10 Ways to Make Money from Website/Blog Latest 2012

No other blogging software (and even a content management system) has managed to gain such massive popularity and adoption as WordPress has gained over the last few years. It’s used by professionals as well as by the beginners providing a robust platform to host and run a blog. Directly and indirectly, it has also helped countless professionals to earn their bread and butter through different methods centered around this powerful blogging engine. Making money from WordPress is not a rocket science and you can get started within 5 minutes through one of the methods discussed below. If you’re looking to earn decent money from products and services related to WordPress, this is the right time to take a plunge. Here are some of the most common methods that can be used to kick start your money making machine based on WordPress products.

Sell Premium Frameworks

This is one of the most popular methods to make money from WordPress. In recent years, several premium frameworks have emerged that provides a solid foundation for creating a flexible and visually appealing website. These frameworks work behind the scenes and significantly improve your blog’s seo, design, usability and several other important elements.
Some of the popular premium frameworks like Thesis (I use it on all of my blogs), Genesis, Headway and Catalyst are used by large numbers of users. These premium frameworks have huge number of customers and thousands of bloggers and publishers make good money selling these frameworks as an affiliate.
All you need is a website with some traffic and your affiliate account for whatever framework you want to sell to your readers. The more targeted readers you pull to your website, the more you’re likely to make a sale. It’s all about how you market these frameworks and how qualified is the traffic. The best way to sell these themes is to create a customized product page with detailed review or to create a large custom banner placed at prime locations on your website.

Sell Premium Child Themes

Almost every premium framework support child themes that provide killer visual skins for your WordPress blog. Similar to the underlying framework, premium child themes also gives you an excellent way to make good money.
You can sell these different kinds of premium skins that offer killer designs running on top of the core framework. Since there are large number of premium skins available on the web, you have more options at your disposal to offer to your readers and followers.
Premium skin market is very competitive and their price range deviate sharply letting even customers with small budget to buy and use these killer visual designs on their blog. You must handpick and segregate these premium skins in different groups on the basis of their design formats and their price range. This way you can offer multiple types of skins to different segments of customers.

Sell Premium Plugins

In recent years, lot of premium plugins have emerged offering great functionality with added features that are generally absent or are in limited form in free alternatives. Premium plugins are generally much cheaper compared to frameworks and skins. This makes them much more affordable to a larger set of WordPress users.
Some of the popular premium plugins like CommentLuv, Gravity Forms and WPtouch Pro are used by large numbers of users. They offer unique set of features and help you make your blog better and more engaging. Selling such kind of premium plugins is yet another way to make money from WordPress. The best way to sell these plugins is to write detailed reviews for each one of them and then diverting prospects towards these reviews. This way the conversion rate is much healthier compared to displaying simple links or banners on the blog.

Create and Sell Your Own Premium Skins or Plugins

If you’re proficient in CSS, HTML and other web technologies, you may try building your own skins and plugins for the WordPress community. Although creating and selling a premium software product is not a cakewalk, but once it clicks you can earn much more revenue than selling others products.
Dozens of WordPress developers are making premium skins, plugins and other products based on WordPress and are selling them successfully to generate huge amount of money. Guys like Alex Mangini are well-known for creating premium skins that are highly customizable and are equally attractive at the same time.

Offer Custom Design Services

Talented web developers use their skills to offer custom theme designs to WordPress users. This is yet another excellent way to earn good amount of money from WordPress. A complete highly customized design costs between anywhere $500 (simple design) to $10000 (large projects) depending on the features and the level of customization required by the customer. Popular designers like Kristarella, Heather Jones and Caitlin offer rocking custom designs that runs on Thesis, Genesis and Headway frameworks.
WordPress professionals offering custom theme design services need a portfolio site with an integrated blog that acts as a platform to showcase their skills as well as for pulling potential customers. Once you start getting the leads, word of mouth plays its role and helps you grow very fast. Make sure you keep your rate reasonable enough and do not take very rigid approach while taking custom design projects.

Offer Consulting Services

Another lucrative option to generate decent revenue is to provide consulting services to individuals and businesses that are using or want to use WordPress. This involves recommendations, strategy formation and complete guidance to launch or optimize a WordPress-powered website or blog. You must possess excellent communication and negotiation skills, if you’re planning to offer such kind of consulting services.
Experts like Bradley Spencer and David Olsen are successfully running their WordPress consulting business with hundreds of satisfied customers. If you’re planning to open a similar kind of consulting business, make sure you thoroughly study the entire setup and strategy of existing players in the market.

Write and Sell an eBook

Informative and useful eBooks on any subject sells like a hotcake. If you possess good writing skills with in-depth knowledge about WordPress, consider writing an eBook about the same. Instead of touching the subject at the macro level, pick a specific topic and write a detailed book that solves a prevalent problem experienced by WordPress bloggers.
If you’re not sure about the marketing and selling system needed for launching your own eBook, here’s an excellent guide that explains the entire process of creating and selling eBooks. eBooks related to WordPress blog customization, security techniques and plugin usage are some of the hot topics that are purchased by large numbers of users. You can pick one of these topics and can present your perspective and unique techniques in a completely different way to the customers.

Offer Support and Maintenance Packages

Thousands of bloggers who’re not technically sound often struggle to update and maintain their blogs. You can find tons of blogs that are still running old versions of WordPress due to owner’s negligence or lack of awareness. These bloggers desperately need someone to help them keeping their blog secure and updated.
You can offer exclusive blog maintenance and support packages to take care of things at the back end so that your customers can concentrate on content creation and marketing. Kim Woodbridge is the first name that comes in my mind when it comes to hiring a good technical assistant to take care of our WordPress blog. She offers flexible plans to tweak, secure, optimize and customize your blog.

Create and Monetize Niche Blogs

This is one of the best methods to generate recurring income through WordPress blogs. Simply launch a niche blog, monetize it with PPC or CPA ads and work on building organic traffic. Countless bloggers use this method to earn good income from their niche blogs.
Seasoned players like Daniel Scocco specialize in buying and selling niche blogs. He optimizes these blogs through smart content creation and monetization strategies. This is an excellent technique that involves purchasing of budding niche blogs and then transforming them into a profitable website. But it’s not as easy as it seems. Your best bet as a beginner is to build and monetize your own niche blog from scratch instead of putting big money on an existing blog. Once you get hold of the basics, you can try replicating the same model on a smaller scale.

Offer Exclusive Training Packages

Large numbers of bloggers running WordPress on their blogs are not that much proficient except their familiarity with the posting and editing interface. These bloggers often seek advice from their peers whenever they need to do something extra (e.g. plugin installation) on their blog.
You can offer exclusive WordPress training packages that include videos, articles, support forum and one-to-one training sessions. Popular WordPress training courses available on WP Apprentice and WP101 are specifically tailored for beginners and non-techies. These websites make decent money from their WordPress training courses helping countless budding bloggers to take complete control over their blog.
If you want to offer similar kind of training packages, make sure you have a good team of experts who’re not only comfortable in WordPress, but also have good communication and presentation skills.