5 Things You Can Sell on Your Website That’ll Make Money

When you have a website that is getting traffic but isn’t making money, it’s likely because you probably don’t know what to sell on it so it makes the money.

This article will give you 5 different options you can explore to start monetizing your site!

5 Things You Can Sell on Your Website That'll Make Money

Here are the 5 things you can sell on your website (each makes good money):

  1. Affiliate marketing products.
  2. Your own products and services (online consultations for example).
  3. Local affiliate marketing or local marketing work in general.
  4. Display Ads.
  5. Collect an email list.

This is what I’ll be discussing further in this article and give you examples of but before I do, there’s 3 parts to this post:

1) Don’t worry so much about what to sell on the site. Worry about the site’s niche topic.

Many people tend to neglect the whole thing about niches and go into figuring out the selling part. And that’s why they get lost. Without identifying a niche, they can’t really pin point the right products to sell. 

For example, if you make a niche site on for instance, any of these 50 niches, you can probably build a seriously profitable online business.

2) Making the most money without ripping off your customers.

There’s 2 things I really feel you need to understand before you promote anything on your website:

1) A relevant product to a relevant visitor = a sale. And the opposite means no sale. Really part I of this post explains this. Back to the whole niche thing. Find what your niche crowd needs (products that solve problems) and give it to them. That’s what we’ll be looking at in Part 3. 

2) Once you do find what they want or like, try to sell them that for a fair price. Say you found 1 perfect product to sell to the niche audience, but there’s 2 different affiliate programs selling that same thing for different prices.

1 sells it for $50, another for $5,000.

You would make $5 for promoting the cheaper one and $500 for promoting the more expensive one. Which would you pick? 

Well my opinion is that you should pick the $50 one because if it gives your customer the same quality of service or product that the $5,000 does, that would make them happier. If you only care about that $500 commission, then you may as well call yourself a scammer and there’s tons of people, especially in the MLM world who look at that $500 alternative as being the better one to promote, only for the money…

If you were buying something and found out you purchased it for 10x the cost, how pissed off would you be? And as a seller, many customers don’t forget these things. They will complain to you, or public places about what you did and your reputation will diminish. 

But let’s not forget, we’re trying to find a balance here.

You don’t want to make pennies and you don’t want to rip people off either. So you have to look for the best scenario. I still advise the $50 option again in the example because…

It can balance out.

If you do stumble across this scenario, you can easily sell more of the cheaper product by doing a price comparison with the expensive alternatives. You’d end up selling more volume of the cheaper product which would add up, making more people happy which may have them return to you and grow a positive reputation on your website.

You can do more than just sell 1 thing too.

That gives your site (page) more options to grow as an online business.

Note: There are cases where expensive items can be sold legitimately because there are no cheaper alternatives for those specific brands and people know they are high ticket. Here are examples of high ticket niches that I personally like.

Part 3: Here are the 5 different things you can sell on your website.

Remember, everything depends on the niche. Then all that’s left to do is to find the right product. And as I added on, finding it for a good price that gives them a good deal and you, the advertiser, a fair commission.

1) Affiliate marketing products.

This is what most sites do and in this particular case, you will ALWAYS find something to promote.

Most of the time, it’ll be a physical product. Other times, it’ll be digital. And it can also be services. Either way, you can sign up with most of the BIG affiliate networks such as Amazon for free, find the product you want to sell, get the affiliate link for it so you can earn money and begin selling it on your website.

In fact, here is a niche case study I did on a specific topic where I found and the tons of products I could sell there.

Other examples: 

  • If I have a site on weight loss. I can sell: weight loss books, dietary supplements. Literally 100,000+ different choices 
  • If I have a site on fitness, I can sell: Fitness machines and programs. Also 100,000+ choices of products and services to sell.
  • If I have a page that tries to show people how to make websites, I can promote: Services from Godaddy, Wix, Wealthy Affiliate, maybe get in touch with website designers, make a deal with them to sell their services and keep a commission fee or each person I refer. 

There’s always something. And in the examples above, most of the products I’d be able to find on Amazon, with the exception of the last niche example on website building. For that, I’d have to go to another page.

2) You sell your own services/products.

Maybe you possess the knowledge to create and sell your own product or service that is better than what you see and you will be able to make more money doing this. This is another reason you always want to go with a niche because if you know it, it’s very easy to make your own product. 

Example: Maybe you’re a legal expert and selling consulting services through your website is the best option.

3) Affiliate marketing and/or local marketing in general.

Instead of doing business with big networks like Amazon, you do it with a business close to you that’ll pay you well. I have a whole tutorial on affiliate marketing here.

For this to work, I recommend you either be very good at internet marketing or know someone who is.

Possessing knowledge in this market makes it very easy to attract businesses to pay you to market them online. And if you know someone, you can make a deal where you refer clients to them and make a commission too.

Think about it, if I said above that the niche is the most important thing followed by the product/service, in this case, your niche is businesses that want to grow and you have the service/knowledge/product to help them to do this.

You wouldn’t actually promote the business here. You would set up their business but have them pay you to do it. What you can do is have a central website that attracts these business owners and then sell the services as your promotion which is pretty much an example of the second idea above. 

4) Display Ads.

If you run a website that isn’t niche focused, then display ads are what will make your site money. For example:

Both of these things can make you money without having to worry about what to sell on your website. These services will place ads on your site and make you money for it.

5) Just collect email leads and sell stuff to the list.

Anything you do decide to promote later, be it services or products will be on the back end once people sign up and this is something many successful marketers recommend, to collect an email list and then do the other 4 things I talked about, just not through your website, but through the list you will accumulate. 

My final thoughts:

Bottom line, there’s never such a thing as not having something to sell or promote. In just those 5 ideas above, you have access to well over a million different ways to make money and if those ideas weren’t enough to help you figure out what to sell, let me know below!

15 thoughts on “5 Things You Can Sell on Your Website That’ll Make Money”

  1. I liked the way you made a point about not ripping people off. I think this aspect is far too commonly overlooked or even deliberately ignored.

    I’m sure that in the long run, the ripoff artists will not be as successful as people who are genuinely helpful – at least that’s what I hope.

    Also good advice about having a mix of lower and higher priced items.

    Great post, thanks.

    Reply
  2. This article was full of good advice. First I liked when it talked about worrying about the niche and not stressing out about the exact product you want to sell, and this is so true because when you have a foundation niche website, there are tons of affiliate opportunities out there and you can just take your pick. Also, a relevant visitor = a sale, meaning the niche needs to be on point and all the content within the site needs to be relevant to the niche. Again thanks for the great post.

    Reply
  3. Hey Vitaliy

    I really like that idea of promoting the cheaper affiliate products.

    This shows to your readers that you are NOT in the game just to make quick money. As you mentioned when they return to you, you have a loyal customer and your brand grows.This makes you stand out among your competition which is huge within the Internet world.

    You have made me see things in different perspective when it comes to marketing on my site.Thanks a lot for the tips.

    Regards

    Roopesh

    Reply
    • That’s a very good point on trust through promoting small things Roopesh. But I can tell you most people who visit your site (unless it’s something like making money online where they know you’re an affiliate), they won’t even consider that you’re making money of there.

      Affiliate marketing is still a very new concept for the general audience. However, promoting a solution for cheap prices will indeed give you credibility and on that I totally agree with you.

      Reply
  4. Hi Vitaliy,

    May I also add not to be too excited putting banners of irrelevant products on the sidebars. Some readers find the clutter annoying. And sometimes even if the product review is very good, you sometimes would not get the affiliate link click.

    There are also times that the ads from Google Adsense can be a distraction if there are too many of them placed in different parts of the article. I am not a fan of Adsense unless my traffic is really high…but then again, if I have a lot of visitors and write helpful content, affiliate marketing earnings would be more than enough.

    Don’t you think so?

    Regards,

    Pitin

    Reply
    • Hi Pitin, your position shows me you have great knowledge of online marketing because I absolutely agree with all the points you made, including the banner thing and adsense.

      I too have noticed from running experiments, particularly one here, that banners can impede sales for the very reason you stated.

      As for Adsense, yes I agree, affiliate marketing is far more lucrative depending on the type of site you have and in most cases, I would advise it against adsense anyday.

      Reply
  5. You offer some outstanding insight into the business of affiliate marketing.

    I agree with you about choosing what is “best” to offer to your customers. I know the $500 commission sounds great, but if you are looking out for your customer, you might have their loyalty, which, in the future could mean much more than $500 if they purchase through you because they trust you. Building trust with your customers is paramount to your success.

    I also agree that there are plenty of affiliate options outside of the “heavy hitters” like Amazon…so, it is best to look around and maybe support a quality company that might need customers.

    Thank you for the great article.

    Reply
  6. Very informative as always Vitaliy. Yes finding the niche is important. And I often think people overthink this. What do you like doing? What do you do in your free time? If you never had to work again, what would you spend most of your time doing? Find a common answer to those questions and boom, you have your niche……

    Reply
    • That third question you posed is fantastic Lain and personally, I have never though of it that way, but it definitely will help people identify their niche.

      Reply
  7. Hi Vitaily,

    Thanks for this excellent article. You are certainly hitting the nail on the head when you say focus on the niche. When I am thinking on what products to sell I ask myself is this relevant to my niche? Can it help my readers and how can it help my readers as well as is it solving a problem (relevant to the niche)?

    I think, in my humble opinion if you stick to that formula you really ought to finding and reviewing products that are relevant to the niche as long as you are answering yes to all of the questions above.

    Reply
  8. That was a very good article Vitaliy because I didn’t know what to sell myself so I started selling blog comments and articles and later I started with helping people with social media management. How would you suggest starting with affiliate marketing? Which one between shareasale and commission junction?

    Reply
    • Comments and articles are certainly in demand for the make money online niche Darrell, but I hope were careful with them because there have been some people I know who sell those things too that tend to sell duplicates of it, which is very bad for your reputation and it can also hurt the client. While I don’t like the idea of selling comments, I do like the article option though.

      Regarding the affiliate networks, honestly, it just comes down to which program provides better products for your niche site and gives you a better percentage. Both those networks are very good though.

      Reply
  9. Great site! One of the reasons I chose Wealthy Affiliate was because of the awesome feedback I read about it from you and other people. Do you think I should be an expert in my niche? I write about fitness and overall mental and physical health because it is a huge part of my life, but I am not a trainer and I’ve seen that there are a lot of people out there with more knowledge than me. Just wondering if I should maybe find something with less competition?

    Reply
    • Hi Taylor, there are always going to be people in your niche that know more than you, but if the knowledge you have on it can help people, that’s enough. I’ve met people with certifications in fields where I ended up knowing more than they did.

      And when you build your page, you will also build your experience, making you an even bigger expert.

      Reply
    • I agree with Vitaliy, and also would like to add…

      Your knowledge, even if it’s just 1% more than someone else who is googling for information, can be a golden nugget to them.

      There are always people out there who know far less than you do. As time passes, you will gain more knowledge and will always be ahead of those with just 1% less knowledge than you have.

      James

      Reply

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