How to Make Money Online With WordPress [8 Proven Ways]

Did you know that almost half of all websites use WordPress? That’s right, 43% of websites are powered by WordPress, which means it’s super easy for most people to make money with WordPress!

WordPress is like a big, friendly robot that helps you create and share your blog with the world. And the best part? You can turn your love for writing into cold, hard cash!

Whether you’ve been blogging for a while or you’re just starting, WordPress has tons of ways for you to make money from your blog.

My today’s article is primarily aimed at two types of audiences:

• Newbies in the WordPress ecosystem look forward to kick-starting a productive and progressive career.
• Existing users willing to generate money from multiple revenue streams (duh, everybody likes earning extra money :))

In this piece, I’ll be helping you explore all the possible gateways through which you can earn money using WordPress. So without further ado, let’s get started!

1 Monetizing Through Your Blog

For your business to have an online presence, it’s always recommended to start a website. Not sure how to get started with your WordPress website? Check out this article → How to Start a WordPress Blog.

After setting up a blog, you can make money via affiliate marketing, advertisements, sponsored reviews, etc. If you have good content and more traffic on your blog, making money is not a strenuous task.

1.1 Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a business model where a user earns a commission upon promoting other companies or people’s products using affiliate links. For example, Amazon generates an affiliate link of a product tailored to your account to ensure that Amazon can easily detect your sales.

And the beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to spend countless hours building a product yourself; you just select the products and promote them.

A few of my personal favorites with affiliate marketing programs in the community are offered by Kinsta, Elegant Themes, Siteground, and Envato. Moreover, you can find great affiliate products from plenty of affiliate networks like Clickbank, ShareASale, and JVZoo.

Take an example of Kinsta that offers you up to $500 for a single sale. How can you promote it?

The first step is to purchase the Kinsta hosting plan, make videos or write articles explaining how Kinsta is different from traditional hosting companies. You can mention Kinsta uses the Google Cloud Platform — speedy, efficient, and user-friendly.

Other ways to earn money are affiliate partnerships. You can connect with the hot selling products in your niche, connect with the vendor and have a dedicated page to sell their products to earn a commission.

After choosing your product to promote, you can also use WordPress plugins like Pretty Links and Thirsty Affiliates to manage the affiliate links.

It’s worth mentioning that good affiliate marketers have a creative mind to solve complex problems. They pick the right product, the right channel, and the right audience to sell your products.

You can get success faster by using affiliate marketing tools like SEMrush to find the perfect keywords that people are actually searching for, Ahrefs to find untapped backlinks opportunities, Rank Maths to optimize your content to rank better on Google.

1.2 Advertisements

Advertisements are the most practiced technique of making money through WordPress. You display advertisements on your website for third-party products and earn money through clicks. And why only third-party products? You can advertise your products as well.

On WordPress, you can find plenty of advertising plugins like Ads by WPQUAD to put the banner ad on your website without writing a single line of code.

Google Adsense is considered the easiest monetization method for new bloggers, as you only need to copy and paste a few lines of code in your site where you want to display these ads and start generating money.

World’s best websites use Google Adsense to earn a significant amount of money like Healthline, Techradar, and The Guardian.

The next question might come to your mind, “how much can I earn with Google Adsense?” The answer to the question, Google Adsense, created a simple tool to find out the estimated earning you can make as per the target region and the niche you work on.

Did you know? Successful bloggers earn handsome amounts of money up to $4500 a month using Google Adsense.

In order to earn good revenue from Google Adsense, your blog must generate good traffic from Google. You might be thinking about how to get traffic for FREE? The best way is to learn SEO — the art of ranking your website on Google.

Did you know? Professional bloggers recommend earning money from affiliate marketing instead of Google Adsense. The reason is that affiliate marketing has a high payoff in the long term. If you make $1000 a month using Google Adsense, you can make ten times higher than Google Adsense with affiliate marketing.

1.3 Paid Sponsorships

You can also add a sponsor page to your website to seek help from companies and individuals to support your work as The Guardian asks for a donation.

Other than that, this sponsor page can help you earn paid reviews for third-party businesses. You can tap on this opportunity by offering them a hands-on product review and, in return, end up making a decent chunk of money.

For the sake of profile building, you can even write these reviews for free, and once you get established, you can monetize this service of yours. On average, you can earn between $100 to $250 by writing these paid reviews.

Apart from this, you can always reach out to companies yourself pitching an idea about writing for them and helping them spread the word through social media.

1.4 Public Speaking, Podcasts, and Personal Branding

If you are a good orator, then there’s an exciting niche in the WordPress ecosystem that revolves around public speaking and podcasts. You can be a host for a conference, or you can participate in such existing engagements. This is one big step in profile building and personal branding.

WordPress is all-famous for its community-based events, and these are generally backed by big names of the industry, especially WordCamp.

Getting sponsorships helps you not only to meet the event expenditures but also to get good public speakers on board. You’ll be in a capacity to pay the speaker honorarium, which is a huge motivation. Even if the event is unpaid, you make the right name for yourself which might translate into a potential job opportunity.

2 Content Creation & Freelance Writing

WordPress was built to cater to the niche of content writing. It turned out to be a nightmare for several other blogging platforms, including the Blogger by Google. It opened an all-new arena in content writing through WordPress.com and encouraged even unconventional writers to blog frequently.

With time, this outreach wasn’t restricted to only WordPress.com; the community established an entire content writing industry around it. And believe me, it is gratifying.

Writing content requires three things:

• The writing skill
• A decent computer/laptop
• A good internet connection

If you are good at writing despite being non-technical, then the stage is set for you. Content writing in WordPress is the most convenient yet skillful way of earning money. You write for blogs and websites and get paid. You’ll find “Write for us” or a similar page featured on a website where you can apply to be a full, part-time, or even a freelance writer.

The process is pretty straightforward. At most times, you do not have to go through lengthy interview procedures. All that is required is an article’s pitch, some links to your work, and your portfolio. However, it might be challenging for beginners since they have not accomplished any writing gigs in the past but do not worry.

Invest a month or two in writing on your blog or at platforms like Medium. Try getting yourself recognized as an established author, and then reach out to these websites.

Did you know? A single-story has earned up to $16,000 and a single author up to $49,000 in 2020 on Medium.

Besides you can go through the job listings for content writing projects on the company’s Careers page other than blogs and websites.

For freelance services, Upwork, Freelancer, and Fiverr are the related platforms that you should check.

3 Become A Developer

If you’re a maestro at code, then you can earn money by becoming a WordPress developer. This will require more technical skills, but it’s not too hard to get started. You can always develop a new plugin, theme, or even customize it, etc.

3.1 WordPress Plugin Development

To ensure a smooth running of a WordPress website, you need the right set of plugins. Period.

Despite the huge free WordPress plugin directory, the market is ever ready to welcome paid plugins. Over the years, plugin developers initially got started with a free product, and when it outgrew, a paid version of it. That paves the way for a full-fledged plugin development company.

Undoubtedly, building plugins might seem a tedious task, but it’s easier than building a theme. All you need to hire a freelancer, guide him to create your plugin at a budget-friendly cost.

Take the example of Easy Digital Downloads (EDD). It started as a free plugin, but later, its developer established a decent company out of a single product. This is one possible approach to start a career with paid plugin development.

Before launching a new plugin, you need to do market research to study how viable it will be.

Check out the competitors and explore whether you are capable of completing them or not. You also need to focus on ways of promoting and selling the plugin. This will help you to create constant cash flow.

3.2 WordPress Theme Development

Want to make the most money from WordPress? Learn custom theme development. Businesses now recognize the value of custom themes as most companies use cookie-cutter-driven templates — customers hate such sites.

Just like plugins, the themes ecosystem has a consolidated significance in the WordPress space. They serve as a potential chance to earn money. The business model for theme development is no less different from plugin development. I have seen developers building an entire theme shop out of a single WordPress theme.

Good examples to quote here are Elegant Themes, MyThemeShop, ThemeIsle, etc. Today, these companies develop WordPress themes but offer adjacent services and plugin suites, security, management toolkits, hosting, etc.

Did you know? Avada is the most selling theme on WordPress — achieved a striking revenue of 39 million dollars from Themeforest.

Moreover, if you’re a pro in writing code, you can provide your services to customize themes and get paid for them. Many developers make a good amount of money by offering website, theme, and plugin customization services on WordPress job sites.

Many users can install a theme but are unable to change it according to their needs. That’s where the role of customizing websites comes in. You can custom page layouts, post types, create logos, etc., and earn a living.

3.3 Design

Apart from this, you can also provide design services to clients. If you have a creative mind, then crafting awe-inspiring web designs is your go-to task. And why only web design? Like development, design trends have significantly improved over the years.

People have component-based design toolkits that go hand-in-hand with site development—mockups, templates, banners, widgets, buttons, and whatnot. Just name any WordPress site component, and you’ll find an excellent solution for it.

4 Selling Digital Products

Another great mode of making money with WordPress is to create a digital product and sell it. Since online trends are rising exponentially, everything pursues to grasp an online presence. Here are a few digital product ideas which you can create and get started.

4.1 Online Teaching

Online teaching is another source of income since the internet has made this world globally-connected, and everything is just a few clicks away. So are the teaching trends that have changed, and people prefer learning through online courses than enrolling in some in-house program.

Online teaching has several benefits that are not only attached to ease and convenience. Instead, it has brought versatility as well. Today, you get to enjoy courses by instructors from all around the globe without going places.

If you are good at WordPress-related skills, be it design, development, content, or marketing, no one is restricting you from holding the mic and recording lectures.

Several WordPress instructors earn their living through online selling video courses independently or taking help from third-party platforms like Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Lamda School, etc.

If you want to self-host your courses, you can use LearnDash; it is the best WordPress LMS Plugin and is used by Fortune 500 Companies.

4.2 Writing eBooks

If you think you might not do well with recording online lectures, writing ebooks could be your source of passive income streams. Once again, writing a WordPress-related ebook and then selling it is not a bad option. I call it a more refined form of content writing.

If you have been blogging for quite some time, you can create an ebook, including your blog posts. That’s a decent start.

4.3 eCommerce

Just like people find ease at learning online, they feel the same when purchasing things. Ecommerce refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet. The WordPress community is blessed to have excellent eCommerce plugins that fix the hassle of setting up an online store.

Yes, I am talking about WooCommerce — an eCommerce plugin to sell a variety of products from physical products to digital products. It again started as a free plugin, but today it offers premium plugins for complete eCommerce solutions.

 Getting started with WooCommerce is pretty straightforward. Even if you come from a completely non-technical background and are interested in selling online, this plugin helps you achieve your goal in a jiffy.

4.4 Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a way of creating an online store on your website without handling the inventory or shipping items yourself. WordPress can also be used to build a dropshippingstore. In this case, you sell goods directly to customers but third party ships them out, and you don’t have to worry about the shipment. You can use the WooCommerce plugin to create a dropshipping store. Using plugins or settings ensures that the shipping info is sent to the supplier directly.

People have set up their entire businesses using e-commerce or dropshipping and are earning very well. This option of making money with WordPress doesn’t require hard technical skills and pays off very well too.

5 Paid Membership Websites

Having your audience pay to access certain content or areas of your site is another way of making money using WordPress. You can create a restricted only content on your website and let only members have access to it. For this option to work out, you need a loyal audience willing to pay for the membership and are interested in your work.

You can easily create a membership site using an intuitive plugin called MemberPress. It is the most beginner user-friendly membership plugin out there.

MemberPress will help you build astounding WordPress membership sites, accept credit cards securely, sell online courses, control who sees your content, and sell digital downloads, all without any difficulty.

Membership sites can be a long-time investment since you must create premium content for your paying members without long hiatuses. But they can be very lucrative because they generate constant revenue.

6 Website Maintenance

There is a huge opportunity for generating income with maintenance services. Many website owners don’t want to deal with the day-to-day tasks of running a website. They simply want a way for people to find them on the web. And this is where the role of hiring someone to maintain a website comes in.

Most businesses frequently need consulting for various services like WordPress design, development, and search engine optimization. You can provide WordPress consulting services for small enterprises along with website maintenance.

If you already have a website for yourself and are looking after WordPress updates, security monitoring, theme and plugin updates, hosting management, CDN setup, etc., then maintaining someone else’s website and getting paid for it is not a bad idea. Using site management plugins like InfiniteWP and ManageWP will make your life easier.

With the help of plugins, you can provide a comprehensive maintenance service to your clients without monitoring each site individually and earning tons of money for it, especially with blog setup services.

7 Providing SEO Services

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an integral part of building up a website. If a website has good SEO, it will rank well and attract more traffic and, ultimately, more money.

To be successful in SEO, you must provide valuable content to your audience to rank better in search engines. The demand for SEO has dramatically increased thanks to the competition in PPC.

If you’re good at content optimization, increasing site speed, and SEO, many website owners, will hire you for this. The knowledge and skills you use for building your website can help someone else too and, in return, can generate an income for you as well.

The search Engine Optimization market is expected to grow dramatically, especially during COVID-19, as most businesses are moving online to boost their sales.

SEO is vast. Don’t be a jack of all trades and master of none. Select a specific SEO field like Local SEO, Technical SEO, International SEO, and Off-Page SEO.

Most people are earning plenty of money using guest posts in SEO. A guest post is a blog post published on other websites to get a backlink relevant to the industry to boost ranking in search engines.

Another great way other than SEO is email marketing. With email marketing, you can provide exclusive content to your audience to build trust — making it easier for you to sell later.

Another effective way is to get the WordPress websites from simple Google search, scrape their emails and send them the services you’re selling.

It’s called cold email marketing — not effective until it’s hyper-personalized and relevant to the niches.

8 Security

WordPress is secure, but vulnerabilities are always there. That’s why cybercrime costs businesses $10.5 Trillion annually By 2025. The amount is enormous.

You can become a WordPress security expert to fix hacked WordPress websites, protect businesses from common attacks, and penetration testing to discover new vulnerabilities.

Especially if you are an enterprise client, then securing your online assets becomes even more critical. If you are a web security expert and can help businesses protect themselves, you should tap into this niche.

Currently, there are many security-providing solutions other than plugins. Where plugins help you achieve an essential security tightening, these companies help you on an extended level. Sucuri and SiteLock are good examples to quote. These companies are serving their WordPress clients for quite some time and can serve as excellent inspiration.

Summary

In this world of the internet, it’s all about leaving those conventional ways of money-making and adopting the new online world. And WordPress has helped people in doing so. Whether you are an expert developer or not, there is an opportunity for everyone interested in making money with WordPress. If you can use any of the suggestions mentioned above and know-how to sell yourself or your product, you will have plenty of chances to make really good money using WordPress.

With all the parameters mentioned above, you can easily earn money with WordPress. So, there you have it. I hope that you’ll find this article super helpful in choosing your way. For any queries or feedback, don’t hesitate to use the comments section below.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)