How to Monetize an eCommerce Website (Beyond Product Sales)

eCommerce is one of the most common business models to choose, and it’s not hard to see why. The potential wins are lucrative if you’re successful; according to the International Trade Administration, global eCommerce revenue is expected to surpass $5 trillion (USD) in 2027. You can sell all kinds of products online in multiple verticals and niches, and there’s enough space for everyone to win.

When you launch your eCommerce store, focusing on one stream of revenue is a good idea. Most of the time, this will be products – whether that’s digital or physical. But if you want to grow in the long run, you should strongly consider other forms of income generation.

It’s easy to get stuck in the thinking that product sales are the only way to monetize an eCommerce store. However, this is not true. You have countless options to grow your revenue, and while implementing them is difficult, their concepts are simple.

In this guide, we’ll show you some of the best ways to monetize an eCommerce website beyond product sales. Our aim is that you’ll think outside the box, and – as a result – build a stronger business. To give you the best possible chance of success, we’ll also highlight some important prerequisites.

Subscription packages are some of the most popular ways to monetize a business away from product sales. While they’re commonly associated with software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, you can get creative with monetizing an eCommerce store in this way.

Setting up a subscription package has multiple advantages. The biggest of these is that you can generate recurring revenue. As a result, you don’t need to focus on constantly acquiring new customers. Knowing that the lights will stay on frees up significant energy to focus on improving your business in other areas.

That said, creating a site with a subscription model does have challenges. For example, you need to know how to set up recurring payments. Secondly, you must have a strong security infrastructure and hosting that can support a subscription-based business model.

Dealing with the downsides of subscription packages starts first and foremost with the hosting provider you choose. For example, Verpex has features like free SSL certificates and DDoS protection. Considering that it’s also very affordable, it’s perfect for small to medium-sized businesses (not to mention, scalable). You can sign up here.

Ad revenue is one of the simplest ways to make money online. Once you place ads on your website, you’re paid based on the model you choose. You can either offer ad space directly or join an ad network. It’s possible to run ads on your website, along with starting a YouTube channel and joining AdSense.

There are pros and cons to offering ad space and joining an ad network. Ad networks are much easier; the company will manage everything for you and help with optimization. However, you’ll still need to do some manual work, and revenue shares will depend on the platform you choose. Moreover, you may need to meet certain traffic requirements.

On the other hand, offering ad spaces and negotiating them yourself means you have more control over how much you can charge. However, you need to find the advertisers yourself. Moreover, you are responsible for everything.

To make significant money via ad revenue, you’ll need to have valuable traffic. This means high-value customers, decent website traffic volumes, and if you join an ad network, your audience’s regions will make a difference, too.

Starting a newsletter should be one of the first things you do as an eCommerce store owner. Compared to social media, you own the audience you grow via your newsletter. Sending regular updates is a great way to keep your customers informed, and over time, email marketing will grow into one of your biggest assets.

Once you have a strong newsletter audience, you can start offering sponsorships. In these instances, companies will pay you money to promote them. This can look different depending on your niche, but it’s an excellent way to earn additional passive income.

In your early days, your focus should be entirely on growing your audience. However, thinking about how you’d offer sponsorships at some point is still worthwhile. The engagement rate of your audience will matter much more than numbers alone.

Affiliate marketing is one of the simplest ways to make money online. You promote a company’s product or service, and if someone buys it, you earn a commission. Sounds amazing, right?

Well, yes and no.

Once you’ve built an established audience, affiliate marketing can be seriously lucrative. However, just because it’s simple does not mean that it’s easy. You must avoid the most common affiliate marketing mistakes, such as “reviewing” products you don’t actually use.

There’s also an art to setting up affiliate links and widgets. Learning how these work can take a long time. For example, it took me around a year to start earning serious money from affiliate marketing on my own website. Below is an example of a widget I use with contextual text around it.

That said, affiliate marketing is still worth looking at – especially if your eCommerce store is an extension of content creation elsewhere. Since you’ll be selling products yourself, you might also want to think about setting up an affiliate program for others to promote you.

When your customers buy from you, they do so because they think you can solve a specific problem. Thinking about the second, third, and fourth-order needs someone might have will be powerful in helping you make even more money over the long run.

Depending on what you offer, your customers might not want to set everything up themselves. This is especially true with heavy-duty physical products, such as desks and sofas, and things that are more complex. Done-it-for-you and done-it-with-you services are excellent ways to make money in this respect.

You will, of course, need to hire others to assist – and you should therefore consider this in your costs and overall strategy. Still, it’s well worth considering in many cases.

Depending on what you offer, workshops can be an excellent way to generate extra money for your eCommerce business. This works especially well with creative products and services where the customer needs a certain level of skill to make the most out of what they’re buying.

When hosting workshops, you need to think carefully about your marketing. Giving people at least a few months to sign up is wise, and you should also think about announcing when you’ll release tickets in advance. Doing so will help increase the awareness around your event.

To host your workshop, test your connection and platform in advance. Running a couple of test rounds beforehand is also a good idea.

In addition to thinking about the ways in which you improve your eCommerce site monetization, you also need to make sure all the prerequisites are in place. Without these, you will needlessly make everything more complicated than it needs to be.

Strong Website Hosting

A strong website host is the foundation of any good website, and eCommerce stores are no different. You must have the right hosting in place for both security and performance.

Understanding your web hosting requirements is essential. Look for a provider with multiple server locations, round-the-clock support, and robust security measures. Ideally, you also want something that will scale with you as your business grows.

Since Verpex offers all of the above, it’s very much worth signing up.

A Clear Business Strategy

Thinking about offering multiple revenue streams is a good starting point, but it doesn’t guarantee success. If you don’t know your audience, you will find it much harder to offer things they actually want. As a result, much of your efforts will be wasted.

Having a clear business strategy, which involves knowing about your audience, is essential for enhancing your monetization. You can do research in several ways, such as analyzing old data to see what resonates with buyers. Asking customers what they want is also a good idea.

Success in One Form of Monetization Already

When you realize how much money you can make by offering multiple income streams, it’s tempting to try and do everything at once. This, however, is not a good idea – and you will actually have the problem where it hinders your success.

Before diversifying your income streams you should be successful in selling your products. Until you’ve done that, you should not be focusing on anything else. Extra revenue streams are nice-to-haves more than anything else.

Monetizing an eCommerce website doesn’t need to just stay with product sales. You have several options for improving your revenue, from ad revenue to working more closely with your customers. Knowing your audience, and what they want, will help you make the right choices.