WordPress is not only the most popular CMS platform but also the best choice for your website, no matter what industry you belong to. What’s more, once you’re comfortable with WordPress, you can make use of your newly acquired skills and make money with it too.
In this post, I’m sharing the top 12 ways to make money online with WordPress. At the end of the post, I’m also sharing these tips as a video so you can see real examples of people who have taken their WordPress skills and used them to make money. Let’s dig in!
1. Start Your Own Web Design Business
The most obvious way to make money with WordPress is to start your own web design business. There are several ways to monetize this; from designing websites for people to adding recurring income through monthly SEO packages, maintenance or update packages.
The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to learn how to code thanks to plugins like Elementor and themes like the Divi theme. If you have a great eye for design, there are plenty of people that will pay you to set up a website for them and you can easily use a page builder or a theme with a page builder built-in to speed up the process and avoid coding from scratch altogether.
2. Start Your Own e-Commerce Business
Next up is an e-Commerce business. What makes this a great idea to start making money online.
3. Sell Digital Products
If you don’t like the idea of selling physical products, consider selling digital products. If you’re good at drawing or any other skill, you can create digital products that others are willing to pay for. A few examples include:
Cooking instructions or recipes following a particular diet
Icons, fonts, patterns or any other graphic asset
Computer and phone wallpapers, digital drawings or paintings,
Wall prints
The good thing about digital products is that you only have to create the item once and can sell it multiple times. This means you don’t have to worry about shipping, taxes or warehouse fees.
4. WordPress Products
If you are interested in coding and have learned how to make your own WordPress theme or a plugin, you can sell WordPress themes and plugins. Similarly to digital products, there are no shipping or tax fees nor do you have to worry about storing items in a warehouse somewhere.
You can sell themes and plugins as a one-time purchase or you can opt for a popular annual subscription model where your users get support and updates for one year for as long as they renew their subscription.
5. produce and Sell on-line Courses on Your web site
Another way to make money is to create and sell courses on your website. If you feel confident in your WordPress skills, you can teach others how to start using WordPress. You can also cover specific plugins like WooCommerce or Yoast SEO.
While you can sell courses on WordPress, keep in mind that WordPress is not the only topic. You can produce a course concerning something you’re significantly smart at.
There are plenty of businesses out there that not only sell courses on WordPress but also on topics like how to run webinars, how to use a specific software, how to run an online business, and more.
6. Create Templates for WordPress
Once you know how to use the Divi theme or the Elementor plugin, you can create templates for them and sell them. There are plenty of WordPress designers who have found success with this business model. A couple of examples embody Elegant Marketplace and CrocoBlock.
Keep in mind that this space is getting rather competitive pretty quickly so if you want to go down this route, make sure your templates are outstanding in terms of design and bring something new to the table.
7. Make an Affiliate Website
Affiliate marketing is the number 1 way to make money online. With this business model, you’re promoting someone else’s product and get paid a commission each time someone makes a purchase using your link.
The best way to monetize your affiliate website requires more than just throwing up a bunch of affiliate links. You have to provide value to your visitors and explain how a certain product will improve their life and show them why they should use it.
A few sites to get you started with affiliate marketing include:
ClickBank
Commission Junction
ShareASale
8. Sell Freelance Services
You can also sell freelance services on marketplaces like Freelancer.com, Upwork, and others. The benefit of this is that you don’t have to spend a ton of time and money marketing yourself as people who come to this platform are already looking for someone like you.
You can sell WordPress design as well as services like troubleshooting, quick fixes, maintenance, custom plugins, and more.
9. Guest Blogging and Paid Ads
If you have a popular blog or love blogging in general, you can monetize it through sponsored posts and paid ads. The way this works is simple: if your blog is in a popular niche, people who have products or services in that niche are willing to pay you to write a post about them.
You can also sell advertising space in your blog’s sidebar or header area. Once someone buys an ad space, you’ll display their banner for the duration of their campaign. You can make this a one-time charge or a recurring monthly fee.
10. Sell Online Courses on Other Platforms
Similarly to selling courses on your website, you can sell courses on other platforms like Udemy.
The benefit of this approach is that a lot of the marketing work has been done for you as people who visit your platform are generally looking for a course on a specific topic already. Not to mention, you don’t have to worry about bandwidth and hosting fees as your course is hosted on the platform itself.
11. Sell Websites
Another way to make money is by selling websites on platforms like Flippa.com. There are two ways to approach this:
You can sell an established website — keep in mind that if you want to make this worthwhile, you will either need to spend the time needed to build the website into a profitable site with plenty of traffic.
Sell a brand new website with a good domain name and WordPress already installed and configured — this method can pay off as well as people generally don’t want to deal with the location setup thus you’re giving them a hands-free answer.
12. Use Craigslist Lastly, consider using your local Craigslist. Believe it or not, people are using Craigslist to find others who are familiar with WordPress to help them solve minor issues or even design full websites.
