Make money

Five ways, in the order that works

There are five ways a content site makes money, and beginners try them in the wrong order. The wrong order is ads first, because ads are easy to add. The right order is the one that matches your traffic and your trust at each stage. Below is each method, what it actually pays, and when to switch it on. Every number here is a range from public data and our own experience, not a promise, and all thresholds are as of September 2026; check the current page before you plan around one.

Affiliate: the first money most sites make

An affiliate program pays you a commission when someone clicks your link and buys. You join a program, get a tracked link, and disclose the relationship to readers.

How the money works:

• The program sets a rate and a cookie window. Amazon Associates is the biggest and pays the least. Rates are set per category and have been cut more than once, so check the current page rather than any figure quoted in a blog post. The cookie lasts 24 hours, with a longer window for items added to the basket in that time.
• Software programs pay far more: many SaaS tools offer 20% to 45% recurring, usually for the first 12 to 24 months, with 30 to 120 day cookies. For an AI tools site, this is where the money is. Check each vendor's affiliate page; most have one, and most are run through a network such as Impact, PartnerStack or ShareASale.
• Payouts arrive 30 to 90 days after the sale, after refunds clear.

What converts: honest comparisons where you say who should not buy, "best for" lists where every entry has a reason, and tutorials that show the tool doing the job. What does not: a link in a sentence that does not explain why. Readers click links they trust, and they trust links that came with a reason.

Disclosure is not optional. In the US the FTC requires a clear statement near the link; in the EU consumer law does the same; Amazon's agreement requires it on the page. A short line at the top of any article with affiliate links, in plain words, is the standard. We use one on every review.

Realistic range: a site with 10,000 monthly visitors focused on tools with software affiliate programs can make a few hundred dollars a month; the same traffic on Amazon links makes tens.

Display ads: only after the traffic exists

Ads pay per thousand pageviews, and the rate depends on your topic, your readers' countries, and which network you are in.

• Google AdSense has no traffic minimum and pays out at $100. Publishers keep roughly 68% of what advertisers pay when the ad is bought through Google Ads. Expect a low single-digit RPM (revenue per thousand views) on most topics. It is the on-ramp, not the destination.
• Ezoic changed its rules for sites added after 19 February 2026: they now need 250,000 monthly active users. It is no longer the easy step up it used to be.
• Mediavine now admits sites on revenue rather than sessions: $5,000 of ad revenue in the past year, and it pays 75% of ad revenue, rising with volume. Its on-ramp, Journey by Mediavine, takes sites from 1,000 sessions in 30 days from Tier 1 countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia and similar) with no revenue minimum, pays 70%, and promotes them automatically once they pass $5,000.
• Raptive cut its minimum from 100,000 to 25,000 monthly pageviews in October 2025, with at least half of traffic from the US, UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand at the lower tiers. It pays 75%.

The premium networks pay several times AdSense for English-language content with a mostly US readership, and much less for other audiences; the rate depends on your niche and the season, so check the current page before you plan around one. The realistic path in 2026: AdSense or nothing until 1,000 Tier 1 sessions, then Journey, then Mediavine or Raptive as traffic grows. Every network slows your site slightly and makes it uglier; watch what it does to your newsletter sign-up rate before you accept every ad slot.

Sponsorships: when someone else's product fits your reader

A sponsor pays a flat fee to be mentioned to your audience. Newsletters sell this better than websites because the audience is countable and attentive.

Rates are quoted per thousand opens. Public rate cards in 2026 cluster around $20 to $50 CPM for consumer audiences and $50 to $150 for specialist business audiences; AI tools readers sit toward the upper end if they are professionals. A newsletter with 2,000 engaged subscribers can charge around $100 to $200 per issue for a primary slot, and more once it can show click data.

Rules that keep sponsorships from destroying trust: only tools you have used, a visible "sponsored" label, one sponsor per issue, and a written rate card so you are not negotiating from scratch. Marketplaces exist (Beehiiv has one built in), but the best deals come from emailing a company whose product you already recommended for free.

Digital products: the best margin you will ever have

A template, a checklist, a short course, a prompt library, a dataset, a paid newsletter tier. You make it once and sell it forever, and the price is yours to set.

Where to sell:

• Gumroad is the simplest: 10% plus $0.50 per sale, plus card processing. High fee, zero setup.
• Lemon Squeezy charges 5% plus $0.50 and acts as merchant of record, meaning it handles VAT and sales tax in every country. For anyone in the EU, that alone is worth the fee.
• Stripe charges 2.9% plus $0.30 per card payment with no monthly fee, but you handle tax and invoicing, or add its tax service.

Pricing: the first product should be small and priced between $9 and $49. A short, specific, obviously useful thing sells; a big vague course does not. Realistic: 1% to 2% of newsletter subscribers buy a first product in its launch week. With a list of 1,000, that is ten to twenty sales. That is not a living; it is proof, and proof is what you need before building the bigger thing.

Services: the fastest money and the hardest to scale

Consulting, setup, done-for-you. If you can build a site in a day with AI, someone will pay you to do it for them. A page that says "we do this for you, here is the price" converts from day one because it needs no traffic, only trust. Set a fixed price, a fixed scope, and a fixed timeline. Two or three of these a month funds everything else while the site grows.

Putting it together

Month one to three: affiliate links on every tool review and a services page. Month three to six: newsletter sponsorships once you pass a thousand subscribers, and Journey by Mediavine once you pass a thousand Tier 1 sessions. Month six onward: a first small product, then a second. Ads scale with traffic; products scale with trust. A site with 20,000 monthly visitors and 3,000 subscribers, doing all five, lands somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars a month depending on niche. Anyone quoting a precise figure for your site is guessing.

Checklist

• Joined two software affiliate programs relevant to your niche and read their terms
• Disclosure line added to every page with an affiliate link
• Services page with a fixed price and scope published
• Newsletter rate card written, even before the first sponsor
• First small product named and priced under $50