The coronavirus pandemic is to blame, which has dealt a serious blow to the economies of all countries and forced the world community to take various measures to slow the spread of the disease and reduce the number of deaths.

Quarantine (lockdown) and mask mode have become commonplace and are no longer perceived as something out of the ordinary. Locked in their apartments, people quickly adapted to the new realities and learned to have fun, study, shop and even work online.

Most of the adult population spends a lot of time on the Internet, in connection with this, unlimited opportunities for making money online open up.

Is it possible to make money by creating a website?

First, you should make the first distinction: earnings on your site and earnings on creating sites for others.

How to create your own website and make money from it.

Contextual advertising

This is one of the most popular and common ways to make money on the site. An ad block is placed on the site in certain places chosen by you, where ads of a certain or random topic are shown.

Advertising of this kind can be ordered on special sites. Examples of such services are Google Adsense. They work as intermediaries between advertisers and webmasters (website owners). Payment is charged for each click on the advertisement.

The cost of a click varies and depends on various factors, including the theme of the site, the geographic region of the user, the price that advertisers are willing to pay, etc.

To place contextual advertising, you need to make sure that your site meets the requirements of the service. For example, it has a certain daily traffic and topics. Among other things, monetization is not available for sites with erotic materials that promote the use of drugs and alcohol, etc. For a complete list of requirements, please contact the specific service.

Read more: The business model that increased sales 40 times

Direct advertising

Unlike contextual advertising, where you are subject to the rules of third-party sites (Google Adsense), here you directly contact advertisers and offer them a place on your site. The terms of cooperation and the cost of advertising are agreed by you personally. It can be an advertising banner or a link in the text.

If your site has good positions and high traffic, then advertisers will start coming to you with interesting offers. This option is not suitable for newly created sites with no history and no audience.

The disadvantage of this way of earning is that it takes time to find advertisers, as well as resources to negotiate with customers. You need to have an entrepreneurial spirit in order to negotiate a good price and not agree to unfavorable conditions.

Native advertising

Native advertising is an unobtrusive recommendation of a product without direct calls to buy it. Given the specifics, it is positively perceived by users and does not cause rejection.

The mention of the product can be woven into sponsored content (article, review, interview, etc.) and does not stand out from the rest of the information.

Optionally, native ads can be marked as “sponsored content”, which increases the level of audience trust.

Advantages of this type of advertising: Google positively treats content and links marked as sponsored. Such ads are not blocked by adblockers. The problem of “banner blindness” does not apply to native advertising either. Sponsored posts are eagerly read, because, as a rule, they are written with high quality and provide useful information to the reader.

Cons: Such ads are expensive because it takes time to write a post, and not all sites are suitable for publishing it, but only those that have good organic traffic.

Selling a product / service

This is the most obvious way for which many companies create a site. In addition to increasing brand awareness, the company receives a platform for advertising its products.

The possibilities of the site are almost unlimited, so you get complete freedom of action in creating a virtual storefront. You can add a gallery with photos, descriptions of parameters and features, include reviews and comments from happy customers, add videos. For prompt communication with a potential client, the option of live chat and callback will not be superfluous.

You can go further and add the ability to purchase goods to the site, so the site is transformed into a small online store of branded products. Many website builders have ready-made ecommerce functionality, where you just have to choose the features that you need.

Affiliate programs

The affiliate program works according to the following principle: you recommend a product or service of a certain company and receive a percentage for each client. Affiliate programs are beneficial to both parties: you get additional passive income, and the company that owns the product – new customers.

Before participating in the program, an agreement is usually signed, which specifies all the conditions, and a special affiliate link is generated, which will be used to track all clients who have come on your recommendation.

For affiliate program success and high income, you must choose to advertise a product / service that resonates with the theme of your site / the specifics of your business. In this case, the target audiences will overlap, and the probability of clicking on the link is higher.

Sale of access to closed resources

If you have an information site or a site where you post your professional secrets that are in demand among the audience, then one of the ways to make money will be to limit access to the most valuable and unique resources. This can be done in the form of a subscription: the user pays a certain fixed amount per month and has the opportunity to open and read all the materials on your site.

This method is great for site owners who are professionals in a narrow niche where there is not much information published in the public domain yet.

Monetization of knowledge

If you are an expert in your field and have built up an impressive knowledge base, a website is a great tool to build strong relationships with leads and convert them into buyers. You can share your knowledge in the format of paid webinars, which bring a good income, provided that the topic of the speech is relevant, unique and can meet the needs of the client.

If you have your own digital product (for example, an e-book, a guide, online courses, consultations, etc.), then it can also be sold through the site.

Selling your site

It happens that you decide to leave the business, and you no longer need a website. Instead of just disconnecting it from your domain/hosting and other services and throwing it into oblivion, you can finally profit from it. Especially if your site has already gained a loyal audience, is known in certain circles, has good traffic and positions in search results.

For obvious reasons, this type of earnings cannot be called long-term, but it can also bring profit.

How to make money creating websites for others

The business of selling websites, despite the presence of a huge number of website builders, is still relevant. You create a website, think over the design, fill it with content, optimize it, work on traffic and then sell it. The better the position of the site and its attendance, the more expensive it can be sold.

If you have chosen this method, do not chase quantity. It is better to sell 2 high-quality sites per month than 10 low-quality ones. At the beginning of the journey, you work for your reputation, and it is very important that the client is satisfied.

When choosing goods or services for advertising, proceed from the interests of your target audience and the subject of the site. Refuse dubious offers – the reputation of the company and the site can be destroyed with just one advertisement. In addition to audience dissatisfaction, you run the risk of being penalized by search engines.

Finally – How to make money on creating sites for a beginner

Google algorithms especially value such characteristics as expertise, authority and reliability (E-A-T – Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). If your site has these qualities, then it has a great future.

It is not recommended to create a site for show, as a platform for advertising. It should be a self-contained source of useful and interesting information. Then advertising links and other sources of income will look authentic and will not irritate the public.

Building a website has never been as easy as it is now. At the same time, attracting targeted traffic and making the site visible is more difficult than ever. It’s all about serious competition with other web resources. To create a website, you do not need to contact an agency or freelancers, you can do all this yourself in the website builder. If you want to compare the cost of developing a site in a website builder with the services of agencies, we invite you to read our recent study.

But to survive and thrive in the long run, you must be an expert in your field and love what you do. If you sincerely give yourself to the cause, then the audience will always feel it. And the engaged audience generates traffic more actively and helps to monetize the site.