How To Make Money With A Website Without Selling Anything

There are so many ways to monetize a blog.  If you are not into selling products or if you’re a beginner blogger, this will show you exactly how to make money with a website without selling anything!  

This post may contain affiliate links.  Please read my disclosure for more info.

Making Money with a Website

There are so many different ways to make money with a website.  Many people start websites or blogs with the purpose of selling a product or service, but this is definitely not the only way to make money with your website.

There are ways to make money with a website without selling anything.

Generally when you want to make money online, it’s best not to put all your eggs in one basket.

If you want to build an income stream from blogging, the safest way is to try a lot of different ways of making money with your website. 

When you are starting out or if you’re just starting to monetize, you don’t know what’s going to work best with your particular site. 

What might work well for me might not for you and vice versa. 

Try different things and see what sticks.

Blogging to make money is the opposite of a get rich quick scheme. 

It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of patience to start making good money with your blog. 

But it is possible to make a lot more money than with most traditional jobs. 

It’s also creative and fun and challenging and I just love it!

If you are curious about how to make money with a website without selling anything, I will share the top seven ways, including #3 below that you might not have heard of!

There are a lot of fun and lucrative alternatives to having an ecommerce store.

—> Psst…if you don’t have a blog yet, head to my super easy tutorial on how to start a blog here

7 Ways to Make Money with a Website Without Selling Anything

The first step if you want a profitable website is to focus on writing high-quality content on your blog.

1. Sponsored Posts

One way to make money with a blog is through sponsored posts. 

You can reach out to brands directly or you can go through brand networks. 

You will usually need either a certain number of pageviews/month or a certain amount of followers on social media. 

The rate you can charge will increase as those numbers increase.

I have been approached by many companies offering me sponsored post opportunities with them. 

I am extremely choosey on what I would write a sponsored post about. 

It has to be something I’m personally interested in/like and most importantly something that I think would be useful or interesting to my readers. 

Sponsored posts can be a great way to make money with a website without selling anything but I am very selective.

2.  Ads

Ads can be a good way to make money from your website without selling anything.  If you have lots of pageviews, you can make good money with ads.

I make several thousand dollars a month in ad revenue.

To make a lot of money with a website without selling anything, you need to increase page views though search engine optimization, and consistently write helpful content for your target audience.

For beginner bloggers, many people get started with Google AdSense, because it’s the most well-known (it’s Google) and it accepts almost everyone (there are exceptions).  I started with Google AdSense. 

The huge drawback to AdSense is that it will not make you very much money, while at the same time you’re giving up valuable ad space on your blog. 

If you are going to use ads to make money blogging it should be worth it for you.

If I had to do it all over again, I might not use ads at all at the beginning.  I would work on getting website traffic to over 10,000 pageviews/month, and then you can sign up for one of the top ad networks. 

The top advertising networks pay much better but you do need to get your pageviews up before you can apply.

Another great thing is they will set up your display ads for you, and optimize them so they make you the most money.

3. Micropayments

You can use a free app like Buy Me a Coffee to accept micropayments on your blog.  It is a little widget you put on your blog to let readers buy you a coffee or donate a few dollars to your site. 

This is part of the pay-per-use economy and lets users make payments and tips for content they read or watch.

You can put it on a single page of your website, on all the posts, in your side bar, and more! 

It’s small (but noticeable!) and is a a no-pressure way for your readers to contribute = a way to make money from your blog!

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great option to make money with a website without selling anything.

You don’t need to have any inventory, you don’t need to create your own products, and affiliate marketing has the potential to make a lot of extra money.

A really good thing about affiliate marketing is it’s the easiest way to start making money quickly. This is

One of the most popular affiliate marketing programs is of course Amazon.

No matter what your blog is, you can likely find useful products on Amazon to share that will naturally fit in with your blog posts.

There are lots of other niche-specific affiliate marketing programs that you can search for.

Say your niche is dog costumes for small dogs.

You would search for that term and then ‘affiliate programs’. Then look into the programs from there.

I have been very successful at affiliate marketing.

There are a few reasons for this, but a main one is you need to first and foremost – be helpful.

It shouldn’t be about dropping affiliate links wherever you can, but providing helpful finds for people to solve their problems based on their blog posts.

5. Offering Online Courses

You can make a lot of money if you have a successful online course.

This way to make money with a website without selling anything is a lot of work, but has the potential to make a lot of money.

Most of the work is upfront, and if you create funnels and sales pages that do the selling for you, you have the potential to make passive income.

If you want to learn how to make passive income with your online course, grab my mini course here.

6. Digital Products

When people think of selling things with a website, many people think of an online store selling tangible products. Like shoes, candles, makeup, etc.

I had a business selling used books on Amazon, and while it was interesting and profitable, I didn’t like dealing with physical stuff.

If you don’t want to deal with product, inventory, shipping, etc., a simple way is to sell digital products.

Printables, eBooks, and eCourses are popular digital products to sell.

You can have an online store on your website or sell on Etsy.

To make things even easier if you don’t feel super creative, you can buy printables that are ready to sell. Grab these done-for-you printables – no design experience needed.

7. Membership Sites

Another way you can make money with a website without selling anything is by offering membership options.

Some popular sites like Medium and Elephant Journal use this business model, as well as many online news outlets.

There is usually a tiered membership system.

Some articles are free, and others are exclusive content that you have to become a paid member to be able to view.

Another membership website system is to offer a certain number of free articles a viewer can read, and beyond that they have to become a paid member.

There are so many different types of ways to make money with a website without selling anything.

It’s an amazing time to have an online business, and these are 7 different ways to generate income with your own website without selling anything.

Related posts on making money online:

• How to use Pinterest for business – what works now
• Is selling on Amazon worth it?  My honest review
• The best home office gifts for the work-from-home mom
• Get paid to test websites
• Become a search engine evaluator
• Get paid for searching the web (4 legit ways!)
• 10 reasons to NOT join an MLM

There you have it! The best ways to start making money from your website without selling anything.

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Do you have any other ideas to add on how to make money with a website without selling anything?