For many, generating income from their website can seem like a distant dream.
And for the most part, this is true. Monetizing a website isn’t always easy.
It’s relatively easy for a website that gets over 10,000 visitors every month to generate income. Websites like these can put out new content and generate ads revenue.
The real difficulty comes in when you’re looking to generate income with 1,000 or less monthly visitors.
While generating income from a website that has a low visitor count can be challenging, it’s not impossible.
That’s why I’m going to be sharing with you 3 more unconventional ways for you to generate income from your website. (Nope, it doesn’t have to be as popular as your favourite blog.)
Ready to learn 3 ways to monetize your low traffic website? Lets jump in.
Sell online courses to visitors
If your website gets a low number of visitors, one valuable but simple thing to do is getting to know your audience.
Knowing them means you can find out what you can create and sell to them.
One of the things you can create and sell are online courses.
Online courses focused on niche subjects that maybe be more inconvenient to find for free are often popular.
For the most part, online courses are valued more highly than blog posts; thus, you’re able to charge for them on your website.
But a huge concern still remains. Perhaps you’re not confident in your ability to create an online course.
Luckily, there’s always room and time to improve. Impressively enough, Bryan Harris’ second ever online course generated over $500k in revenue from an email list of 20,000.
This goes to show that creating content on your website can position you as a subject matter expert. With that, comes the potential for selling online courses on your website.
Do keep in mind that the online course market is vast. If you find that you’re not getting enough traffic to your online courses on your website, consider sharing your online courses on platforms like Udemy, Lynda and Teachable.
Did you know? The average Udemy course earns up to $7,000 annually? That’s a large chunk of change if you ask me.
If you’re ready to get started, review your most popular blog posts first and foremost. That will give you a strong indicator of what your audience likes to learn about.
Better yet, break down your most popular blog series into an outline for your online course.
Write and publish an ebook
Not a real fan of creating videos and online courses?
Don’t fret. For those of you that are writers at the core, there’s still a way to monetize your website.
Here’s an idea: publish an ebook. It might be easier than you think.
U.S. ebook sales are going up and we have Amazon Kindle to thank for that.
The great thing about leveraging Amazon Kindle to sell your ebook is that your website can help drive visitors to the ebook listing.
Amazon itself already does a great job of this because they’re a known brand and trusted website.
Don’t get me wrong, selling ebooks won’t make you a living fortune.
That said, when priced at a dollar or two each, with a thousand buyers, you can still be cashing in at $1,000 to $2,000.
Not bad when you have the time, talent and passion for it.
Partner with brands for product launches
For those that have a website with a very niche theme and little traffic, brands still might want to work with you for product launches.
That’s because you audience is unique to those in the mainstream market.
Think of it as your website being able to specialize in something many others cannot.
You don’t have to wait on brands to reach out to you either.
Everytime you’re able to generate substantial traffic to content that contains relevant niche topics, those are valuable ways to pitch brands on potential partnerships.
Let them know that you’re able to speak on their behalf because you know, use and love their products.
As Joan Schneider and Julie Hall from Harvard Business Review shares:
“The biggest problem we’ve encountered is lack of preparation: Companies are so focused on designing and manufacturing new products that they postpone the hard work of getting ready to market them until too late in the game. Here are five other frequent, and frequently fatal, flaws.”
So you see, there is a fatal flaw in the system and you can bridge that gap.
Final thoughts
By now, you’ve learned the hard truth: having a website alone cannot make you money.
Those that are able to monetize their website always offer some sort of value in products or services.
While your product or service may be niche and have a small audience, it remains most fundamental that you’re good at what you do.
Now I’d like to learn from you. What have you found to be the most effective to monetize your website in your journey thus far?
