Looking for ways to supplement your business income? Whether you’re a creator, blogger, or small business, there are a number of ways you can monetize your website with WordPress.com’s eCommerce features. Our infographic offers several methods to elevate your online presence, from a hobby to a side-hustle, or from a business formality to a stream of income. Try one, or try them all!
1. Sell digital products
No matter what industry you’re in, there’s probably some type of digital product you can offer your audience. Artists can offer digital renditions of their work, or marketers can put together a white paper or eBook about advertising best practices.
You can use the Payments block options to sell digital downloads to your audience. This feature is available to customers on all our paid plans. If you branch out into selling branded merchandise or other physical goods, consider an eCommerce plan — this is the ideal package for running a fully functional online store.
2. Offer freelance services
Are you a writer, photographer, designer, or marketer? All these skills (and more) are in high demand, and you can use your WordPress.com website as a home base for freelance services. One-on-one consulting can be a lucrative side gig that may help you bring in quite a bit of extra cash! If you go this route, you’ll find the option to set-up recurring payments with the Payments block to be useful for handling transactions like monthly retainer fees.
3. Create a premium content library
If your website has a dedicated group of fans, consider turning them into paying subscribers by offering a special collection of exclusive content.
There’s no need to search for a plugin to do this. Using the Payments block in combination with the Premium Content block, you can ask subscribers to log in to view or download content they’ve paid for.
4. Include a donation button
It’s becoming more common for fans to make monetary contributions to their favorite writers, musicians, podcasters, and other creators. You can do this using recurring payment features available in the Payments block.
Choose to set standard donation amounts, or select a setting that lets people pay what they want.
5. Practice affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is an increasingly popular practice among media sites and bloggers. Essentially, it allows you to recommend products to your readers — for instance, your favorite art supplies or workout equipment — and if they make a purchase via your link, you get a small commission.
Amazon Associates is one of the most popular affiliate marketing programs right now, and you can get started for no cost, making it an appealing way to earn passive income.
6. Build an email list
Email marketing is an important part of the lead generation process, and you should encourage your fans to sign up for your email list while they’re on your website. This might mean putting a sign-up field in the footer or sidebar using widgets, or you can use a plugin like Popup Builder to employ the popular popup email collection strategy. Doing this can help drive traffic to your site — where readers can engage with the other monetization methods you’ve set up.
With so many ways to monetize your website and grow your company’s income, there’s nothing stopping you from employing a few strategies to help increase your bottom line.