Earning money online through WordPress websites and blogs is what nowadays most people are doing. There is no limit on how much you can earn and it is much flexible as you can work on it at any time and place.

WordPress is the most popular platform among entrepreneurs and bloggers, as it is a great source of earnings. It powers about 30% of all websites around the world.

Here you will find many ideas through which you can monetize your WordPress website or blog.

Make Money With Your Blog Content

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing means in your blog content you will put a special link to sell a product or service to your audience and if anyone buys that, after clicking on your link, you will get a referral commission. It is a great method for earning as you can promote as many products as you can.

If you are going for affiliate marketing, you must list the products that can catch the interest of your readers. Many popular stores like Amazon, Commission Junction, ShareASale, etc. provide an affiliate program to promote their products, for which you need to sign up for that store.

You can use PrettyLinks – a WordPress plugin to manage affiliate links. It allows you to insert links, create branded links, auto-replace keywords into links, and even see how each link is performing on your site.

Google Adsense

Google Adsense is good to make money online. You need to add a script from Google to your website to display ads. These are called CPC (cost per click) ads, in which you will be paid for each click a visitor makes on the ad. The cost is set by an advertiser.

Sell Ads Directly Using Advertising Plugin

The more profitable option to make money from ads can be selling a banner ad space for your website. You can charge a flat rate for each ad.

It’s a bit managing tasks as you have to manage all the things on your own. Finalizing terms and conditions, making agreements, negotiating on price, and even making invoices.

But you can use AdSanity – A WordPress ad management plugin that can make your work easier. AdSanity helps you to manage your ads as well as Google Adsense.

Sell Sponsored Blog Posts

If you do not want to go for monetizing with ads, you can monetize your blog with sponsorships. You have to promote a company’s product in your blog and you will be paid by the company. You need to put a one-page media kit that has all details like traffic stats, social media following, audience demographics, and other data, on your site that attract advertisers. After that, you can offer sponsorship deals to companies.

Write Paid Reviews

One of the ways to monetize your site is by writing paid reviews. You could try some products for free that your audience would be interested in and write a review on them. Then, you can propose for companies to ask about doing paid reviews.

Selling a website

Many entrepreneurs are interested in buying established websites to use for their business. So you can create a WordPress website and approach the companies to sell it. You can build a WordPress blog as well. Start getting traffic, then you can sell it and earn money for your hard work.

Some information is required like which type of websites are in demand, pricing, and selling strategy. You can even find some auction sites where buying and selling websites and blogs are done.

Paid Public Speaker

If you are blogging for a long time then you might have a pretty good following, making your impression as an influencer. You might be successful in convincing your audience. This could help you to get a public speaking job.

Public speaking means it could be paid or unpaid events where you have to speak to promote your blog or brand. Generally, public speaking starts as an unpaid job on a smaller scale.

But being consistent and continuously available on events and social media platforms (blog or vlog) can be helpful for your growth and you would be able to find lots of new opportunities.

Create a Website With Paid Membership

This is another way to earn money online from your blog. Create a premium website and the audience will have to pay to access its premium content or areas. It’s a bit challenging as you need to set up things that can convince your readers to pay and get access.

Restricted Access To Members Only

When you have a good following of readers and you know that they would pay for your content, you can add a ‘Read More’ option to your visible blog content and let ‘members-only’ access the full content. Your readers have to take a paid membership via subscription to view the full content.

It can be a bit time taking as you continuously need to create premium content and that could include either videos, audios, download links, or extensive lengthy blog content.

You can use MemberPress –  WordPress membership plugin to create a membership site. MemberPress is one of the most powerful and beginner-friendly plugins.

Create a Private Forum

An online forum is a community created for your website audience to interact with you and other members of the community by posting questions, and solutions, sharing new ideas, etc.

You can create private forums with paid membership on your website. It helps your visitors to participate and gets engaged in your website and your site can get more traffic.

You need to work on managing the forum but eventually, a paid forum is really good for earning from your WordPress website. There are also plenty of forum plugins for WordPress you can use.

Create a Q&A Board

Questions and Answers (Q&A) Board/community is similar to the forum but it is much bigger than Stack Overflow and Quora. It is a time-consuming task to create a Q&A Board but it’s lucrative.

This could be a highly engaging website and you can make money from the posts that are shared by the members of the community through advertisements or affiliate ads.

You could also get advertisement and sponsorship deals directly from the advertisers for popular questions and answers, for which they could offer you higher rates.

Create a Directory Website With WordPress

To make money online with WordPress is even possible by creating a directory or listing website.

The users need to pay to advertise their company/brand/product on your website listing.

Paid Business Directory

The directory was very much useful in the early days. Today, a web directory has a collection of lists or reviews of the product or business in a specific niche.

You can create a local or niche directory that could attract specific businesses. You will ask the user to pay, to make their product or business display on the list of your website.

WordPress provides many different plugins that will be helpful to create a directory website.

 

Paid Job Board

You can create a paid job board, generic, or under a certain niche. Companies that have the vacancy for jobs can post an advertisement on your website. A company will have to pay for each post.

Creating a job board for a specific niche can give a more positive result, as it is easy to attract users looking for jobs without filtering the number of categories.

It’s really easy to create a job board using WordPress. WooCommerce Paid Listings addon will help to charge for job post submissions.

Event Calendar With Paid Submissions

You need to create an event calendar in which people can post an advertisement for their event and you will get paid for the submission of each post.

To make a successful event, they need a maximum audience. If your website has good traffic then it could be beneficial for them and profitable to you.

This is a good option for monetization as you can advertise events in your city or webinars or live online events.

Sell Digital Products With WordPress

You can create your digital products and sell them online a good method of monetization. The only time-consuming thing is to create a product after that you don’t have to hassle much. Selling digital products on the WordPress website is easy with a plugin that you need to install on your site.

Selling eBooks

If you are a blogger, then it’s not hard for you to write a book of a few chapters. You can also take references from some of your old blogs. After you finish writing, proofread it once to avoid mistakes and then you can design the front cover of your ebook using the tool ‘Canva’. Then convert to PDF and your ebook is ready to launch.

Now you have to place a downloadable/purchasable link to your ebook on a WordPress website. A more convenient area on a website, to sell your ebooks is near the recommended products section so it can be easily visible to the visitors. Keep the payment method short and secure.

Selling Online Courses

Selling Online Courses can be a great method for earning money as it can give you a higher price than ebooks. It is visually more satisfactory to catch the interest of the audience.

Firstly you will create a tutorial with some addon links like download, slides with highlighted topics, etc. You can also give a premium version option for your expert advice and support.

After you are ready with your course, you can use a learning management system (LMS) plugin to sell the course to your audience. LearnDash with MemberPress is more appropriate to reach more users.

You can also sell products from your course as recommended products.

Paid Webinar

A webinar is an online seminar, it goes live and may include questions and answers. You can earn money by hosting a webinar on your WordPress website. Webinars work better on websites that offer online classes.

You can host a paid webinar or even give advertisements for the webinar and register participants.

Sell Services Online Using WordPress

Selling services is a very easy way to earn money online. You do not need to create any product, so it’s time-saving. Only you have to create your portfolio to attract clients.

Freelancing

Freelancing is one of the best ways of earning money online without any primary investment of time or money. You need to display your work and market your services the way you want. You can work at your flexible hours and also from home.

Being a blogger you already know your skills, just you need to deliver your best service to your clients and you will get paid for it. You need to create an invoice to collect payment.

WordPress provides two plugins: FreshBooks and WP-Invoice, for creating invoices.

Consulting Services

You can be a consultant and help people by giving your advice, suggestions, and tips on related subjects to make them more effective in their field.

You just need to make a WordPress website or a blog through which you can offer your consulting service. Create a form on your website or blog page where users can request for more information. You can charge money for the service you offer or for the time of consultation.

WordPress provides many plugins that can help you charge money with various payment methods.

Coaching Services

You can become a coach in your area of expertise and guide people to solve their problems and help to improve their progress to achieve their goals. You can give online coaching on your preferable subjects like writing, designing, and any study-related subject.

Create a booking form on your WordPress website or a blog with a schedule of sessions, so that users can book your coaching session and you will charge money for each session.

Keep yourself updated regularly. Keep track of your client’s progress by creating a forum on your website.

Online Selling Physical Products Using WordPress

Nowadays, online shopping is very popular. Just make a click and you can buy a product from available millions. Also selling a product online has been easier. You don’t have to stick to local customers and you can sell your products worldwide. Just display your products on websites, sell them, and earn money.

An Online Store With WooCommerce

Starting an online store can be a long job, as you need to create the product list and then ship them out yourself. But WordPress makes it easier to create a shop online using the free WooCommerce plugin.

This plugin helps to create a product listing, set up payment methods, and design your online store. Selling physical products through an online store can give you a rewarding experience as buyers are happy to have the products of their choice without much hassle.

Online T-shirt Store

Starting an online T-shirt shop is a great way of monetization. Be creative in designing the t-shirts according to the ongoing trends. People love to wear t-shirts with custom prints.

You can tie up with a printing agency that can print your design on t-shirts, they sell them and both of you will be sharing the profit. Instead of this, you can also sell them on your online store. With the uniqueness of your designed t-shirts, you can become an exclusive store of T-shirts.

Using WP-Spreadplugin by Spreadshirt, You can easily create your t-shirt shop on your WordPress website.

WooCommerce Dropshipping Store

Dropshipping is another way to create an online store in which you didn’t have to maintain inventory or ship products yourself. The product manufacturer itself will do the shipping.

With dropshipping, you will create an online store with WooCommerce and manage the orders and payments from customers. You will forward the orders to the manufacturer and they will ship products to the customers. You will pay the manufacturer the wholesale price of the products.

WooCommerce Dropshipping addon plugin allows you to automate the process of dropshipping.

Amazon Affiliate Shop

You can join the Amazon Affiliate Program and create your online store where you can sell affiliate products. This is one of the great affiliate programs as it offers a fairly-high commission.

You can list the number of products related to your niche, in your online store. Under a small niche, there is a better chance of having traffic to your site and standing out.

You can add reviews and recommendations which builds the credibility of your store and selling products on your store will be even easier.

Offering Platform as a Service

You can offer a paid service through your WordPress plugin installed on your website, blog, or e-commerce store. It allows you to earn income from users on your website.

Online Marketplace Website

Generally, the WooCommerce store is a single-vendor website. WC Vendors plugin helps to make the WooCommerce store a multi-vendor capable platform (online marketplace).

An online marketplace offers users not just to buy but also to sell their products. Users will have to register on your site and start selling. For monetization, you can charge a commission on user’s every sale. You can also create membership packages that users have to buy for listing their products.

Auctions Website

You can create an auction website using WordPress and allow third-party vendors to list their products for auction. You can charge the vendors for the listing of the products or get a commission for each sale.

To build an auctions WooCommerce website, you will need the following add-ons:

YITH WooCommerce Auctions – to add products for auction on your website.

WC Vendors – to make the WooCommerce store a multi-vendor platform.

Job Marketplace

Through the job marketplace, you can earn money from each job listing. You can make your job marketplace under a niche to make it more competitive.

This will help you to find customers and professionals easily, who are unable to use large platforms because of too much competition.

Either you charge money for a job listing or after a job is done. As much as a successful job completion is there it will help you to fetch more customers and freelancers.

WordPress Designing or Development

If you have that technical skill then you can be a WordPress developer or designer to earn money online.

Develop WordPress Plugins

There is a great demand for plugins. If you have basic knowledge of WordPress development, you can create a WordPress plugin.

You can research the functionalities that are demanded by users and according to you can create a plugin. Plugins help to extend and modify any functionality of the WordPress website.

You can distribute your developed plugins in many ways. You can submit a free plugin to the WordPress.org plugin directory, by following WordPress plugin guidelines.

You can also sell plugins on your WordPress site. You can put a downloadable link of your plugins and charge money to download it. Once you become good at developing plugins, you can develop multiple plugins and this is a good source of passive income.

Develop WordPress Themes

If you are good at designing and developing, you could start creating your WordPress themes. Your theme will gain popularity depending on the design and functionality of your WordPress theme.

You can sell your developed themes on your WordPress website or through online forums. You can use a plugin to set up your payment method. The more people download it, the more you earn. You also provide certain paid features.

Keep your themes updated with new features and your developed theme should be compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

Sell Graphics

If you like designing then creating graphic designs and selling them on a WordPress website can be a good method of earning money. You can create graphics like stock images or logos.

You can sell them on your site using an e-commerce plugin. You can also join online marketplaces and sell your graphics.

You can earn money based on how attractive your graphics are, to the customers. You can showcase multiple graphics that may be of the same niche so that a specific category of customers can focus.

Donations

One way you can earn money from your WordPress blog is with donations. You need to install a donation plugin on your WordPress website that features different modes of payment, donation forms, and automated records of donations. WordPress.org.offers many donation plugins. And add a donation button on your website.

Also, you need to make clear for what reason you asking for a donation so that the people do not hesitate to donate if they want to.

It depends on how much effort and time you put in to invest. You will earn money from the WordPress website depending on how much traffic you get, the monetization methods you use, and the work of effort you put in. Many successful bloggers make really good money through these methods.