carried out through high-quality banners, images, and videos paired with buttons containing redirecting links for users to donate to the cause. You can visit Fundrazr as an example charity site.
5. Selling Sponsored Posts
If your site has several members capable of getting considered a community, you can sell your blog posts to different sponsors who want their products to reach your website’s market.
To gain sponsors, you need to pitch a free sponsored post on your platform for a company’s product.
The next thing you know is the company paying you for your blog posts or product reviews. By this, you can create a list of sponsors ready to pay you for your services.
The sponsored posts or blogs are promotional product reviews, descriptions, and content providing insight into a premium product.
Targeted landing pages and links get placed in these posts to direct traffic to the company website resulting in a potential sale.
Visit Which platform to understand the process of selling blog posts.
6. Sell Physical Products
Creating a website containing a list of your physical products to offer to your customers leads to a lot of online capital gain.
A variety of products are available to customers online, including garments, gifts, toys, sporting equipment, etc.
Going for your online store can be hard to gain traffic at the start. But once you gain the knowledge of how to market your products, the sky is the limit.
You can drop ship your products to different regions of the world.
Visit Amazon to go through one of the biggest e-stores.
One thing to be careful about is the quality of the products that you offer.
You can lose your regular customers with one or two reduced quality products.
It is recommended to do extensive research and market analysis before you start selling anything.
7. Email Marketing
It is an essential part of a digital marketing strategy that uses emails to reach out to prospects and turn them into potential customers.
For carrying out a successful email campaign, you need to start adding to your email list.
You need to stack up hundreds and hundreds of leads through apps like Salesforce that help you gain prospect leads.
Email marketing is the only way through which you can muster up a return on investment of about 4000%.
This vast number is why email marketing has surpassed social media marketing by a considerable amount, on average, three times more.
8. Create a Membership Site
Going for a site that adds to its community by offering a subscription form to every visiting user is the way to go.
With a site like this, you provide content that readers like to read on your site. Then limit a section on your site that contains premium content only accessible to the site members.
First, you need to determine which content to show and which to offer under a premium package; once that gets sorted out, the next thing is to add a membership form to the premium content section.
Once the form is set up, the next thing is to market it. I recommend pairing the membership site with the email marketing strategy that will benefit you a lot.
Visit Mailchimp for its excellent marketing features.
9. Rank and Rent
Rank and rent is a new way to earn online revenue. In this method, SEO technicians optimize a site and make it rank on the google search engine.
Once the ranking gets reached for a specific niche, it gets rented out to local businesses of a similar type to reach out to prospect leads.
In this way, local businesses get access to the website traffic, and in turn, they pay the rent for this optimized website usage.
If you are a technical expert with SEO skills, this is a productive way for you to try out your skills to gauge a monetary benefit.
It is a little complex as Google keeps changing the ranking algorithm after definite periods. But it is definitely worth giving a try since all the successful bloggers are doing it.
Conclusion
Now you must have learned how do websites make money without ads. Ads might be a tried and tested way to earn online revenue, but it is not ideal for everyone.
People are now wary of all types of advertisements on any website, and they try not to click on them unless they are very well embedded with the website’s content.
Plus, too many ads and banners can make a site look unprofessional.
Moreover, some ads can make your site load slowly, which is something at least Google doesn’t like.
If you want your blog to reach the top 10 results in the SERPs, then design a seamless and straightforward website without any ads on it.
However, you would still want to monetize your blog, wouldn’t you? It’s exciting to know that there are many other methods through which you can start earning a decent income with your blog.
The techniques I have recommended above have the potential to grow your online exposure and monetary status if followed in the right spirit.
Check them out and see which one best suits your niche and your expertise. There are tons of resources and tools online to help you get started.
