6 Quick Ways to Monetize Your Personal Brand & Website
There are many ways to make money online. If monetizing your brand is on your radar, let me teach you about a few opportunities to start collecting donations or tips, saving/charging for your time, selling your own services and products, or making commissions.
OPTION ONE: EASY
Invoices and/or Donations ❤️
I believe the best way to monetize your brand and website is to sell services such as teaching, coaching, consulting, etc. With Squarespace’s NEW invoicing tools, you can quickly create a branded invoice and get paid through your website.
Take a look at this walkthrough from my friend, Christy Price.
Don’t want to sell services? You can also start monetizing your brand by adding a donation button.
Here is an example of the NEW donation block on Squarespace.
You can set any amount, allow custom amounts, accept recurring donations, style the block to your brand, and both admins and donors have custom dashboards.
If you’re not using Squarespace, you can use LinkTree to add a donate button, or link to your PayPal or Venmo. Consider adding a form if you want to use this for “song requests” or collect any other information from your donors. In Squarespace, you can also customize the receipts that go out through the donation button, which is a great automation for non-profits!
Ready to offer services or accept donations/tips?
OPTION 2: INTERMEDIATE
Saving/Charging for Time with Scheduling 🗓️
Whether you offer coaching, consulting, lessons, speaking, or other services, Scheduling is a great way to start making money or save time with all the back-and-forth of appointment scheduling. You can also apply these principles to Calendly or other tools.
Here’s an example of how we use Scheduling:
Adjust the front and backend settings to suit your needs. You might get started by offering bookings for 15-minute FREE intro calls or 90-minute podcast recording sessions.
Whatever appointment types you decide on, I recommend adding:
photos or graphics to appointments
descriptions of what’s included
success messages
appointment reminders
appointment follow-ups.
You can also explore add-ons, coupon codes, packages, subscriptions, gift certificates, and more!
Ready to start saving/charging for your time?!
OPTION 3: INTERMEDIATE
Protect Content with Gated Member Areas 🔐
Member Areas are now available on Squarespace and Wix. They offer you the ability to create a private section on your website. While we use Kajabi* for courses, I’d only recommend it for those who need advanced features like launch funnels and advanced email marketing. Otherwise, keep it simple and create a “club” where your website is hosted.
Here’s a Member Area from Flaweless:
We’ve had clients use this technology to create special fan communities (such as a book club around their launch) or “on-demand” training libraries. The benefit of offering a Member Area (even a FREE one) is that you can collect emails and start to see who are your most loyal fans.
Ready to create an online course or subscription community?
OPTION 4: EASY TO ADVANCED
eCommerce 🛍️
It’s not too difficult to add a shop to your website, but deciding what to offer may be a challenge!
Most artists start by offerings services. If you don’t use Scheduling, you can use eCommerce to sell services, such as video messages from you. After that, you might also consider Recordings or Books you’re a part of or want to recommend.
To avoid getting into physical inventory and order fulfillment, you might choose to link out to Apple, Amazon, or other large retailers. However, it’s becoming much easy to create print-on-demand merchandise, and you might also want to think about digital products, like PDFs or MP3s.
Here are the products we offer through eCommerce:
Ready to sell your own products and services?
OPTION 5: EASY
Affiliate Marketing 🔗
It’s hard to grow a community by yourself. One big way that online marketers and personalities make money is through affiliate marketing. They become ambassadors for a specific brand or service—making a commission off of recommendations that convert to sales.
*I have a strong commitment to only endorsing the people, products and services I truly believe in. I have to see results or experience the value before I’ll pass anything on to my community. I’d strongly suggest you hold yourself to the same standards. You want to earn long-term trust… not make a quick buck off of people.
The biggest example of this is Amazon Associates. However, you’ll see many small businesses do this for each other. These are called joint ventures, or JV partnerships.
Here are our affiliate partners:
Ready to start collecting commissions?
OPTION 6: ADVANCED
Sponsored Ads & Influencer Marketing 📢
This is getting paid to mention brands or products in your blogs and social media. No one really likes to see ads… but they’re a part of our daily existence. As long as they’re not too intrusive, and you have some control over what is being offered to your audience, why not consider this?
A great example of someone who does this really well is Chelsea Foy of LovelyIndeed.com.
If you’re interested in influencer marketing, the first step is attracting a large and loyal audience. You have to become a content creator. Once you’ve grown a significant following, brands and marketers will likely approach you. If you go seeking them, you may not be ready.
Here’s our example from the Broadway Podcast Network:
If you have a website with a lot of traffic, you can install Google AdSense. This will display super-targeted ads to your audience. You can even customize what does or doesn’t appear!
You might also want to explore YouTube Monetization or join a podcast network that offers monetization.
Ready to offer ads and sponsorship opportunities?
SPECIAL INVITATION
Join Jonathan and Tony for tech handholding and best practices on all of these methods to quickly and easily monetize your brand. This two-hour eCommerce class is guaranteed to pay you back!
