One of the hardest things for new bloggers and website owners is overcoming the learning curve of making money for all that hard work you put into your website. Chances are you've already added Google Adsense to your website in hopes of getting paid for your customers clicking on a few of the ads.

I'm guessing you have even had a few clicks and got your hopes up, just to find that you had 3 clicks in a day from the Google Adsense ads, and you made roughly $0.10 total!

If this isn't you and you haven't experienced this yet, take it from me and the many other bloggers that using Google Adsense requires patience, and you probably won't make much money at all to be bragging about until your website generates a significant amount of traffic.

I've got nothing bad to say about Google Adsense, they can be a great source of added income. But frankly put, it's not going to do much for you in the beginning of your blog or website. I'm going to show you how to monetize your website without using Google Adsense.

You will soon find that your time may be better spent elsewhere when trying to make that first $10. This post ISN'T suggesting you don't use Google Adsense, it is however suggesting that you may be able to spend your time more wisely in the early days of your blog.

Alternative ways to make money from your website or blog

So, if you don't have enough traffic on your website to make any money with Google Adsense, how then are you to build your online stream of income? If you're reading this, chances are you already know the answer, or at least heard the answers I'm about to suggest. But hear me out, I'm going to tell you important things about my answers that other blogs and online business owners fail to mention.

For the quick breakdown, here are the top 5 ways that will make you money from your blog quicker than Google Adsense:

  1. Affiliate Marketing
  2. Email Marketing
  3. Paid Memberships
  4. eBooks
  5. Online Courses

The nice thing about each of these suggested ways to make money from your website, is they all include making more content in the process, which helps expand your website presence to search engines.

OK so you've heard a few of those ideas before, and you may be incorporating them with your website right now along with your Adsense ads. But what aren't you being told? Let me show you.

1 – Making money from affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is simply referring your website customers to recommended products and services within your website topic. You do this by including affiliate links generated specifically for your website (from companies like FlexOffers or VigLinks), which send your customers to the recommended company website when clicked. You then make a commission on any purchases made by your referred customer.

Tips to improve your affiliate marketing success

  • Only use products and services you have personally used, or that you sincerely see beneficial to your customers.
  • Never base choosing which affiliate links to include off of how much money you can make from a commission (it's OK to take this into account, but it should never be the reason you use that affiliate link).
  • You are not a salesman, you are an adviser and an expert. Don't try to jump out at your website visitors every chance you get to try to entice them to make a purchase. They will see the salesman in you and it will discredit your advice and expertise. The sales will naturally come as you focus on being helpful, and not a salesman.
  • Don't include affiliate links too much in your post. It comes off again as being too salesy, and not sincere. Your customers know where your links are, they saw it in the previous paragraph they just read. Allow them to keep reading, and they'll click your link when they've found what they're looking for.
  • Your affiliate links need to be relevant to the content you insert them into. No one wants to read about health and nutrition, yet to find they clicked a “recommended link” and were sent to a gardening website.
  • When planning your affiliate marketing for a specific company you want to promote, create a post or review that is your most well-thought-out and in depth helpful info on that promoted company, and include your affiliate links to that company on that detailed post. All other posts in your website that mention that company should then be linked to your foundational post. This will improve your conversion rates, as well as increase your popularity with major search engines.

By following those bullet pointed suggestions with your affiliate marketing plan, you will see the time was well spent on that, rather than where to place an ad from Google. Your next paycheck will be much more healthy, trust me.

⇒ How To Start An Affiliate Marketing Business From Scratch ⇐

2 – How to make money from your website with email marketing

How To Make Money Email Marketing
Email marketing is great in that it is traffic that you essentially “own”. What I mean by that is you control that traffic, not any of the search engines or their constantly changing algorithms. By building an email subscriber list, you are basically building your method of predictable traffic. When you write a new post, or have a new product or service you find helpful, you already have a list of interested readers.

Tips on how to improve your email marketing success

  • As mentioned in the former discussion on affiliate marketing, your intent here is to provide value and be helpful. Don't try to sound like a salesman saying you have the next secret to making a million dollars in a week, because you don't.
  • Your website visitors are going to subconsciously ask themselves when you approach them asking for their email address, “What's in it for me?”. That's a valid question, don't you think? Your list will grow much quicker by providing free tools and resources that will aid them in their search for helpful info on the web. These can be things like free ebooks, templates, market updates, courses, case studies, etc. Anything that will provide value for free is a great way to receive the approval of your customers sending them emails regularly.
  • Your first priority with your email list is to win their loyalty and trust. This is not done by promoting new products to them from the get-go. Just like a plant needs to be nurtured to grow, so does your email list. This is done by continuing to progress your relationship with your subscribers through consistent contact, and continuing to provide relevant and helpful content for free. Once you have sent a plethora of helpful emails to build trust and loyalty, now you're ready to start recommending products and services, and they will buy from you time and time again.
  • Do not spam your subscribers by emailing them 3 times per day. Each time they see a new email, they will discredit you more and more. You want to stay in touch, but not annoy the heck out of them! There are multiple ways to do this, and ultimately you will be the one to determine how often you contact your list. A good rule of thumb is to keep in contact either weekly or semi-weekly. This isn't annoying, but yet keeps your business name and content in front of them so they will remember who you are.

When done properly, your efforts in growing your email list will greatly outweigh any income made from a couple clicks on your website Adsense ads.

⇒ How To Make Money Email Marketing For Beginners ⇐

3 – Making money from your website with paid memberships

This strategy best applies when you have reached a point that you have a decent amount of content on your website. It may take some time to build your memberships, but it certainly will pay of much quicker than using Google Adsense.

Tips for making money with paid memberships

  • Set your paid membership price point in the beginning at a price that is easy for someone to say yes to from the beginning. Somewhere in the price range of $5 – $10 monthly seems to be a sweet spot for people in agreeing to pay you for more helpful content. Think about companies like Hulu and Netflix. ranging from $8 – $12 monthly, it's so affordable that people say yes to that just because they were asked!
  • Use a little bit of bait in your regular posts available to everyone. If you can create captivating content that sparks curiosity in your readers, and then leave them thirsty for a little more, but only if they subscribe to become a paid member, they will convert like wildfire!
  • Be sure to make your paid content much more helpful and valuable. You should put a lot more time and focus to making your membership worth it, otherwise your turnover rate will skyrocket.
  • Include referral bonuses for your current subscribers. Easy marketing that is based on a referral basis which is the most loyal type of new customers.

Paid memberships can take time and patience, but pay off in the long run, even quicker than making money with Google Adsense.

4 – Make money from your website selling your published eBooks

So you've never written an ebook, who cares! You are blogging every day and over time have written loads of content. Is that not essentially the same as writing an ebook? Here are a few things to help you get going.

Tips to making money writing ebooks

  • First and foremost, don't worry about structure and organization too much in the beginning. Just start writing and organization will come as you edit.
  • Brainstorming creative headlines, titles and chapter headings can be the difference of a successful ebook or failure. Sparking interest and curiosity while staying relevant will achieve this goal.
  • An ebook doesn't have to be a novel to be successful. You can write a book on 10 chapters, each with 1,000 words and still have a successful book.
  • A good idea to help determine what your readers like, is using Google Analytics to see which pages are visited the most. These are great starting points when determining what to write your ebook about.
  • Sell your ebook to your current email subscribers at a heavily discounted price,, or even for free. Remember once you build that email list, you own that traffic and it could mean much more income in the long run vs. a few quick bucks up front.
  • Follow this quick 10 step guide to writing a successful ebook that sells. This will save you time and energy, and result in a successful publishing.

Just like writing blog posts, you can keep writing more and more ebooks and include an entire page on your website about all your ebooks and content. This will turn into a huge sales page that generates tons of revenue for you, definitely much quicker and potentially much more money than using Google Adsense.

5 – Making money from your website selling training's and courses

This strategy, along with writing ebooks is very similar to having a paid membership for extra content. Its basically just structuring it a bit differently. Some people don't want to commit to a recurring payment, so they'd rather purchase a one time product like a training course.

Tips on making money online selling training courses

  • Just like your ebook, as you write more and more trainings, you can have an entire page focused on offered trainings that will convert like crazy!
  • Your training courses would not be just more content, but should include video tutorials and slide shows with examples and how to's. This is what makes training courses different from ebooks and paid memberships.
  • Your training courses need to have tasks to complete, otherwise it's just another piece of content. You want your audience to be engaged and complete tasks that will help them progress quickly towards their goal or objective of the training.
  • Just like ebooks, keep the price for your training courses at a price point that anyone would be OK paying quickly, yet something that can add up for you over time.
  • Getting reviews and testimonials will turn your courses into money making empires! Hopefully you are capturing emails of new customers who purchase your trainings, so you need to reach out to them sincerely asking for a review and feedback on the course, so you can tailor the content to your readers needs.

Training courses can be a HUGE source of added income, and will give your website or blog more credibility as customers your courses online. This allows them to view you as the expert, and your following will be loyal and recurring.

How to get started monetizing your website for free

The list above was written in a specific order for a reason. Each way of monetizing your website without Google Adsense is listed based on ease, success rates, and authority of your website. As you write more and more content, it's natural for you to include more affiliate links to recommended companies, and link your websites throughout your blog as well.

Affiliate marketing and email marketing are the easiest ways to started quickly, and as your blog evolves you will have a better grasp on how to start creating your paid membership, ebooks and training courses.

These guys are a great place to get started for free. They give you access to all the tools and resources you need all in one place, along with even more trainings on how to further progress your income streams from your website.

The best part is they are free to use, and include 2 free domains with 20 free courses to help you get started. To give you an idea of what they teach and offer, here is a video from Wealthy Affiliate to aid in our discussion to making money online from your website:

Understanding How To Make Money Online
Understanding how to make money online

 

As mentioned, it's free to use and they won't even ask for your credit card.  Learn more about their platform here.