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Ecommerce shops are mobile, allowing you to manage your online business from anywhere. They also have lower overhead than brick-and-mortar stores and give you various options for sourcing goods or offering services on a broad scale.
If you want to be an online entrepreneur or are interested in building a website, we can get you started. Here are a dozen ways to make money from a new or existing website and the tools we like for web building.
This is probably the most common form of online business. Whether an influencer links their Amazon store or an artisan sells their work, the sale of physical products is a highly saturated market. To stand out from the crowd, you’ll need an effective marketing strategy, a product that fills a need, an easy-to-navigate website, and SEO knowledge.
Starting an online store isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, but it can be an effective way to earn income. Here are our quick tips for starting this kind of website.
How to get started: Decide on the products you want to sell. We suggest finding an online community, maybe on social media, and listening to their biggest problems. Then, choose a product that solves that problem and market it to them. The larger the group, the more potential customers you’ll have.
Our recommended web builder: Squarespace and Square Online have intuitive designs and ecommerce solutions for small- to mid-sized businesses.
Who can make this work: Anyone who can effectively identify a need for a product and then offer that product as a solution to the group with the problem. If you’re a hobbyist and already have your product defined, then you’re ahead of the curve.
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Similar to selling physical products, a print-on-demand store could be a great solution to a problem. For instance, you could create custom T-shirts for groups like families on a vacation or sports teams. Groups are usually looking for stickers, mugs, corporate swag products, wall art, or whatever else you can think up. Wall art printed on high-quality materials like canvas has been highly popular and a less expensive way for Gen Z and millennials to decorate their spaces.
How to get started: Decide on your product: One that solves a need and caters to a large group of people will give you a broader audience. Then, you’ll want to find a print-on-demand supplier with rates you like. After you’ve chosen all that, you’ll need to connect your supplier to your website for easy ordering.
Our recommended web builder: Shopify has a significant amount of print-on-demand suppliers that easily integrate into its framework.
Who can make this work: Anyone who can create something from scratch and upload the image to a service.
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Do you know a lot about one topic, like cybersecurity? You could become a consultant for small businesses that don’t know what cybersecurity products to use. Have you studied nutrition for food allergies or specific medical conditions like diabetes? Offering your dietary knowledge as a service could net you a tidy monthly income. Whatever you’re good at, you can probably sell this service to someone looking for your specific knowledge base.
How to get started: Write down all your skills, certifications, and degrees and decide how you can translate that into a paying business model.
Our recommended web builder: Wix and Squarespace are user-friendly web builders that offer templates and design elements for people who sell services.
Who can make this work: A person with a specialized skill that others want to learn more about.
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Dropshipping means you find a wholesaler who takes orders and then independently sends the products to the customers without you actually having to stock physical products. It’s almost like you’re referring people to the wholesaler, and they are, in turn, rewarding you with payment for selling their products. It’s a highly competitive market with many dropshippers integrating with TikTok shops and Amazon. Temu is a great example of a highly effective dropshipping business, but you can start smaller with a curated number of items.
How to get started: Decide on what kind of products you want to sell. Start with 30-50 products and make sure they all have a theme (like kitchen gadgets or outdoor living equipment) so your store looks cohesive.
Our recommended web builder: Shopify has the most dropshipping integrations of all the sites we’ve tested. Square Online also offers robust ecommerce features for dropshipping and warehousing services.
Who can make this work: Anyone can do dropshipping.
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Are you a finance wiz? Try making financial literacy pamphlets for others. Do parents around you complain their kids aren’t able to read cursive? Jump on Canva and make sheets kids can print and practice on. Is there another topic you know a lot about that someone may want to learn? Creating e-learning products isn’t a glamorous business, but it is a stable one, as people are always trying to expand their skills and knowledge base. Just look at you wanting to learn to make money from a website!
How to get started: This is another instance of finding and filling a need with your special skills.
Our recommended web builder: Hostinger, Wix, and Squarespace all cater to a more artistic type of website. Hostinger has WordPress integration if you want to supplement your products with a WordPress blog and share even more information.
Who can make this work: Subject matter experts with teachable skills can sell e-learning products. So hobbyists, consultants, trainers — this is for you. Bonus if you have an education, leadership, or instructional design background.
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Patreon and OnlyFans aren’t the only places you can find subscription-based content. Maybe you’re a budding cartoonist or teach a weekly writing class. Maybe OnlyFans is taking too high a cut of your profits. Whatever your reason, you can set up your own subscription-based content page. You’ll have more control over your design and can truly be your own boss.
How to get started: Gather your resources, such as photos, videos, worksheets, or whatever else you’ll be using to support your business. Also, set up a way to receive payment, like PayPal or Zelle, which you can link to your site. Most subscription-based services have supplementary social media channels that tease the content and direct the buyer to the site; it’s a good way to market.
Our recommended web builder: Wix, Squarespace, and Hostinger all have solid subscription-based setups.
Who can make this work: Content creators who can update their website’s content multiple times weekly.
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True crime podcasters may have additional visual aids they can’t share, or you may have a YouTube channel with supplemental materials. You may just want to expand on your audio or visual channel. Whatever the reason, a support website can generate sales through physical products, digital downloads, merchandise, and more.
How to get started: Decide what materials you want to supplement your online platform with and gather them. If you’re looking to sell merchandise for your show or channel, connect with a print-on-demand or other supplier. Explore all your pricing options before making a final decision.
Our recommended web builder: Wix, Squarespace, Hostinger, and GoDaddy are good web builders for hosting media. GoDaddy is fairly affordable but lacks site analytics, which podcasters or YouTubers may not mind.
Who can make this work: Established YouTubers and podcasters who just need a polished ecommerce site.
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If others commend your helpful, authentic product reviews, affiliate marketing might be a great way to bring in income. This is a service where you create content around honest reviews of your products. Once someone purchases a product from your affiliate link, you’re given a commission for the sale. Affiliate marketing is the basis of most influencer incomes and can be very lucrative if you sign up with companies like Amazon, Awin, Skimlinks, or others. Marketing your site will likely be easier with a supporting social media channel.
How to get started: Choose who you want to join with for affiliate marketing and get your account set up. You’ll want to recommend products or services you’ve actually used and can give an honest opinion about so customers will continue to come back to you.
Our recommended web builder: Wix, GoDaddy, and Hostinger are good web builders for affiliate businesses. You’ll essentially be running a blog with links, so we suggest going with a web builder with less expensive tiers and fewer ecommerce tools.
Who can make this work: Influencers, bloggers, and anyone else who can connect customers to products and services.
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Domain flipping is more of a long-term investment that involves buying old domains and making them modern again, then selling them to a business that may find them useful. Most people on Reddit who are domain flippers say it takes 1-5 years to make any kind of a real profit.
That being said, you could also do the less moral and mildly sketchier version that requires you to be up on trends and names a company may want. Take a film, for instance. If you’re aware of what’s in development and think the film will be successful, you can snag the name before the studio does and then try to sell it to them. @GuyInAChair successfully did this with AvengersEndgame.com and traded it for two tickets to the film's premiere.
How to get started: Begin looking at sites like NameJet.com for expiring domains so you can swoop in and purchase them.
Our recommended web builder: Your best web builder varies. It’ll depend on the domain and how it’s set up to decide which web builder you’ll use.
Who can make this work: Developers, coders, or anyone with a basic understanding of web design may excel at domain flipping. Cheeky opportunists may also play the game by snagging domains they think a brand may want before the brand purchases it itself.
If you’re not really a sales kind of person, you can incorporate ads on your site to generate revenue. Google Adsense, Media.net, and others will pay you to put advertisements on your personal blog or website. Instead of worrying about driving sales, you can focus on driving clicks and engagement. This works best with sites that already have a regular readership and a certain amount of monthly site traffic.
How to get started: Sign up for an account with Google Adsense, Media.net, or other advertisers.
Our recommended web builder: Wix, Squarespace, and Hostinger are better designed for ad integration. With Hostinger, you can opt for the WordPress integration, which offers more customization, but Wix and Squarespace also have ad integrations.
Who can make this work: An existing website with metrics showing a good average monthly readership is better positioned to make money from ads.
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Email marketing lists have the potential to make a lot of money over time. This is another long-term investment opportunity, but once you build your reputation as someone who recommends quality products and services, you’ll find that your return on investment (ROI) is lucrative. Affiliate marketing, ads, sponsored content, paid content, or marketing your own products are all valid forms of email marketing.
How to get started: Start slowly. Once you already have a site where you recommend products and services or sell other products, supplement that with an email newsletter. Make sure to give away free things like an e-book of finance tips or recipes for joining. You could even hold a contest for new subscribers.
Our recommended web builder: Any web builder can work. All of the web builders we’ve tested had email marketing capabilities.
Who can make this work: Email marketing can work for people with established websites or online presence. It can also work for ambitious people willing to work from the bottom who have a lot of time to devote to it with little in return to start.
GoFundMe and Kickstarter are household names because they allow people to donate to causes or projects they believe in. Kickstarter, in particular, has a rewards-based system where the person donating gets a benefit. We’ve seen incentives range anywhere from getting first dibs on a product before it hits the market to having a walk-on role in a film you help finance. The sky’s the limit.
How to get started: Since people may be a little hesitant to donate outside of a protected form like GoFundMe, Kickstarter, or Patreon, you should have plenty of documentation showing you’re a legit place where people can donate.
Our recommended web builder: Wix and Squarespace offer clean design elements and the ability to scale. Plus, the ecommerce tools on these platforms will help you keep your overhead costs down.
Who can make this work: Someone with a verifiable, legitimate donation request can hope to receive donations. Or if you’re an artist or content creator with fans, it’s worth enabling the option to donate or use your website to promote your Patreon or crowdfunding platform.
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Simply put, website monetization is a way of turning the traffic you get on a site into a money-making opportunity. If you put out quality content that people want to revisit over and over, you can leverage that into a source of income. Properly monetized websites can generate a substantial amount of revenue monthly.
Making money from a website doesn’t have to just mean recipe blogs or dropshipping stores (but don’t knock those, either). If you can solve a problem, you can sell that solution to others.
Online influencers say you can make thousands selling a PDF on Etsy, but it’s not quite that simple. Becoming an online entrepreneur takes hard work and daily dedication to your business.
Website monetization isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. Quite the opposite. You’ll need to put in time and effort to build a site that people visit regularly. The key is quality content, honest reviews or recommendations, quick delivery of services and consultations, and generally providing value to your customers. Smart tools like AI built into web design software can help you create an aesthetically pleasing website with SEO for search results, but you need to learn which marketing avenue is best for your business and determine how much effort is required to be successful online.
To be successful, it’s important to consider these foundational steps:
You’ll need to be patient and put in the work. Like any business, the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.
Dropshipping has a high return, but the market is highly saturated and competitive. We'd recommend Shopify or Square Online for launching a dropshipping business. Subscription-based content, affiliate marketing, email lists, and ad revenue all have good profit margins and may be easier to break through all the noise of the internet to grab consumers’ attention. We'd recommend Wix or Squarespace for setting up one of those business models.
You can get paid through ad revenue, reselling the website, affiliate marketing, donations, merchandise sales, and more. The bottom line is that your website, regardless of the niche or sales focus, needs to have traffic and rankings to make money via most monetization methods.
There really isn’t a limit on how much a website can make as long as it has page views to support it. Ad revenue, ecommerce sales, and various other factors will determine how much page views are worth, but driving traffic to your site is the best way to ensure high payouts.
If you’re new to selling online, you’ll have to start from the bottom. Choosing one of the best web builders like Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, or others will provide a solid foundation for the site you want to create. You’ll need to work hard and be patient, but the rewards could be very lucrative.
If you already have an established site and want to make money from it, affiliate marketing, ad revenue, an email list, or selling merchandise or services could provide you with a regular monthly income. You’ve built a following, and you deserve to be paid for all your hard work.
Having a monetized website can potentially replace an in-office 9-5 or allow you more freedom and flexibility to live your life on your own terms. Choose your niche and work hard — and hopefully, you’ll see the results you want. You’ve got this.
Easy to use drag-and-drop platform like Wix
Offers ecommerce tools for sales, payment, and fulfillment
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