How to monetize a website without ads
You can monetize a website without using ads by looking at other methods of monetization. These include affiliate marketing, e-commerce, holding ticketed events or donations.
Monetizing a website without ads can be really difficult. You have little to no chance of being approved by Google Adsense or other advertising platforms. It’s not worth their time or worth risking the brands that advertise through them by approving their use on small websites with little to no traffic. You are probably wondering – How to monetize a website without ads?
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make some money with your website. It is essentially including a link to products or services but you will make a percentage of every sale that a user makes.
For example if you refer your users to a phone you are reviewing that is on sale for £1000, your affiliate link will usually give you between 2-10% of that sale, which can be an easy £100! Imagine that on a website that’s pulling 50,000 weekly users and it can really add up.
It should be noted affiliate marketing, can really difficult to get started with. If you don’t get the traffic to your website then you will not make much money. It really is a long term strategy, but if it pays off – it pays off well!
2. Monetize a website without ads by creating & selling a physical or digital product
The most obvious and well known way of making money has got to be selling something. If you have a physical product idea, it’s super easy to get a website up and running and get selling today! Check out our guide on how to make your first website.
Physical Products
If you have the time and ability to make and ship hundreds of physical products then this will be the best way of monetizing a website without ads for you. You can even look at outsourcing the production, fulfilment and admin to make your job even easier!
Some great products you could look at selling would be merchandise, maybe you could create your own branded t-shirts. Why not look at reselling products? You could buy them from a cheaper store/car boot and sell them on your website for profit! This is called Dropshipping.
Digital Products
If you don’t have much time or any ideas of something that hasn’t been made a thousand times, why not look at selling digital products. This is great if you can get it going. It requires little to no effort once the product is finished, all your products, delivery and admin is mostly done for you!
These could be something as simple as an e-book (ofcourse this requires you to write it). You could sell an online course that you have written about a subject you are passionate about. Maybe you could look at creating and selling some software.
3. Sponsored content & reviews
Product and service reviews are really important for smaller companies that are wanting to get their product off the ground. A new product with 3-5 five star reviews will always get more sales than a product with no reviews.
This is where you come in! You can exchange product reviews and blog posts about certain products. In return you can charge a small fee or look at exchanging backlinks between the two sites.
Once you become a little more well known your fee for a sponsored post can increase. It’s worth noting that you don’t particularly want to be promoting bad products. Anything that might make your readers lose trust in your brand is really bad for you. So don’t be shy in turning people away!
4. Pay-gate your content!
As your site gets bigger and bigger, the amount of users will increase. This may mean that hosting costs increase as well. If you aren’t wanting to use any affiliate links or ads, theres no shame in locking some of your content behind a paywall!
If what you write is good quality and you think your users will happily pay to read it, you can set up a memberships plugin and lock some content behind a small monthly charge. With WordPress this is really easy and can be done in a couple of clicks!
Why not reward paying customers by offering them special offers, look at working with other companies to offer discount codes, this offers a stronger incentive for your users to subscribe and word of mouth will help too!
Setting up a website is easy!
Start your business venture now by following our simple 3 step guide!
Get Started5. Monetize a website without ads by capitalising on your passions
Some passions can make you some money really easily! You might be a budding photographer or videographer, why not sell some of your photos and videos, people will happily pay for good quality images and videos to use on their website.
For example, Shutterstock sell their images at upwards of £2 per image and charge even more for a video, but it’s the quality that makes them stand out.
Always remember – quality of quantity and your users will see the difference.
Using the methods above, it’s can be easy to monetize your website without ads. You shouldn’t be disheartened because Adsense won’t approve your new website, there are always other ways of monetizing a website. Once you start getting traction and users, Adsense will be asking YOU to put their adverts on the website.
