Read time: 4 minutes

Hello!

Today we’ll cover:

💲 💻️ 20 Ways to Monetize a Website

🏫 A Startup Course to Get You Started as an Entrepreneur

We’ve talked about building an audience before.
More on that in our blog post: https://blog.validatorai.com/2023/01/13/i-dont-even-have-an-idea-but-i-want-to-start-something-help/ 

Once you build a following and establish yourself, you can easily build a website and drive traffic there. This article isn’t about building a site/blog, but rather how you can monetize this audience once you build a following.

➡️ If you operate a site with traffic, here are 20 ways you can monetize your audience: 👇️ 

💵 Advertising
Simple enough. Sell ad space on your website. Find direct advertisers and pitch them on your traffic stats, audience engagement, time users spend on your site and the vertical (topic) of your site. Most people have skipped going direct to advertisers and instead they use a platform like this one below…. ⬇️ 

💵 Pay Per Click Ads
There are literally dozens of platforms where you can sign up and place ads on your site. The main one is adsense.google.com — you tap into Google’s advertiser base and they provide you with the ads to place on your site. Simple. You have to apply and get accepted.

💵 Marketplace / Auctions
Add a marketplace, auction or classified listings to your website. Charge one side (either the buyers or sellers) or take a commission on sales. If you have a big enough audience seeking products, you can setup a marketplace connecting buyers and sellers.

💵 Turn Your Website into a Platform 
With any platform you have two sides that you connect together (such as buyers and sellers). StubHub is an example of a platform. They connect ticket sellers with ticket buyers. Find a way to turn your website or business into a platform. NOTE: You will have to subsidize the most “price sensitive” side in order to build momentum. Then, you can make profit off of the other side. Successful platforms have created ways to make profit off of both sides. eBay connects buyers and sellers. You have to have a critical mass of one side (either buyers or sellers) because the sellers go where the buyers are — and the opposite is true — the buyers go where the sellers are.

💵 Pay for Content Model 
Do you have a lot of original and exclusive content? Sell the content, or offer a freemium model where users receive the basic information/features for free and then are charged for further access. In other words, make your website a subscription based site.

💵 Theme or Site Takeover 
This is another form of advertising where an advertiser takes over your website’s design/background (for a fee). You can have a single advertiser be the sole sponsor — typically you incorporate their ads into the design of your site… often the entire sides of your site are the advertisers banners.

💵 Promoted or Sponsored Content 
Vendors and advertisers may pay to reach your audience. Charge them to send a message to your user base or write a guest feature on your website. For example, I could charge GoDaddy or Shopify a fee to do a sponsored post on our website.

💵 Gather and Sell Leads 
It is not too difficult to create a lead generation form and sell the leads that come in to retailers or B2B companies. Third-party companies also provide lead generation forms and they will process the leads for you. One is Buyerzone.com — they have a program where they offer their lead generation forms and services for you and you split the revenue your site makes.

💵 Affiliate-based Advertising / Shopping 
Affiliate revenue can be very lucrative depending on your website’s vertical and traffic. Some affiliate programs pay VERY well. I’d recommend getting started at CJ.com or ShareaSale.com . eBay has an affiliate program as well. An affiliate program is where you put other companies products on your site and you get a split of the revenue if one of your visitors makes a purchase.

💵 Email Marketing
Start gathering emails into an email list program like MailChimp or Aweber and then start marketing to your email list. Granted, there have been books written on how to effectively market to an email list. Building trust and giving your email list something of value (substance) are essential if you want to have success with an email marketing program. Then you can upsell the audience services or products — or even have sponsors do guest posts to your newsletter. You have to make sure your newsletter provides value.

Before we list the next 10, we have something really cool to share!

🏫 We’ve created a Startup Course!

I partnered with a friend who went through an Accelerator, built a $1Billion startup, and recently sold it.

Click the video or watch it here: https://youtu.be/TnT9sLgAS28

In this course we cover:

✔️ How to Validate Your Ideas

✔️ How to Find a Target Customer

✔️ Exactly WHAT to Ask Them and HOW to Ask It

✔️ How to Find Problems Worth Solving

✔️ How to Find the Right Business Model

✔️ How to Get Early Traction

✔️ How to Pitch Your Idea to Customers and Investors

and a lot more!

We’ll drop a new lesson in your email inbox each week for 10 weeks.

It’s what people pay $500 for when they join an accelerator.

Ours is only $29, and we have a discount for the first 100 people that register!

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📜 Ok, back to the list:

💵 Sell access to an APP 
Create an app to go along with your website and sell it as an added service. Example: MLB.com has added services that they offer on their MLB apps such as live streaming. Create an app that requires a subscription - sell your knowledge, for example, to users for a small monthly fee. Or sell access to buyers and sellers if you have built up a nice list of possible buyers/sellers in your industry.

💵 Offer Education / Seminars / Consulting
If you’re an expert in your field, people will pay to have one-on-one consulting or to hop on a group call to learn exclusive information. This works for people with a wealth of knowledge in their industry.

💵 Sell Your Business Intelligence/Research 
If you have significant B.I. to offer, sell it, or collaborate with another company. Collaboration can benefit both parties if done properly. You can sell your knowledge or research to companies and individuals.

💵 Joint Venture 
If you’ve hit a road block on growth, perhaps taking on a JV partner can take your business/website to the next level. There are many companies who are seeking to tap into your expertise and audience, but want to avoid a large upfront capital expense to get started.

💵 Sell an eBook 
Write an ebook and sell it. Simple enough. Gather your thoughts and put them into 20 or 25 pages. If you are an expert and have a unique perspective, you can do very well with this.

💵 Retailing
Source products from suppliers and sell them on your website. Or, make your own product/device/widget and sell it. This covers digital goods and digital downloads as well. Find suppliers overseas at Alibaba.com for example. This is a very competitive type of businesses and usually ends up in a race to the bottom (as far as pricing). But maybe you can source a manufacturer and create something new.

💵 Fulfillment 
Locate a fulfillment partner who will process orders and drop ship for you. It’s not too hard to find a fulfillment partner in nearly every industry. You can skip manufacturing and just find a partner to fill your orders, if you have a big audience looking to buy something to fill their needs.

💵 Daily Deals or Group Purchasing 
Offer a deal of the day or a group buying discount opportunity to the visitors of your website.

💵 Aggregation 
Aggregate together products or information from a number of sources and house them in one location. Example: you can aggregate news sources or blogs on a specific topic and display them all in one feed on your site. Domaining.com is an example of this… they aggregate all the domain name related news together in one place… and they sell ad space to make money.

💵 Donations 
Many websites have a donation box or form to offset the costs they incur to run the website. If you are doing something for the public good, then consider this.

➕ BONUS. Two more! ✌️ 

💵 Licensing 
You can license your content/designs etc. to another company for them to use.
Do you create cool art or music other unique designs/content? A company might want to use your creation.

❕ Brokerage / Intermediary ❕ 
You can be a “go between” and facilitate deals in your industry. This is the best way to start, actually. It costs $0 for you to be an expert and put buyers and sellers together. It’s a good way to get moving and make money to fund development. Example: I am a broker for buyers and sellers of very high end domain names. Others do this with rare collectibles, as another example.

I hope you found this list helpful.

As always, email me and let me know what you’re working on!

Be sure to check out this link, again, for our startup course:

Take care!

Aron

PS: follow along on social media. We’ll start the conversation soon: 👇️