How to Monetize a Squarespace Blog
Have you ever thought about what else you could be doing to monetize your Squarespace website?
Sure, you can use a website to sell your services, but there are other ways to make money via your site, too. Why not, right?
Of course, you don’t want to turn your website into a slow-running advertising machine, so it’s important to have goals about maintaining the overall character of your site and choosing options that will be a good fit. You can monetize AND maintain the integrity of your website.
That’s not to say that it’s easy to make money online because realistically, it takes consistent work to grow a money-making website. That includes tasks like:
Creating valuable content for your website
Optimizing your website for SEO (including content)
Building an audience via social media or other channels
Growing your email list
Engaging with your audience
Finding multiple ways to drive traffic (paid or unpaid)
With those things figured out, you can look at monetization methods that don’t involve selling your services. The kinds of revenue you can actually make while you sleep are awesome. You can’t beat passive income, and here are some ways to do it online:
Free download: How to choose website monetization methods
#1. Affiliate and referral marketing
As an affiliate marketer or member of a referral program, you make a cut every time you make the referral to another business. For example, you’ll often see bloggers who post links to products that they review - those are usually affiliate links.
How affiliate programs work
Usually, you apply to be an affiliate and the company decides whether you’re a good fit, although not all screen their affiliates. We’d say the best kind DO screen, because it’s important that affiliates fit in with their messaging and purpose, and vice versa. It would make no sense if your core website mission was to sell your Squarespace website building services, but at the same time, you were an affiliate for cat food!
If you are approved as an affiliate, you’ll be set up with some sort of account (there are many different ways of running an affiliate program), and access to create your own unique links. When people click on your link and make a purchase, you get paid.
For the sake of your own reputation, we’d recommend you carefully screen the products or services you want to promote as an affiliate. Here’s an example - at SQSP Themes, we have a page dedicated to apps that we recommend. Those are affiliate links, but we only add those that we know and trust.
You can also become an affiliate for sharing our plugins. We screen applicants, too.
How much money can you make?
One of the keys to making any sort of decent income from affiliate marketing is to have consistent, targeted traffic to your website. Most programs work by paying you either a fixed rate or a percentage amount for sales made via your link - one sale isn’t going to pay the rent!
You can expect that it takes time and persistence. Top affiliate marketers make thousands of dollars each month, but they’ve usually worked for a long time to reach that level. For example, by building an engaged blog audience.
Tips to make affiliate marketing work
It’s about delivering value, rather than being “salesy.” People tend to be wary of links being dropped in out of nowhere, so make it relevant and valuable.
For example, you could:
Create tutorials for things that people really want to know about, then include affiliate links for any tools or resources that are relevant.
Write honest product reviews.
Have a dedicated page (like we do) of recommended tools and resources.
#2. Create and sell your own digital products
We recently wrote a few articles about digital products, what you can do with them, and the advantages for your business.
How digital products work
You are the owner and creator of the product that you sell. Some of the most “ideal” products, especially if you want more passive income streams, are those you rarely have to touch once created. In other words, you create them, then put the mechanism in place to sell them so that you don’t have to “do work” every time you make a sale (though you might need to make updates to the product).
As a Squarespace designer, some relevant products might include things like:
Squarespace themes
Plugins or apps
Courses or books on how to solve a relevant problem for your target audience
Graphics or photography for websites…
How much money can you make?
Again, this is a function of how much qualified traffic you drive to your website. You need to be proactive about identifying who the best customer is for your product, then targeting campaigns to those people. Popular digital products on high-traffic websites make thousands of dollars each month.
Tips to make digital products work
The best digital products solve a key issue for the customer in a format that is simple for them to consume. So if you were to create some kind of tool or calculator, you’d want to think about how to make that as user-friendly as possible. For ebooks or courses, you’d think about formatting so that advice is practical and easy to follow.
#3. Sell merchandise
Do you have a niche that is ripe for things like t-shirts or coffee mugs? You could choose to sell merchandise from your website, and there are ways to do that without packing and shipping.
How to sell merchandise without having to store or ship
In a similar vein to affiliate marketing, there are companies that exist that manage the entire supply chain. For example, you might design a t-shirt and put it up for sale via an ecommerce link on your site. A customer places an order and that goes to the third-party that will produce the t-shirt and send it to your customer. Here are examples of on-demand printing platforms (note that t-shirts are just one example of many possible products):
Teespring - For on-demand apparel
Printful - Has a Squarespace integration for on-demand printing and dropshipping
Spreadshirt - On-demand apparel and gift items
How much money can you make?
If you’re using an on-demand printing and dropshipping service, the rates will vary. For example, on Teespring, you choose a price that you want to charge and it will show your estimated cut. The advantage is that you don’t have to make an expensive outlay on pre-printed merchandise, the disadvantage is that you won’t make as much money for sales.
So once again, if you’re consistently driving a lot of traffic, you can make good money. There are some stories of top Teespring sellers making massive amounts of money, for example. The key is that they’ve worked hard to get there.
Tips to make selling merchandise work
The bottom line is that you have to consistently market it. For Squarespace website designers, it’s a matter of finding a way that fits with your own business style and is a natural extension of what you offer for customers. Top Teespring sellers report that they spend a bit on Facebook advertising to drive people to their merchandise.
#4. Advertising and sponsored posts
Most people don’t want to turn their website into a spammy-looking advertising space, but there are ways to do it without crossing that line. It’s not 2011 though, so forget things like RSS feed ads (or RSS feeds - no one really reads them).
In terms of display ads, most websites aren’t really making money off them anymore. Data shows that 25% of internet users are using ad blocking software, so they’re not even going to see your banner ads. Then there’s this investigation that found you would need 20,000 website visitors per day to make $100k off Google Adsense. So what can you do?
How to make money from advertising on your website
One of the ways popular blogs often make money is by charging other companies for sponsored posts. These may be blog posts with links to products in them - generally, you only want to include posts that add value on your website. You might also choose to publish sponsored product reviews, only if they’re relevant to your audience.
Does Adsense work with Squarespace?
Yes. You can add Adsense links via code block or sitewide code injection.
How much money can you make?
This varies with factors such as how much traffic you get and the individual sponsor’s budget. Some popular blogs offer packages where they charge companies $750 - $1,500 per sponsored post. If they want promotion via social media channels as well, there’s often an extra charge for that.
Tips to making advertising or sponsored posts work
Be selective. Short-term financial gain isn’t worth it if a post might do longer-term reputational damage. Choose only those that are a great fit. You might even team up with other Squarespace designers, especially if they offer something different to what you do.
Download our tips for choosing website monetization methods here
Final thoughts
If you’re looking for other ways to monetize your website besides selling your services, there are several good options. We recommend ways that don’t create “extra work” for you in any significant way. Passive income is the best!
The bottom line for making it work is to “keep it classy.” That means only sell high-quality and added value for your target audience. Avoid anything that promises good money but would be a poor fit for your brand.
What are your thoughts? Drop us a comment below about any other ways you’re monetizing...
