7 Ways To Be Profitable With WordPress

You’ve put an incredible amount of effort into creating your site. So now how do you profit from it? The good news is because you’re on WordPress, you’ll already be reaping the benefits of powerful SEO combined with professionalism and extensive functionality.

Let’s take a look at a few key winning tactics you can use to monetize off your WordPress site (including some WordPress plugins that can assist!).

How to Profit with WordPress

1. Join an affiliate program

   
   Graphic source: Shopify

   Affiliate programs allow you to profit by placing another brand’s ad on your site. If a user clicks-through the ad and purchases a product or service, you’ll earn a percentage of that sale.

   On your WordPress site you can promote and review certain products or services on your site, linking to the brand’s product page somewhere in the post. Again, you’ll earn commission if a user clicks-through the link and completes a purchase.

   Just be sure the products you’re promoting align with your target audience. For instance, it wouldn’t make sense to advertise cars when your site or blog is about fashion.

   Here are some WordPress plugins that make affiliate marketing a piece of cake: ThirstyAffiliates, Auto Affiliate Links, Easy Affiliate Links

2. Develop Themes and plugins

   
   As you can see from the data presented above, WordPress plugins and themes present a thriving marketplace. In fact, between WordPress themes and plugins, more than $300 million has exchanged hands. In addition, authors with at least one sale average over $52,000 annually.

   Developing a plugin or theme isn’t easy though. The hardest aspects of this monetization tactic include:

   1) Finding something people actually want
   2) Figuring out how to develop it

   For more info on developing WordPress plugins and themes, see WordPress Codex’s Writing a Plugin and Theme Development articles.

   Once developed, you can sell your plugin or theme using Easy Digital Downloads, or create an ecommerce store to start monetizing off your creation.

3. Offer Subscriptions and memberships

   Subscription commerce is a great way to earn repeat income; all the user has to do is signup and you’ll get repeating monthly payments. You can offer types of subscription/memberships, such as access to premium content or online courses.

   Here are some WordPress plugins to help get you started with subscriptions and memberships: Membership 2, Ultimate Member, MemberPress, Simple Membership, and more.

   Of course, subscriptions also apply to emails. Therefore you’ll want to focus on growing your email subscription list in addition to potentially offering a subscription/membership commerce service.

   Building a bigger email list is important because it develops a relationship between your brand and readers, as well as converts readers into prospects.

   Here are some of the best WordPress plugins for growing your email list: OptinMonster, Drip, Email Subscribers & Newsletters, MailMunch, WP Subscribe

4. Sell Digital Products

   
   Graphic source: Udemy

   Ebooks and other items that can be digitally downloaded are a worthwhile investment if you’re looking to monetize off your WordPress site.

   For instance, if you own a health site, you could create an ebook containing healthy cooking recipes. Or if you blog about traveling, you could focus on in-depth ebooks that contain useful travel tips.

   Creating content that’s worth downloading isn’t always easy to do. If you lack graphic design skills, try using Canva.com for easy ebook creation. You might also consider creating a landing page to ensure whatever digital product you offer has a strong conversion rate.

   To help get your digital products on your site, use a plugin like Easy Digital Downloads or Pressbooks.

5. sell tangible goods

   

   Starting an ecommerce store is a great way to earn extra cash. You could try selling items with your brand’s logo or name (think notepads, water bottles, stickers, etc.). Or you can make your shop a separate entity from your home site.

   Starting an ecommerce store on WordPress is super easy to do. The leading WordPress ecommerce solution is WooCommerce, however ecommerce sites like Shopify, Volusion, BigCommerce, and Magento can all be integrated with WordPress.

6. accept sponsored articles

   Extra content and cash? Sounds too good to be true. But once your site is established and has enough authority, you’ll want to accept sponsored posts…that is guest authors paying you to publish their content on your site.

   Once your site gets enough traffic, you’ll likely be approached by others who want you to write about their products, linking to their site in return for money. You might even get requests by others who want to write the posts themselves and pay you to publish them.

   However, be careful that all published content is of quality. You wouldn’t want a bad post to damage your page rankings or be off-target with your current audience.

   Plugins like Guest Post Simplified and Really Simple Guest Post Plugin can assist you with creating sponsored posts.

7. Invest in a performance platform

   

   To help you squeeze the most money out of your WordPress monetization efforts, you’ll want to consider investing in a hosting platform to acquire the added benefits of top-notch site performance.

   Ensuring your WordPress site is optimized for traffic, speed, and performance is the next step in building a WordPress empire that can attain the highest possible revenue. WP Engine delivers on this with its enterprise-grade performance platform and other WordPress hosting solutions.

   If you want to learn more about the importance of site speed and performance, check out this free ebook: Every Second Counts: How Page Performance And Speed Affect Your Business And Your Bottom Line.