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As marketers we’re competing with some of the biggest companies in the world. Sometimes having access to the right tool may be more useful than a dozen employees.

I’m not here to chant about how the money is in the list. If you’re reading this, you already know that. Here’s everything you’ll ever need to take your email marketing campaigns to the next level.

Best Email Marketing Software

Choosing the best email marketing software for your business is something you’ll have to do on your own, but we’re here to help. Everyone has different needs and not all businesses are equal. Some companies send out more email than others, some prefer plain-text, some need fancy templates and some want CRM integrations.

Here’s an overview of each of the top-rated tools out there for sending your emails out.

1. Infusionsoft

InfusionSoft is one of the most famous email marketing tools of all time – use it right and you’ll make your money back ten-fold. It’s not just an email marketing tool, but a full-blown marketing automation assistant with hundreds if not thousands of features and unlimited possibilities.

Here’s just some of it’s amazing features:

• Easy to create web forms
• Traditional email marketing capabilities w/ advanced list segmentation
• Advanced autoresponders
• One of the best CRMs (customer relationship managers)
• Their own shopping cart system
• Brandable reports
• Integrates with hundreds of tools through their API
• Affiliate management system
• Create landing pages with ease

Price: $199/mo

2. MailChimp

MailChimp is the most popular email marketing software and there’s a lot of reasons for that. It’s free to get started with, has amazing deliverability rates, features autoresponders and opt-in forms, integrates with just about anything and has super flexible pricing.

Price: Free up to 2,000 subscribers & starting from $10/mo afterwards

3. GetResponse

GetResponse is another super popular tool and offers competitive pricing, a myriad of pre-tested templates for you to use, hundreds of integrations, an amazing affiliate program and great support. List segmentation, landing pages, signup forms, split-testing, send-time optimisation, a super friendly user interface are just a few things you can expect when signing up for GetResponse.

Price: $15/mo & up

4. ActiveCampaign

More and more marketers are switching from traditional tools like Aweber, GetResponse and MailChimp to ActiveCampaign. Why? It’s one of the best email services that has a CRM attached to it as well. It helps you gather a lot more information about your leads and start segmenting them based on that. It’s time to personalise your automated campaigns.

Price: Starting at $9/mo

5. Aweber

Aweber is known for having some of the best email marketing templates in the industry. It’s not as flexible as MailChimp for example, but it’s definitely better for a less tech-savvy users. You don’t need to be a designer and a developer anymore, to create amazing autoresponders and opt-in forms. They’ve also got much better analytics than most providers.

Price: Free trial & starting from $19/mo

6. Benchmark Email

Use Benchmark’s drag and drop editor to create beautiful autoresponders and test them on every single device you may think of. With this tool, you can be certain that your email gets delivered everywhere and looks the way you intended it to look. Other notable things include 24/7 support and the ability to easily integrate photos and videos in your campaigns.

Price: Free up to 2,000 subscribers & starting from $11.95/mo

7. Campaign Monitor

With a super straightforward and pleasing user interface, responsive email templates and split-testing features, it’s a pretty good tool. It’s a lot pricier than most of their competitors but extremely suitable for companies that rarely use email marketing – they’re the only provider that will let you “pay per campaign”.

Price: Starting at $9/mo

8. Constant Contact

Constant Contact has the second highest deliverability rates in the industry, right after MailChimp. They have systems in place that’ll flag your email before you send it out, if it has a chance of ending up in the spam folder. This feature alone could save you a lot of time and make you a LOT more money.

Price: Free 60-day trial & starting from $20/mo

9. iContact

A great WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) email composer, great segmentation capabilities, social media integrations, autoresponders, split-testing, Google Analytics integration and ROI reporting – what else could you want? How about super competitive pricing? They have that too.

Price: Free trial & starting from $14/mo

10. Mad Mimi

Mad Mimi, as cheesy as it sounds, is one of the top tools out there. Possibly the best MailChimp alternative and the cheapest email marketing software on the web. It’s made for beginners and is thus super simple to use. Advanced users will want to steer away from this, but if you’re just getting started, Mad Mimi is perfect.

Price: Free up to 100 subscribers & starting at $10/mo

11. SendinBlue

SendinBlue is one of the cheaper tools and can be super helpful for, yet again, companies that send messages out rarely. They charge you per email sent, not per subscriber. They’ve also replaced autoresponders with “trigger marketing” – something I definitely urge you to check out. One of our favorite parts about SendinBlue is the “statistics” aka analytics. Crisp, clear, practical.

Price: Free up to 9,000 emails/month & starting from $7.37/mo

12. DotMailer

DotMailer is an amazing replacement for InfusionSoft. Great CRM and automation capabilities and even the design is similar at times. It’s definitely the go-to tool for anyone doing mailing for an eCommerce business.

Price: Individual

Best List Building Tools

What’s the point of having the best email marketing services if you don’t have permission to send anyone an email? This section is dedicated to helping you grow your email list by any means necessary.

All-Inclusive

13. OptinMonster

This tool will let you create amazing-looking forms within a few minutes. Integrate these high-converting forms with their exit-intent technologies, customer segmentation features, target based on visitor behaviour. It won’t be long until you’ve tripled your current email list and hopefully revenue as well.

Other features include:

• Popups
• A/B testing
• Useful analytics
• Conversion boosting 2-step optin technology
• Mobile specific popups
• In-content forms
• MonsterEffects™

Price: $9/m or $49/year

14. Opt In Architect

Very similar to Optin Monster, this tool has popups, sitewide optins, 2-step optins and they’re all super simple to create. It integrates with just about any email marketing service and comes at a fair price. Not a fan of Optin Monster? Check this one out.

Price: $27/mo or $297 lifetime

15. Thrive Leads

Thrive Leads promises to turn your website into a lead-generation machine. It has the same features as the previous two solutions, but is way easier to use, for better results. It has a super powerful A/B testing system built into it that will even pick the winner for you automatically. One of the most impressive list-building tools I’ve seen!

Price: $67

16. SumoMe

A huge suite of tools that you get from installing one plugin on WordPress. Log in, choose the features you want and they’ll be enabled on your site. Great A/B testing, easy to design opt-ins, a plethora of different options and they have both free and paid versions. This is what we’ve been using at MonetizePros for a while now.

Price: Free & premium versions available

Exit-Intent

Exit-Intent tools will recognise when your visitor is about to leave and will let you present them with extra incentive to stay. This is one of the main ways online businesses are leaving money on the table.

17. Exit Monitor

 

Build your email list, reduce cart abandonment, increase your social media following, redirect your leaving traffic – all of this translates into more revenue for your business. Exit Monitor has some of the most advanced exit-intent technologies on the market and it comes at a bargain.

Price: 14-day free trial & starting at $39/mo

18. Rooster

Have a SaaS or eCommerce business? Rooster’s exit-intent technology is probably for you. It’s already been a huge success on it’s own, but has now been acquired by Unbounce which means that it can only get better. Start your trial today!

Price: Free 30-day trial & starting at $49/mo

Pop-ups

Pop-ups used to have a horrible image to them due to the ads that spammy websites have been running for decades. Popups are making a return, by providing your users value, instead of annoying them with advertising. Here are some of the best tools for you to use.

19. Pippity

See your pop-up in real-time as you edit and customize one of their 18 designs. Elegantly bulleted lists, your own product images, dozens of triggers to use for your popup and split-test your results – all within 5 minutes.

Price: $49/year

20. NinjaPopups

Exit intent popups, scrolling triggers, time-based triggers, Google Analytics integration, A/B testing and much more. Sounds like a simple popup tool at first but is full of conversion-boosting technology to help you get the most out of your websites’ visitors.

Price: $25

21. PopUp Domination

Great pop-up plugin that doesn’t have a “spammy feel” to it. Includes A/B testing, force-subscribe features, page specific popups, entry and exit popups and much much more.

Pricing: Starting at $47

Opt-ins

22. Snip.ly

Snip.ly is an amazing way for you to get extra visitors and potential optins. It lets you put your own message on any website. This allows you to drive traffic to your own landing page, while promoting other experts’ content on social media. Here’s an example from Quicksprout and MonetizePros:

Price: Free & premium versions available

23. PadiAct

PadiAct is an easy-to-install way to show customized messages to your audience, based on their behaviour on your site. Collect leads, offer extra incentives – MONETIZE!

Price: Free version & premium starting at $25/mo

24. OptIn Content Locker

Put some of your best content out there and offer bonuses, but implement them IN your content. Let’s say your talking about measuring Facebook Ads results, you probably have your own Excel sheet with the proper formulas already set up. Offer that as a bonus to your readers and lock it with the OptIn Content Locker.

Price: $15

25. Magic Action Box

Easily create action boxes and optins in your blog posts, before them, after them. An easy way to turn your passive visitors into engaged customers and leads. Create powerful call-to-actions and much much more.

Price: Free & Premium versions available from $47

26. Dreamgrow Scroll Triggered Box

Super customizeable popups that get triggered when your visitor scrolls down the page a certain amount. You can use opt-in boxes, social share buttons, article suggestions, have a lead gen form and much more. Triggers are now not only limited to scrolling but also based on clicks, mouse-overs, time and even reaching the end of a post.

Price: Free

27. FeatureBox

The Optin Feature Box is probably the easiest way for you to double your email optin rates. Popularized by Derek Halpern, the FeatureBox is a box that goes below your menu, above your content and lets your readers optin. Derek Halpern said the feature box has a 33.6% conversion rate on his website!

Price: $37 & above

BONUS! The folks over at Plugmatter gave our readers a special discount for all of their plugins!

28. HelloBar

It seems like every site in the internet marketing niche now has a HelloBar attached to it. It’s a powerful way to get your visitors attention and:

• Direct them to a page of your choice
• Collect emails
• Increase your social following
• A/B test everything

Price: Free & Premium versions available

29. Comment redirect

Redirect everyone who leaves their first comment on your website to a landing page of your choice. When someone’s leaving a comment, they’re already in “action taking mode” – make use of that and give them another action to do. This could be opting in to your newsletter, joining your Mastermind group on Facebook or whatever is most valuable to you.

Price: Free

Improving open rates and deliverability

30. Return Path’s Inbox Insight

See which of your subscribers are being messaged by your competitors, how their engagement rates compare to yours, what you should put in the headline of your emails, when you should start sending emails to your following and much much more. If James Bond was an email marketer, this would be his #1 tool!

Price: Individual

31. Lyris ContentChecker

About to send out an email newsletter? Run it through Lyris ContentChecker and see if you have a chance of ending up in the spam folder of your subscribers. If yes, adapt your content based on their suggestions and maximize your deliverability!

Price: Free

32. Sendforensics email deliverability test

You send your newsletter to a test e-mail they give you at Sendforensics and they analyze the deliverability of your email based on the content, infrastructure and other factors. With the pro version, they’ll show you exactly how to maximize your deliverability.

Price: Free trial & starting from $49

33. Litmus

Litmus will let you build your newsletter in their own system and send it out with your ESP. You benefit by seeing real-time how your newsletter will look across 40+ different email clients. It also helps you make sure that all links, images and tracking codes work properly. Not only that, but they have spam filter testing, too.

Price: Free trial & starting from $79/mo

34. SenderScore

SenderScore is one of the many criteria for whether your email gets delivered or ends up in spam. Sign up on their website and find out what your senderscore is and what you can do to improve it. This is probably the easiest way to maximize email delivery rates.

Price: Free!

35. BriteVerify

As nice as it is to be able to say that you have an email list of XX,XXX people, what it really comes down to is how much revenue you make from those emails and how many people open it. BriteVerify helps you get rid of all of your dead emails, emails with typos etc – it’s basically a list cleaner. This is your chance to see REAL data from your email marketing, after clearing out the rubbish.

Price: $0.01/email, less for bigger lists

36. Co-Schedule Headline Analyzer

This little tool scans your headline based on several criteria and gives you advice on how to improve it. This ranges from the use of power words to the keywords present and even shows you previews in Google results and your customers inbox. More often than not, using this tool you’ll realize that you can come up with a better headline.

Price: Free

37. Touchstone Subject Line Gold

Subject Line Gold lets you input your email subject line and will compare and analyze against your previous campaigns as well as 40+ million email campaigns sent by your competitors. It will predict your open rate and delivery rate, give you advice on what to change in the subject line and much more.

Price: Free & extra credits available

CRO

If we had one takeaway for you at MonetizePros, it would be that increasing the amount of traffic you have isn’t always the best solution for making money. We’re all about working with what you already have and improving upon that.

Conversion rate optimization is one of the easiest ways to increase your bottom line and start making more money. These tools will make your CRO a million times easier!

38. Bounce Exchange

Bounce Exchange is a service based on advanced behavioural technology. They run 50,000+ A/B tests across their network and will automatically optimize your website for the most conversions. Supposedly one of the most efficient tools/services out there for improving your CR, but definitely comes at a hefty price.

Price: Individual

39. Optimizely

Optimizely let’s you visually make changes to your website by clicking on any element and changing it from their dashboard. It automatically turns your two variations into an A/B test and displays it on your website. All you need to do is copy one line of code into the header of your website and you’re done!

Price: Free & Paid versions available

40. Visual Website Optimizer

Visual Website Optimizer is another amazing tool for, surprise surprise, optimizing your conversion rates by making visual changes. This means no coding experience is necessary, no design knowledge. In my opinion, it has a slightly nicer and friendlier interface than Optimizely but also has a higher price tag.

Price: Free trial & starting at $49/mo

Generating Content Ideas

41. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is one of the most powerful tools for analyzing content. Enter a keyword and quickly see what’s been successful and why. You’ll get an idea of the best performing content (and their headlines) in your industry. Use this as inspiration.

As a bonus, you’ll see the backlinks to that article as well as the share counts across all major social networks. With the pro version, you can also see who precisely shared it and reach out to the same people for your new and improved piece of content (see Skyscraper technique).

Price: Free & Pro versions available from $99/mo

42. Content Idea Generator

This is a tool that will ask you a bunch of questions about your business and then generate hundreds of brilliant content ideas. It tries to put you into the shoes of your very own customer and based on that generates ideas that may be popular. This is the most efficient content idea generator I’ve seen, after BuzzSumo.

Although it gives a lot of weirdly phrased content ideas, you’ll be able to figure out the template of the headline and change it up a little bit.

Price: Free

43. The Hemingway App

The Hemingway App is not for generating content ideas. It will help you make your headlines and content much better. All your hard to read sentences get highlighted, allowing you to edit them. This will make certain that your content is easy to understand.

Complex phrases are highlighted and simpler alternatives given to you. If you’re using passive voice, that’ll turn into another colour. Edit that and stop being boring.

Price: Free

Best Email Outreach Tool

44. Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach deserves a post of it’s own and we’re working on that. This is THE tool when you’re looking to take your content marketing to the next level.

Search for a keyword and you’ll be presented with relevant influencers, authors, companies. You can filter them based on dozens of factors, ranging from backlinks, twitter followers and even the types of pages on their site.

Compile them all into one list, write a template outreach email and personalise it with the data Ninja Outreach fetched. A few clicks and you’ve just let dozens of relevant influencers know about your latest, amazing piece.

It’s a powerful tool, but don’t abuse it. Put thought into your templates and only reach out when you have actual value to provide.

Price: Free trial & starting from $29/mo

Giveaways

Giveaways can be an amazing way to get thousands of emails in a short amount of time, with little investment. Meanwhile, you’ll be making your audience happier! Buy some sick tools or services that your audience might like and run a giveaway. We’ve done this in the past and ended up getting thousands of emails. Extreme cases have shown email list growth of over 200K people.

45. UpViral

UpViral lets you create a sophisticated giveaway with no technical knowledge required. Viral giveaways, contests, product launches, locking your content virally – anything you can think of. They have dozens of pre-made landing pages designed for you, that you can modify with ease. It integrates with almost all email marketing services, too!

Price: $47/mo

46. KingSumo Giveaways

KingSumo giveaways lets you do super simple giveaways in as little as 10 minutes. This is what we used last year for our $14K marketing giveaway. It integrates with your favorite ESP, picks the winner for you, has a nice viral system built in and is a super cheap solution.

Price: $198 for a lifetime

Best Landing Page Software

Landing pages are one of the most important parts of your email marketing campaigns. This is where you actually get access to your (potential) customers email address. A good landing page will make or break your campaign.

47. LeadPages

LeadPages is probably the most popular solution when it comes to creating high-converting landing pages. They’re excellent at marketing themselves and have become a well-known name in the landing page industry. They’ve got hundreds of templates pre-made for you. Sort these based on conversion rates and modify according to your needs.

Other than the traditional landing pages, you’ll also be able to create LeadLinks, LeadBoxes, LeadDigits and many other revolutionary things they’ve invented.

Price: $25/mo

48. Clickfunnels

Although one of the more pricier services, it’s much more than a simple landing page tool. It will not only make you perfect, measured landing pages, but entire sales funnels that you can use for your marketing campaigns. They’ve got templates for just about everything, ranging from webinars to upsell pages.

Price: Starts at $97/mo

49. Instapage

Instapage promotes themself as being super easy to use. It’s true – in fact, you can set up your first landing page within just 3 minutes. There’s a 45-day free trial so go ahead and give it a shot! They’ve got a huge library of templates and they’re actually one of my favorites out of all the landing page software providers.

Price: Free trial & starting at $29/mo

50. OptimizePress

OptimizePress is great for making landing pages but in reality, it’s a lot more than that. I’d say the majority of membership sites that I’ve worked on, have been made with OptimizePress. Other than those two, you’ll also be able to make product launch funnels, webinar registration pages and whatnot – and it’s all responsive!

I’d say the key benefit is that it’s yours for a lifetime, there’s no monthly fees.

Price: $97/lifetime

51. Unbounce

With Unbounce you can create high-converting landing pages that are responsive within just five minutes. Countless of templates for you to use and customize and more being created all the time. They’ve also got an A/B testing system built in for you to get the most out of your landing pages.

Price: $49/mo

Regular Email Hacks

As much as I love automation and efficiency, not all of our email marketing is automated. There’s still dozens if not hundreds of emails a day that need my answer, follow-up or input. Here are some tools to help you get to inbox zero easier, clean up your mailbox and make the whole process smoother in general.

52. Unroll.Me

We’re all a part of at least some newsletters that we want to receive. Unfortunately, we also get a lot of mail we didn’t really intend to sign up for and that clutters our inboxes. With Unroll.Me, you simply log in and it fetches the information on everything you’re subscribed for and let’s you unsubscribe from the unnecessary ones with just one click.

Price: FREE!

53. FollowUpThen

A lot of my email require a response another day, sometimes even weeks or months later. How do you keep track of all of that? I haven’t thought of a good way, but these guys did. Instead of flagging the email or marking it as unread for months.. Use FollowUpThen.

Simply forward your desired email to [some time]@followupthen.com and they’ll automatically remind you.

Examples:

• tomorrow5pm@followupthen.com
• march15th2016@followupthen.com
• … You get the point

Price: Free & premium versions available

54. Boomerang

Unless you’re living in a cave, you’ve probably heard of Boomerang already. Similar to FollowUpThen, Boomerang allows you to send email at a later date or have them remind you to send something at a later date. Don’t like forwarding email? No worries, Boomerang is a gmail plugin!

Price: Free

55. BuzzStream Email Research Tool

Not everyone is easy to reach by e-mail. A lot of influencers and other important people don’t want their e-mail to be found by just anyone. BuzzStreams tool asks you to input a persons name, company and website and then generates potential Google searches that may help you find the persons email.

Price: Free

56. Sidekick

Sent out an important email and are anxious to hear back? Simply want to split-test the open-rates of your email headlines? Sidekick makes your manual email measurable. See who opens your emails, when and from where. Not only that but it’ll automatically fetch important information on your contact, so you don’t have to memorise everything. See your mutual connections, your contact history with them, social media profiles & content and much more.

Price: Free

57. Canned Responses

Canned responses is actually a tool built into Gmail, that’s disabled by default. You can easily enable it though. Why?

I don’t know about you, but a lot of the e-mails I have to respond to, ask the same questions. That means they also get the same answers. Why waste time writing the same things over and over again?

Canned Responses lets you save messages you have to send out all the time and choose the one you need by clicking one button, when the time comes. A huge time-saver in the long run!

Head to your gmail settings, click on labs and enable canned responses!

 

58. Rapportive

Remember how we used BuzzStreams tool to find someone’s email? Rapportive helps you validate that email (or any other email address). When you start composing a new email in Gmail, Rapportive will show their information in the right-hand sidebar. If you’ve got a correct e-mail address, you’ll probably see their profile picture and other information. If it shows nothing, you’ve probably got the wrong email.

Here’s an example:

Price: Free

59. Checker Plus

Checker Plus is a gmail extension that makes managing multiple accounts super easy. It also lets you enable desktop notifications for new email, has the ability to read your emails to you (if you’re busy with something else) and has many other features to help you with email.

Price: Free

60. The Email Game

Email is pretty boring and overwhelming, we can all admit that. This gamifies your email and helps you be more efficient. You get points for making decisions and answering your email. You’ve got five seconds to decide whether you want to reply, archive, Boomerang it or whatever. Do it quickly and you get points for it.

Need to answer? You’ve got three minutes to do so.

Need more than three minutes? No problem, you just don’t get any points!

This makes email fun and efficient!

Price: Free

Contrary to popular belief, Google AdSense is not the only high paying option for publishers today. There are many networks on the market today providing similar if not a better offering than AdSense. Besides the question of rates, publishers also seek for other AdSense alternatives for a variety of reasons including the difficulties involved in getting your AdSense account approved and pursuit for additional income streams. If you are looking for 2017 AdSense alternatives, for whatever reason, here are several lucrative choices to look at.

1. DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX)

This is one of the best ad networks for publishers today but getting accepted is a bit of a challenge. It is an invite-only network that only accepts premium publishers. However, if accepted you stand to earn very good returns. AdX is one of the highest paying AdSense alternatives. For instance, 20% of Google’s revenue share comes from AdX which means the overall CPM/CPC you can get from AdX ads is normally higher than AdSense. AdX basically has a higher CPC per click than almost every other ad network. Google will even assign to you a dedicated account manager who’ll help you maximize revenue from your traffic. Remember you can only get an AdX account if you are a premium publisher with a site or sites that receive over 20 million visitors every month.

The true power of AdX is unlocked when integrated into DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) a Google owned ad server. It is a free ad server (For the first 90MM non-Google ad impressions), the most popular ad server in the world especially amongst the largest publishers in the world. This is because there is no ad server that monetizes programmatic revenue better. Why is that? AdX’s ability to integrate with DFP called dynamic allocation. It enables AdX to run only when it is the highest paying ad network. Therefore, you know you are earning max revenue every time AdX wins an ad impression.

If you’d like to get access to AdX’s exclusive demand, you can apply here and get an optimal setup by the experts.

2. DistrictM

DistrictM has been one of the fastest growing header bid networks in the industry. They are based out of Montreal, Canada and have delved deep into the header bid auction for some strong performance. They are easy to onboard, support is great, payments are quick and publishers report they are easy to work with. If you are a publisher that is running header bidding, don’t hesitate to add DistrictM to your header bid stack.

3. Index Exchange

Index Exchange, formerly known as Casale Media, is a header bid exchange that brings together sellers and buyers of digital media. It is ranked among the top premier ad tech networks in the world with high advertiser demand. The only drawback is its lack of transparency. Index Exchange is quite popular with publishers and advertisers alike primarily because it provides statistics such as ad impressions and clicks in real time. The network has its headquarters in Toronto with branches in London, San Francisco, and New York City. With more than 50,000 brand buyers in partner networks across the globe, Index Exchange is a lucrative choice for publishers seeking for the highest paying alternatives to AdSense in 2017.

4. Facebook Audience Network

Facebook Audience Network (FAN), in its current state, is a mobile ad network run by Facebook. It is a collection of premium mobile apps and websites through which over 2 million Facebook advertisers serve their ads. Advertisers on Facebook Audience Network use the same targeting, monitoring, and measurement tools found on Facebook ads that serve on Facebook.com. As a FAN publisher, you have the option of adding the FAN code to your mobile website or apps and earn revenue when users click on ads placed in your app or mobile website. You basically earn a revenue share of what the advertiser spends on Facebook.

The main advantage FAN has over AdSense lies in its higher eCPMs from more integrated native ads and a powerful header bid solution. Most advertisers are drawn to Facebook because of the social network’s more comprehensive data about consumers. This creates higher bids and in turn higher eCPMs for publishers. If you are a publisher seeking for a better alternative to AdSense in 2017 or simply want an additional source of income, then Facebook Audience Network is definitely worth checking.

5. Media.net

Media.net is another great option for publishers seeking to maximize earnings from their traffic because it serves contextual ads primarily from the Yahoo Bing network. The network comprises of a majority of local and international advertisers who ensure that all publishers get a 100% fill rate for virtually all verticals and ad formats. Some of the major publishers on this network include leading magazines such as Forbes, Cosmopolitan, and Reuters, which should give you a basic idea of how high eCPMS can go in this network.

Another great thing about this network is the fact that it supports all the standard IAB sizes. You can get access to the best quality ads from most key demand side platforms (DSPs). Media.net supports multiple ad formats including display units, desktop interstitial, mobile docked ads, and in-content native ads. Their model is basically CPC, CPM, and CPA with a heavy waiting towards CPC. Keep a close eye on Media.net as well, they plan on opening up their header bid solution in 2017. To apply to Media.net, Click Here.

6. TripleLift

TripleLift is a major player in in-content native advertising. The network has more than 2300 publishers serving ads from a pool of over 400 major advertisers including Microsoft, Land Rover, Nissan, AT&T, Kraft, Campbells, and Jet Blue just to mention a few. A few of its major publishers include publications such as Men’s Fitness, USA Today, Conde Nast, eHow, Atlantic Media, Hearst etc. With such a clientele, this is definitely one of the highest paying AdSense alternatives on the ad market today.

Triple Lift’s header bid solution performs much better than their managed demand solution. For each publisher Triple Lift works with, they customize their creatives to the layout of the publisher to ensure high integration and CTRs. This combined with the optimal setup of header bidding is a lethal combination. Triple Lift tends to perform better than most header bid networks for social content sites within in-content ad placements.

7. Yieldbot

From its headquarters in New York City, Yieldbot provides a performance-based marketplace where advertisers can target consumers in real-time from premium publisher traffic. Yieldbot has 100% unique demand so if you’re worried about problematic ads slipping through, don’t worry, Yieldbot is one of the safest. The company was founded in 2010 but has emerged as a key player in the ad industry mainly because it connects agencies, brands, and advertisers with top publishers. With over 1 billion monthly site sessions, Yieldbot provides a more lucrative option to AdSense for mobile. It is a mobile ad network that supports multiple platforms including apps, games, and brands. They support mobile video content, rich media such as interstitials and expendables, tablet offers, and even incentivized traffic.

Unlike the rest of the ad networks on this list, Yieldbot is 100% header bidding. They do not offer managed demand because they know it’s a thing of the past. If you’re running header bidding and have a lot of mobile traffic, definitely add Yieldbot to your header container. You will not have to worry about malvertising sneaking through or managing passbacks with Yieldbot demand.

8. bRealtime

If you are a publisher seeking for a global, programmatic marketplace with the highest yield and access to a large number of advertisers and DSPs, then bRealtime is the right network for you. They have good relationships with top media buyers who provide lucrative monetization solutions for display, video, and mobile content. It is a CPM/CPC advertising network with a minimum payout threshold of just $100 paid on NET 30 basis. bRealtime’s managed demand solution guarantees 100% fill with other tags that can be set with min CPMs and passbacks.

 

By far, bRealtime’s best offering is their header bid solution. Publishers with traffic from around the world will get a lot of value from adding bRealtime to their header bid demand. bRealtime tends to have high win rates for international traffic and will increase the fill rate because they will bid for the less lucrative countries as well. We call these header bid networks “vacuum bidders” because they buy the lower value bids as well which is also valuable to publishers for increasing page RPMs. bRealtime is easy to work with and their header bid solution is a great AdSense alternative in 2017.

9. DistrictM

Founded by industry veterans with the aim of developing a simple but powerful advertising solution, DistrictM provides publishers with fast earnings, control over ads, and higher revenue. The network currently boasts over 3200 publishers, 62 billion monthly ad requests and a high percentage of revenue increase. This is mainly because of their header bid solution. They have strong win rates and high CPMs for all tier 1 countries.

The network has previously earned industry recognition from leading bodies such as Deloitte who ranked it among the top 50 Technology Fast companies in 2015, and as one of the six most promising digital tech companies by their Canadian Technology Accelerator. For that reason, don’t forget about this AdSense alternative.

10. PulsePoint

PulsePoint is a top Google AdSense alternative on the market today because of their ease of implementation and strong header bid performance. The network handles over 110 billion ad transactions monthly. It is a major player in data-driven ad optimization, processing around 20 TB of data daily. They ensure better targeting and relevance via their proprietary contextual system. PulsePoint publishers have a good opportunity to monetize impressions many buyers would simply ignore in other platforms such as AdSense. It is a free-to-join network with a CPM model and zero minimum traffic requirements.

Their managed solution is decent as well offering standard IAB sizes and an intuitive passback setup system. They have a low minimum payout threshold of $50 for all payment options. Publishers are paid via PayPal, eCheck, Wire Transfer, and Check. Watch out for malvertising and other problematic ads coming through. PulsePoint falls short in ad QA. Despite that drawback, PulsePoint is still a top 10 AdSense alternative of 2017.

11. AOL Advertising

AOL advertising is done via their display ad department simply known as Advertising.com. It is one of the most popular ad networks for both publishers and advertisers primarily because of its data and insights technology. They are a CPM, CPA, and CPC model network with over 30 content verticals. On average, Advertising.com serves close to 2 billion impressions per day. It is that huge. However, to be approved as a publisher your sites must have a minimum of around 300,000 impressions per month. Their managed demand about 7 years ago was known to have even larger reach than Google. Since then, AOL has seen a large drop in market share.

With header bidding, AOL has seen a bit of a resurgence and has decent win rates for US traffic. If you are running header bidding, it is worth adding AOL to your header bidding stack as an AdSense alternative.

12. Sekindo

Sekindo is known as an in-banner video (IBV) AdSense alternative. Sekindo is quite popular for its 100% fill rate especially from tier 1 geo-locations such as US, UK, Australia, and Canada. They offer publishers the best way to monetize desktop ad units. It is a great alternative to AdSense for publishers with enough traffic volumes in those geos. They are now making a move away from the 300×250 videos that tend to hurt user experience and towards standard banner inventory from unique demand via header bidding. We’ve noticed that their CPMs and win rates have improved over the past 6 months. We would not be surprised if they became a major AdSense alternative late in 2017 for header bidding.

Sekindo has a very intuitive interface with hourly reporting. Publishers are assigned account managers who are quite helpful and responsive to queries and requests for monetization assistance. Each of their tags is geo-targeted, meaning you get a unique tag for each geo. Sekindo offers publishers NET 30 payment terms with a minimum payout threshold of $50. Their offers are mainly CPC and CPM. There are no minimum traffic requirements to join the network but each of your sites will have to be vetted first before approval. We recommend to turn off IBV ads whether you’re running managed demand or header bidding because those videos can run infinite loops and crash your users’ browsers. Short of the IBV issue, Sekindo is a great AdSense alternative!

13. AppNexus

This is basically a network that provides an ad tech infrastructure. They are an ad exchange that connects advertisers, DSPs and publishers. They have an efficient platform that provides a real-time bidding marketplace based on demand and supply of ad space. This marketplace is run on publisher sites via header bidding. Appnexus used to only partner with other ad networks to run their demand, however, they are now an AdSense alternative as they partner directly with premium publishers.

AppNexus supports multiple platforms including IOS, Android, and mobile web. Their ad models include CPA, CPC, and CPM. They support different ad formats such as banners, text ads, rich media, and video. Their key markets include US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, and France. For publishers, it can be tough to work with them. They are very short on support staff and their business team tends to work very slowly. If you can tolerate a lack of support then Appnexus is a worthy 2017 AdSense alternative to include in your header bid stack.

14. Sharethrough

Founded way back in 2008, this is one of the most sophisticated ad automation companies that provides real-time buying, sale, and management of in-feed native advertising. It is a modern content driven mobile-first platform where publishers can monetize their sites with premium ads. The company has several platforms such as the Sharethrough Exchange (STX) which is recognized as the largest in-feed advertising exchange in the world. The network has its headquarters in San Francisco and branches in Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, London, and Toronto. It is a great network for publishers seeking for the best in-feed native ads to monetize their sites with.

Although their team heavily pushes their sales management platform, this feature has very little value. Their demand can perform quite well during the end of quarters and Q4. Otherwise, you’ll normally see low fill rates and they tend to have large ad impression and passback discrepancies. Be careful, their sales people can be very aggressive and sell you a plan that is not the best fit for your site. We recommend sticking to demand only. Sharethrough plans to release their header bid solution in 2017 so keep an eye out for that. Being able to run Sharethrough within header bidding and avoiding passbacks will make it one of the highest paying AdSense alternatives in 2017.

15. Defy Media

Defy Media was formed by a merger of Alloy Digital and Break Media in 2013. They started as premium publishers who did quite well in direct sales, so they decided to offer their direct sales inventory outside of their publisher network. It is an American digital media company that specializes in content targeted for millenials and the younger generation of 12 to 34-year-olds. It is a great platform for publishers with millenial and teenage traffic. Defy Media is well known for helping publishers monetize sites with video content. They are big players in the YouTube arena. If you have video content geared for the young generation, you may consider joining Defy Media.

Defy Media’s best offering is definitely their header bid solution. We have noticed that they perform quite well on social and listicle sites that tend to get younger users. If you run a site that attracts users between 18 – 25 and you are already running header bidding, be sure to include Defy Media. They will impress you how many ad impressions that can win. Since Defy Media has header bid demand that can hold its own when competing for younger audiences, it is a strong AdSense alternative.

16. Amazon Nine

This is the advertising department of Amazon that runs header bidding. It is a great source of unique demand and a great alternative to Google AdSense in terms of high revenue. Amazon has a huge database of products to advertise, close to 1.6 million. Therefore, they perform best on sites with high user intent to purchase like shopping comparison or online classifieds.

They have very low minimum payout threshold of just $10 and above. Their customer support is mediocre. They are one of the least flexible header bid partners in the industry because they refuse to integrate with header containers. As a result, they many sophisticated publishers do not integrate them because implementing individual header bid solutions is cumbersome and suboptimal. If implementing their header bid solution directly on-page and mediocre support isn’t an issue, then Amazon is a pretty good AdSense alternative.

17. Komoona

Komoona is popular AdSense alternative for publishers because they are easy to implement and monetize all countries and devices. Its performance is decent with OK fill rates for tier 1 countries and international. They have just come out with a header bid solution so we’d recommend running Komoona header bidding instead to avoid passbacks and run a more optimal ad inventory auction.

They have a very intuitive interface with many self-service options including CPM floor setting, pass back implementation, and updating payment information. However, ad tags can only be given by your account manager. Whenever you need additional ad tags you’ll have to place a request via your account manager. It is a great network for news and shopping verticals. They pay publishers on NET 60 terms which is a bit long. Earnings below $1,500 are paid via PayPal and if you make more than $1,500 you’ll be paid via bank wire. They do not have a minimum traffic requirement for approval so they are a good AdSense alternative if your publisher network traffic is on the lower end.

18. Outbrain

Outbrain is not very new to most publishers. The network has been around for quite some time. It was founded in 2006 and currently has its headquarters in New York. It is a leading native ad network especially when you consider their high-quality ads. The network has over time partnered with some of the leading advertisers in the industry to provide publishers with the best eCPM rates. Getting accepted is a bit of a challenge for publishers starting out. They only accept publishers with a minimum of 10 million page views every month. This is done to maintain quality for both the advertiser and the publisher although, their ad creatives could be easier on the eyes. However, the returns are great for publishers who successfully join Outbrain as a nice alternative to AdSense. Hopefully they will join the header bidding movement in 2017 to become more valuable to publishers.

19. RevContent

RevContent is ranked among the fastest growing networks serving native ads in the industry. They actually serve over 100 billion ad requests every month. The network has over time continued to show promising results to advertisers and publishers alike. Unlike other ad networks that usually take a 50-40% cut from the publishers’ earnings, RevContent only takes 20% revenue share making it more profitable for publishers. It is one of the most profitable ad companies today and a great alternative to Google AdSense. However, to join the network you’ll need to have at least 1 million views per month. If you command a significantly large volume of traffic then this is the network to join.

They are still only running native discovery but we think it’s a matter of time before they get into native in-content and header bidding. Watch Revcontent closely, because it might not be long.

20. OpenX

OpenX claims to provide the safest, most transparent and fair marketplace for advertisers and publishers. In actuality, since their ad exchange reaches so many demand sources, a lot of malvertising, mobile re-directs and problematic creatives serve via OpenX. They have a large QA issue, so hopefully they are able to resolve it in 2017. With that said, they boast very high earning potential on the header bidding side. Their win rates are very high for all countries, devices and verticals. This is because of their tech and far reaching demand. They are one of the biggest AdSense alternative companies in the whole ad tech industry.

You have to demonstrate similar standards before you are approved to join OpenX. To get a managed demand account is quite easy but the performance for that type of account is pretty lackluster. If you run OpenX, a header bidding account is the only one worth running, however, you need minimum 100MM ad impressions per month on each domain. They have also proven to be the most difficult AdSense alternative to work with in the whole industry. The ad reps tend to force publishers to either implement their header bid solution directly on-page which kills page load times or to implement their failing header container. We recommend to push back and implement their header bid demand via a non-OpenX header container.

The network has an intuitive user interface that allows you to create multiple ad units and even set up CPM floors with ease for managed demand. They have NET 90 payment terms and a payment threshold of $100. To be approved as a publisher your site must have original content and show signs of engagement with users. You need to ensure that ads appear properly in web pages or mobile apps. You must also ensure ads do not appear on emails, downloadable apps, pop-ups or pop-unders. You can only place ads on sites you own or on sites where you have a direct relationship with the owner. If you can get over the horrible support, lackluster ad QA and header bidding that kills page load times, you have an AdSense alternative that could be your highest earner in your ad inventory. If they fixed their issues, they would be a top five 2017 AdSense alternative.

Conclusion

Whatever your reason for seeking for the best AdSense alternatives, you’ll find that the above ad networks are growing in value for publishers. With the entrance of header bidding and some new major players, Google’s monopoly of publishers’ ad inventories are diminishing. The good news is, you don’t need to choose between AdSense and one of the above 20 alternatives. If you are serious about growing your ad revenues with your current traffic, your next step is to implement DFP for each ad placement on your site and begin adding each of the 20 AdSense alternatives that we mentioned one-by-one.

There are several advertising and monetization options, and your website niche, target audience, traffic volume, and visitor behavior will determine which options are the most reasonable for your particular website.

We are going to show you 10 monetization options that have broad applications, allowing you to start generating revenue, whether you are trying to turn your website into a profitable business or just cover some of your operating expenses. Don’t try and do all of these at once and make sure you give it some time to see results. No one is an overnight success and you need to see what will work for you and your audience.

1. Google AdSense

Google’s advertising platform for publishers, AdSense, shows ads that are highly relevant to your website content and pays you a percentage of the revenue each time they are clicked on. If you had a website about travel, it might display ads from an airline or travel agent. The process couldn’t be any easier:

1. You place HTML code on your website where you want the advertisements to display. Note: AdSense policy allows up to 3 ad blocks on each page of your website.
2. Advertisements that are related to the content are displayed, and Google uses a real-time to ensure that the highest paying ads are shown.
3. Google bills the advertisers and networks for the advertisements that appeared on your website and pays you directly.

This program is among the most popular monetization methods because of its simplicity. There is no dealing with advertisers directly or chasing down invoices for payment. Google handles everything and you receive a check or direct deposit every month for the revenue that your website generated.

Anyone with a website can take advantage of this program and getting started takes just minutes, provided that you have a Google account. You can read more about Google’s AdSense program by reading our Google AdSense Review.

2. Infolinks

Infolinks is an advertising platform that places in-text ads within your website content and pays you each time that they are clicked. Their software identifies your most valuable keywords within your website content and double-underlines theses keywords, and when your visitor hovers his or her mouse over them an advertisement related to the keyword is displayed. If they decide to click on the “learn more” you are compensated.

Infolinks allows you to customize the look and frequency of the text ads. Making them the same color as your website theme makes them appear to be part of your content, and this will increase your click through rate significantly. Also, they allow you to determine how often they appear. The last thing you want is a page full of clickable ads. One or two per piece of content is enough to attract interest without pushing away visitors.

This is a great platform to sign up for when you are just getting started because every little bit of extra revenue can help you cover basic website expenses like web hosting and domain registration. The payouts per click are fairly low though, so once you build up your traffic and your site becomes more popular there are other monetization methods that will provide you with a bigger and more attractive return.

You can get more information on the infolinks program by clicking here.

3. Affiliate Offers

Affiliate marketing is a very effective way to monetize your website traffic because it allows you to present your visitors with offers that they are likely to be interested in. For instance, if you had a blog about personal finance you would want to find an affiliate offer that would be of interest to your visitors, such as a credit card offer. You would place a banner or text link on your website that contained your affiliate link and directed the visitor to the offer. Now, if they signed up for the particular offer, which in this case is a credit card, you would be compensated with an affiliate referral payment. Some credit card offers pay out $50 – $100 for every referral an affiliate sends.

There are two different types of offers: Cost Per Action (CPA) and Cost Per Sale (CPS). An example of a CPA offer could be an insurance quote request where the user submits his or her name and contact information to receive additional information. Most CPA offers are lead generation offers. Now, a CPS will generally require a purchase be made and a credit card pixel to be fired in order for an affiliate payment to be issued. An example of a CPS offer would be a diet pill offer, where the consumer actually purchases the product. Generally CPS offers will pay out more than CPA offers.

It is important that you match relevant offers with the content and theme of your website. You wouldn’t place a credit card offer on your blog about diet tips and weight loss. You would want to find a health and fitness offer that you believe your website audience would be interested in. One of the best resources for looking for available affiliate offers is Offer Vault.

You can enter in any search term related to your website content and instantly review the available offers. It also tells you what affiliate networks manages each offer. Once you identify the offers that you want to promote on your website you will want to sign up with the affiliate networks that manage them. You can search Offer Vault by clicking here.

Further reading: The Beginner’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing: 7 Essential Resources

4. Create & Sell Your Own Digital Product

This is a monetization strategy that is great for those who have a very niche specific website combined with a large volume of website traffic. Creating your own product allows you to provide something very specific for your visitors and retain 100% of the revenue. Affiliate offers pay you a commission per action, but you don’t have to worry about customer service, refunds, or any issues that might arise. When you sell your own product you have to handle the customer service as well as any problems that pop up.

Don’t worry about stocking inventory and the costs associated with developing a product – go digital! The beauty about creating a digital product such as an eBook is that there are no production and inventory costs after you create it the first time. You can handle the complete creation or you can outsource the work.

There are several WordPress plugins that help you manage your digital downloads and integrate with your payment processor, only allowing your purchaser to download it once their payment is processed. Once you develop the product it is a relatively hands free process.

5. Direct Ad Space

Once your website has a significant amount of traffic and you have built up a following it gives you the ability to sell direct advertising space on your website. Don’t expect these offers to roll in on Day 1. It might take a couple of months but be sure to include details of how you should be contacted by a potential advertiser. Now, Google AdSense doesn’t have any traffic volume requirements, so you can implement that onto a brand new website and your revenue will grow as your blog grows. No advertiser will want to directly purchase exclusive space on a brand new website, but once the traffic numbers increase it becomes more attractive to an advertiser to purchase direct space for a flat monthly fee.

Advertisers that use Google’s platform are charged per click. This can become very expensive for the advertiser so they often look for opportunities to buy ad space for a flat fee. So, imagine that you had a blog about parenting and a retailer of children’s clothes was paying $5 per click on Google’s advertising network. If you charged $500 a month for a banner ad and your blog was receiving 30,000 visitors a month and generating 100,000 page views then it would be a great deal for the advertiser. Their ad would be seen 100,000 times for the same amount of money that they were paying for just 100 clicks using a pay per click model.

You can also combine Google AdSense with your own direct advertising to really generate some serious income from your website.

Check out our full Ad Network Reviews.

6. Sponsored Posts & Reviews

Publishing sponsored posts is another great way to generate income by leveraging the success and popularity of your website. Advertisers pay large sums of money for bloggers to write reviews about their products and services and post them for their audience to read. It is a popular form of advertising because visitors see it as more of a review than a direct advertisement. This type of non-intrusive advertising is very effective. The amount you can get for a sponsored post varies greatly based on the size of your niche, the niche itself, the popularity of your site and your social media following.

The advertiser will also generally provide the website owner with the product or service to review for free, so in addition to generating revenue you can also collect some nice products and services along the way. SponsoredReviews.com is a service that connects advertisers and websites and it is free to set up an account.

7. Gate Premium Content

If you develop a large loyal following you can start to gate premium content, which means that readers will have to pay to access it. Many websites that successfully gate content will offer the first couple of paragraphs for free in order to grab the interest of the reader. They will naturally want to continue reading so they will be more willing to complete an offer in order to access the rest of the content.

Now, it is important that you discuss this with the account manager of any affiliate offer you plan to require your visitors to complete in order to access your content. Some offers don’t allow incentive traffic while some do. Make sure that you only use offers that allow this type of traffic because the last thing you want to do is forfeit your earnings because you did not follow the guidelines. Just have open communication with your affiliate network and you will be fine.

You can also go straight to your affiliate network and let them know what you plan on doing and they can often suggest an offer that they feel will perform well for you while also remaining within the advertisers guidelines. Remember, they want you to be successful just as much as you do. Since they work with thousands of publishers they will typically have very good suggestions for you.

The key here is to create very high quality content that your readers are going to want to access so bad that they don’t mind filling out a quick survey or filling out a form in order to read it. Don’t gate all of your content though, as this will push away a large percentage of your traffic that isn’t interested in completing an offer.

8. Generate & Sell Leads

Once you build a strong following and your traffic numbers are constantly increasing you have the ability to generate your own in-house leads that you can then sell directly to an end buyer. This requires a little more work on your end, but the payout per lead generated can be significantly higher than what you would be paid by an affiliate offer.

Not every website is going to have a niche that has a direct demand for leads. Examples of niches that have this demand are finance, retirement and employment. If this isn’t for you then there are ways to come up with very targeted offers that you could create. For example, if you had a website about cars that discussed reviews of new models it would be hard to create an offer around those that wanted to purchase a car, because your visitors would be from all over and you would need to create relationships with nearly every dealership to make that work. It just wouldn’t make financial sense. So, you would think of something complimentary to the new car shopping experience, such as financing the purchase.

You could create an opt-in lead form to generate car-financing leads and then sell them to one of the largest auto financing companies. They wouldn’t have geographical restrictions, so it would allow you to sell all of the leads to one source. This would make it extremely manageable for you as you would just have one purchaser to deal with. If you decide to generate your own leads just make sure it is something general enough that it will interest a large percentage of your visitors and try to sell them all to one buyer.

Further reading: The Beginner’s Guide to Lead Generation: 7 Essential Resources

9. Related Posts

Outbrain is a great way to help monetize your blog, as it only includes adding a snippet of code to your website and they tend to have high click through rates. At the end of each blog post you publish the Outbrain widget is displayed and it suggests additional posts that their algorithm feels that your reader would also be interested, as they relate to the content they just finished reading. Each time they click through to one of their recommended articles you are compensated.

You don’t have to worry about the quality of the content being displayed on your website visitors, as Outbrain has a very strict policy and only syndicates content from high quality websites. Your visitors just see the post title and an image, so it really doesn’t distract them from your website. It is a great way to earn additional revenue, especially if the user was going to just leave your website after reading the content of the page they were viewing. You might as well maximize the revenue for every single visitor, and Outbrain is a great way to further monetize your website.

You can get more information about Outbrain by reading our Outbrain Review.

10. Paid Private Forum

Creating a private paid forum on your website is another great way to generate extra revenue. This is a strategy that can take a lot of time and should be attempted when you have more of a following and experience. If you built your website using WordPress then you can install the bbPress plugin and instantly create a forum on your website. The settings allow you to make it a private forum and there are add-on’s that allow you to manage paid subscriptions.

To justify charging a price to access your website forum you need to provide something of incredible value. You need a very strong USP (unique selling point) to justify making it a member’s only forum. Premium content, special offers and having well known industry influencers as members provide incentive for your visitors to sign up.

This provides you with a great opportunity to generate steady residual income, but you need to price you forum access in a way that it will encourage a large user base. Charging a high monthly fee will only attract a small pool of users and the forum will be inactive, causing your users to fall off and cancel their subscriptions. Keep it affordable so a large percentage of your user base will sign up. Even a $3 – $5 monthly fee can translate into a good return if you have a massive group of participants.

With several monetization options, it is a good idea to try several and then stick with the ones that earn you the most money per visitor. With all of the analytical and conversion data available you will be able to determine exactly how much each visitor is worth. Some of the most profitable websites have multiple income streams, so don’t be afraid to test several to determine what results in the biggest return for your site.

Affiliate marketing? Amazon? Google AdSense?

Making money from your website isn’t a myth. It’s doable by everyone.

In fact, turning a part-time, hobby blog into an income generating asset is fairly common with a bit of luck and some hard work.

At the very least, you should be able to make enough to cover your basic expenses for a domain and hosting. You might even be able to replace your income (and then some).

Keep in mind that the strategies listed below range from easy and passive, to ones that require a TON of on-going work (so make sure you pick something that suits your site and lifestyle preferences).

There are 33 total tips in this guide, but let’s start with the ten most popular (and predictable) site monetization tips.

P.S. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve started a blog or created a website. Those methods work for both.

10 Most Common Ways to Make Money with Your Website

Making money from your website isn’t easy. But these ten tips are probably your best bet.

1. Affiliate Marketing (.. and affiliate links)

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular (not to mention quickest) ways to make money from your website or blog.

Start by finding a product you like and would recommend. Then on your website, you endorse the product and promote it to your website visitors and email subscribers. If the product or service resonates with these people, they’ll click on your affiliate link, purchasing the product (while you get a split of the sale price).

The commission might be anywhere from 30% of the product or service price, up to as high as 70%. So for example, if the split is 50% and you promote an e-book that costs $100, you’ll get $50 for simply referring the buyer. Pretty sweet deal, huh?!

Where can I find products to promote?

• Commission junction – offers reliable products with on-time payments.
• ShareASale – mostly clothes, accessories, and other offline goods.
• Clickbank – high percentage payouts, but there’s a lack of GOOD products to promote.

2. Pay Per Click Advertising (Google Adsense)

AdWords are the advertisements that show up on the top of Google search result pages.

AdSense is the reverse, allowing publishers (which includes bloggers and other website owners like yourself) to tap into Google’s immense advertising network so that other advertisers can run ads on their website.

The best part about this system is how simple everything is.

Once you sign up, Google will place a simple code on your website that will identify the content of your site and start displaying relevant advertisements. For example, if your site is about pets (dogs & cats), Google AdSense will start showing your visitors ads for cat food, dog training and more.

You get paid each time someone clicks on the ad. (Yes, it’s really that easy!)

Your cut might be anywhere from $0.50 to $5 per click. However, when your site has enough traffic, you can make hundreds (if not thousands of dollars) each month.

How to apply for for Google Adsense?

• Apply for AdSense – Before applying, make sure you keep up with their latest Terms Of Service, though. Google has very strict rules, so it’s hard to get (and stay) approved.

3. Sell Ad Space

Incorporating Google’s AdSense on your website is just one way to make money from online advertisements.

Another is to simply sell your own ad space directly to companies looking to sponsor different blogs. For example, you can come up with a price for each space, like: “Sidebar banner ads will cost $xxx per month”.

You can get paid depending on how many visitors you get. Typically this is quoted as a dollar amount per one thousand impressions (or CPM). So for example, you might see it as: $5 CPM. If the website gets 100,000 visits a month, that ad price translates into $500 bucks.

The good thing about this approach is that if your site gets a ton of traffic from different sources, your simple banner ad pricing can go up to as high as $5000 per month! However, the obvious downside is that if your site doesn’t get a lot of traffic, you can’t expect to earn as much either.

The other common method when selling ad space directly from your website is a simple direct price. Here you simply name a price (based on what you think it’s worth, relative to what the competition might be charging), and get paid upfront at the beginning of each month. This pricing is also generally a simple flat fee, not tied to a Cost Per Click like AdSense.

Where can I let others know that my website is selling ad space?

• BuySellAds – The most popular one.
• AdvertiseSpace – I haven’t tried it, but it should be a good alternative.

4. Sell Your Own Digital Product (Ebook for Example)

You have the potential to make the most money on a per sale basis when you can sell your own directly.

That’s because there’s no middle-man or person in between you and the buyer that’s taking a ‘cut’ from the money earned.

This approach seems fairly straightforward because you can simply sell these products directly through your website and get paid immediately. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple in reality.

Creating good products that are well made and polished require a ton of time and additional resources (like design, content, etc.). So there’s a lot of ‘hidden costs’ in both time spent or contractors to collaborate with. Selling your own products on your site also bring up problematic issues like payment gateways (how are you going to collect payment?), shipping (how are you going to mail or distribute the products?) and taxes (oh man, don’t get me started).

And if that doesn’t sound like enough work already, you’ll also need a well designed, persuasive landing page to make sure your product has a strong conversion rate.

Additional resources:

How to sell products on your website.

How to set up a PayPal “Buy Now” button on WordPress

5. Accept Donations from visitors

Don’t have a ton of monthly visits, but you do have a strong, engaged community? Simply ask your readers to donate!

Accepting one-off donations isn’t a fast road to wealth, however, it can help you cover expenses in the short-term if people like what you have to say and want to support your journey.

For example, PayPal offers little donation buttons that only take about ten minutes to add to your website, offering you a quick way to recoup what you might be spending on a good web hosting, new product creation, research, and all of the other costs to maintain a healthy, active blog.

For example, web.archive.org makes a lot of money from donations (most likely due to their millions of visitors per month).

How to set up donation buttons?

• How to take donations on your website – The right way.

6. Accept sponsored posts & articles (…but use nofollow tag)

One of the common ways to making more money from your website means getting those visitor numbers UP.

Once you’ve done the hard work of building steady traffic to your site with an engaged community, there are a few different ways to monetize your hard work.

For example, many companies go out of their way to look for blogs that will feature their sponsored content. ‘Native advertising‘ like this works well because it still lines up with your site’s primary content, so it comes across relevant and transparent.

You can also review the products from a company in an ‘advertorial’ that’s part content, part advertisement. For example, if your website is all about the latest iOS games for iPhones and iPads, the creator of one of those ads would LOVE to have you review and feature their app to your fans.

When done right, this can create a win/win scenario. However done poorly, with irrelevant or inauthentic site content, and it can erode all of the reader’s goodwill you’ve worked so hard to create in the first place.

For further reading:

• How to make money through sponsored posts and reviews – About.com

7. Generate ‘leads’ for other companies

Businesses thrive off new leads coming in their door to inquire about their products or services.

It’s no surprise then that they’re always on the lookout, searching for creative ways to find new sources of leads to help them grow.

For example:

Let’s say you have a website about teaching math skills. Your reader’s information (like their email address or phone number) would be of great value to different online schools who’re looking to sell their courses to eager, proactive students.

Basically, you’re connecting the dots; playing the matchmaker by introducing two parties who can benefit one another. While it’s similar to how affiliate marketing works, in this case it doesn’t actually matter if your reader ends up purchasing their product or not. They’re just looking for an introduction at this point.

Where can I find such offers?

• MaxBounty
• Neverblue
• Peerfly

8. Build an ‘Email List’

Spend any amount of time reading blog growth tips, and you’re sure to come across people saying “the money’s in the list“.

They’re referring to your email list, which comprises your most loyal readers. The objective is to convert as many strangers who visit your site for the first time into passionate followers who want to stay up-to-date on your latest work or content.

Admittedly this is a long term strategy (and you definitely won’t get rich overnight). But it’s one of the best, long-term methods to profitably growing your blog into a full-fledged, money making enterprise.

Never lose sight of the importance in creating relationships with your followers, however. Offering great information or free help is a perfect way to start. Spamming people with unsolicited offers is one of the fastest ways to abuse reader’s trust and sabotage your long-term goals.

How exactly does it EXACTLY work?

• Listbuilding 101 – Probably the best introduction on the internet.
• How to build a list with your website
• Best Email Marketing Services

9. Set up an e-commerce site (hard work is required)

Websites don’t have to be just content. They can be centered around tools or products in an online store.

Be forewarned, though:

There are literally hundreds of thousands of eCommerce websites or online stores. Make sure that yours is filling a unique niche, with a detailed strategy and the latest marketing techniques to stand out from the crowd.

How do I create a successful online store/shop?

• How to Make a WooCommerce Shop (WordPress)
• How to Make Shopify E-commerce Store (Shopify)

10. Flip Your Websites (Create -> Sell -> Reinvest)

Believe it or not, there’s almost always a market out there for your website.

That means if you’ve built up a following  (or possibly even sold a few products or included advertising on your site), you might be able to sell it to someone else and make a quick buck.

To be honest, I typically don’t suggest people plan on flipping their website or blog. (I’m a bigger fan of creating something for the long term.)

But you can’t deny how lucrative it can be. For example, if your website is making $500 per/month through selling ad space, you might be able to sell the site for $5,000 – $10,000 (which is about 12x – 22x monthly income).

Another interesting option is to sell ready-made sites, These are MUCH cheaper, but there’s still some money to be made.

Where can I sell my site?

• Flippa – The most popular website market.
• We Buy Websites – Another popular marketplace.
• FEinternational – Mostly for high-end websites.

We’ve counted down some of the most popular ways to earn money from your website.

However, we’re only just scratching the surface.

Below are another 23 ways to make money with your website.

(Keep in mind that some of them are slightly connected with the ones above yet they are little ‘out of the box’.)

 

Another 23 ways to monetize your website

11. Sell text-link ads (NOT RECOMMENDED) – There’s still a demand for text-links ads (believe it or not). But please keep in mind that these violate Google’s Terms of Service (which means you run the risk of getting penalized).

To avoid it, simply keep the ‘nofollow‘.

12. Set up “infolinks” – Infolinks are a great alternative to AdSense advertisements, that are very easy to setup. However, the downside is that they aren’t high converting, and the payouts (on a per click basis) are also quite small.

13. Use monetization widgets – These are also very similar to Google Adsense, so they’re worth trying out as an alternative.

14. Set up RSS feed ads. – Exactly what they sound like. Ad space for sale in-line with content from an RSS feed.

15. Give away premium content for extra $$$ – If you are producing mind-blowing, awesome content that visitors can’t get enough of… you can always try asking them to pay for some of it! (Crazy concept, huh?!) I’m personally fine with paying for premium content. However, don’t ask people to pay right away. Instead, stay focused on growing an audience and visitors first.

16. Start a private forum or coaching class(es) – Most of us have unique skills that others can benefit from. Setting up a simple forum or classes is an easy way to (a) help others and (b) generate recurring income at the same time.

17. Create a job board – Setting up a job board on your website is another simple, easy way to collect additional money when people accepting different job offers from various companies or individuals.

18. Offer consulting – Offering consulting gigs and providing services can help you bring in decent sums of money while other forms of ‘passive’ revenue take a little time to build up. You can offer these services via email, forum and or even Skype.

19. Add “hire me” page on your website – Your new website or blog is also a perfect place to feature your freelancing services. Showcasing samples or evidence of past work will help greatly increase your chances of getting hired.

20. Sell or rent internal pages – These aren’t very common, however, you might be surprised at what people would be willing to rent or spend money on!

21. Display pop-ups advertisements – Pop-ups can be extremely annoying. However, they’re also another easy way to make some quick money.

22. Use content lockers – ‘Content locking’ is similar to hiding or protecting pieces of content until a visitor takes some action to redeem it. For example, maybe you want them to pay a small amount, or perhaps click on an advertisement.

23. Display audio ads – These are relatively new and are becoming increasingly more common. Personally, I haven’t tried it. But I have read some articles and it definitely looks promising.

24. Sell an e-book – This one is a no-brainer. Many people sell e-books through their site. Some examples: If you have a website about recipes and cooking, you can easily create and sell your own recipe book. The same applies in almost every single other niche.

25. Create a conference around your website – Lots of work, but a huge potential payoff as well.

26. Set up a teaching program – Kinda like a cross between selling your own content and offering consulting or services.

27. Host paid webinars – Similar to the last tip, which is largely a mix of consulting through content.

28. Create a membership site – Yet another tier on the ‘info-business’ model that has the added benefit of bringing in recurring revenue.

29. Offer coupons (with affiliate links) – People are eagerly looking for discount & promo codes for everything from clothes to travel vacations. If you can (find and) offer a valid one, you can also get a cut of the revenue too.

30. Host polls on your website – Hard to believe, but easy to do!

31. Offer writing gigs – You can easily make $20 – $30 per 500-word articles writing for other companies or individuals. There’s also a huge potential for fluent speakers of different languages, as many companies want their websites translated by those who speak the native language.

32. Create a paid directory/business page – You charge people for listing or submissions to the page.

33. Just copy what others are doing – My personal favourite! 😉

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P.S. If you wish to use this infographic on your website, feel free to do so.

P.S.S. If you know any other ways to monetize websites, let me know in the comment section. I’ll add it to the list and credit you by putting your name under it.