No matter what type of website you have, be it a personal blog, a news site or a company website, it can be monetized through various channels.

Not all monetization channels are ideal for each type of website, so you have to see what works best for each individual website.

A great way to test what works and what does not work for your website is to do A/B testing or heat mapping

A/B testing means putting content and ads on your website with various layouts to see which layout will best optimize your monetization strategies through customer engagement rates.

You can select how often each different version of your site will be shown each time the page is re-loaded, then you will get a report back indicating which version has the highest engagement rate.

With heat mapping, you will see a screenshot of your site with an overlay of red to blue spots for where people are clicking, or engaging, the most or least.

Sometimes this information will be surprising and counter-intuitive to where you thought people were engaging.

Using the highest engagement rate to place monetization channels on your website is very important.

Whether it is ad placements, an email mailing list sign up form or affiliate marketing links, you can get the best optimization with proper placement.

Advertising

The first thing most people think of when they go to monetize their website is to get digital display advertisements on their site as soon as possible.

Digital display ads work through advertisements being uploaded to your site through using slot tokens and keywords to get contextual ads displaying on your site.

They are usually contextual because they will be targeted at the user based on their demographics and search history,

or the ads will show something related to the site the user is looking at.

Digital ads work through pay-per-clicks (PPC) and click through rates (CTR).

Advertisers pay for each click on the ad that is placed on your website and the higher the CTR (the number of clicks based on the number of views), then the better the ad is doing and the more money you will make from the ad.

If you website is fairly new, under six months, then you should refrain from using Google AdSense to monetize your website because they will penalize you and possibly block you out from using AdSense.

There are many terms and conditions to using AdSense and it can be difficult to use and get the clicks you are hoping for.

Email marketing

Email marketing is quickly becoming one of the leading ways to monetize your website.

Targeted email lists means you can send exactly what you want to the audience who wants to see it.

You know they want to see it because they have opted to sign up to receive specific newsletter via email from your website.

These email lists are very important for growing your traffic and monetizing your website.

Growing your email subscribers shows a marketing or advertising company that your website has reach and can be used to promote products to the subscribers that they will enjoy.

Readers who have signed up to be a part of your email marketing typically trust the sender and their opinions enough to opt into the newsletter.

This means that you can easily promote different products and services to them through paid sponsorship or affiliate marketing

They will feel more comfortable having you tell them about that product or service rather than them seeing a pesky ad trying to get them to click.

There are several email marketing service providers that will help you build campaigns, manage your email lists and track how your campaigns are doing by showing who has opened them, what they have clicked on and how much they have engaged with the email.

This kind of information is very important to know how your website is doing and how the audience is interacting with your products.

You can then use this information to improve your monetization channels.

Paid Sponsorship

Another way to monetize your website is through paid sponsorship, which means a company will pay you to sponsor their product or service on your website.

A sponsor will pay for you to write an article featuring or reviewing their product or service,

Have a section on your website dedicated to their product or service,

or they will simply pay for an ad space.

In all cases, they are paying you to put their company’s message, product or services on your blog in hopes of getting conversions.

Sometimes paid sponsorship does not come in the form of money,

but rather they will give you the product or service for free.

For example, they may give you a free couple of nights in their hotel so you write a review on your website.

Paid sponsors will often look at how much traffic you get to your site, your social media follows and your email subscribers to determine how much they will pay you.

Most websites and blogs have a niche that they cater to.

Offer eBooks & Courses

Without a niche your website probably won’t make it.

Having a niche means you are an expert on the subject and people will keep coming back to learn more from you.

Offering courses and eBooks help build authority and trust with your readers and help you with your branding.

Creating premium content for your readers through courses and eBooks shows you have in depth knowledge of a subject and they can be a great source of income.

People will be highly likely to buy an eBook on a specified subject or take a course on a new topic.

People like to learn and scour the Internet in their spare time for new things to read.

You can generate a lot of income through selling your eBook on your own site, as well as have other sites have a link to sell your eBook as well.

Affiliate Marketing

Different to paid sponsorship, affiliate marketing pays for clicks that are converted to purchases on their products.

Affiliate marketing can be the first form of monetization on your website as there is no need to wait to start using it.

You can put affiliate marketing on your website from day one and wait for the money to start coming in,

Though it is recommended to build up some content to be able to implement affiliate marketing.

Sometimes if your blog or website gets good traffic then affiliate marketing companies will approach you and ask to be added to your website.

In other cases, you can simply sign up with different networks, such as JVZoo, ClickBank, Amazon and CJ Affiliate.

These networks have thousands of merchants with a large pool of products to pull from.

You can search for a product you would like to place on your website,

Get a link with your unique ID and then place that link onto your website.

This link will link back to the merchant’s website so the customer can purchase the product.

The unique ID and the browser’s cookies will tell the merchant that the sale came from you and you will get the commission through the affiliate marketing network where you got the link.