Monetize WordPress Website in 2025: 6 Breakthrough Methods [Blog or Site]

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How to monetize WordPress websites or blogs in 2025? If you grow a business, you can’t help but dig into the details.

In their turn, Adsterra publishers practice the actionable strategy on how to make money online, and today we’ll jump into breakthrough methods of generating passive income with a WP-based blog. 

This step-by-step guide will also present how to be running ads and earn with a WordPress blog or site, so it would really make sense for you.

Let’s go for it!

What is website monetization?

Site content monetization means converting your expertise into income by providing valuable, actionable insights or engaging stories with a payback. You can offer digital products such as eBooks, online courses, podcasts, and memberships—anything that offers significant value while generating revenue.

Your possibilities are endless, from sponsored content and online stores to selling eBooks. It can also be ad placements, publishing sponsored posts, paid subscriptions, premium content, native advertising, premium plugins, paid content, or simply selling physical products.

Let’s group them. You can monetize your WordPress blog or website through:

Direct strategy

• Subscriptions: online course with a Learning Management System (LMS) plugin, premium content or early access, WordPress plugins, or email marketing newsletters,
• Digital products (eBooks, templates, printables),
• Coaching/consulting services,
• Pay-per-view content (tutorials, webinars).

Indirect strategy to monetize your WordPress blog

• Selling ad space for display ads, native ads, Smartlink (Direct Link), etc.
• Affiliate marketing,
• Sponsored content (posts or webinars), etc.

If you are in a slight doubt, Adsterra is proud to provide a case study of the brightest female entrepreneurs among our publishers, and today, a star blogger, Achile Anne. You can get inspired to manage any blogging Everest for profit goals.

Why would you recommend WordPress monetization?

Why is it important for WordPress sites?

WordPress is honed not only for building successful blogs. It’s a real website engine to apply great monetization strategies. With fairly simple installation, WordPress environment lets you kick-start and grow your revenue streams with ease with its variety of themes, plugins, and integrations.

Apart from the money-making capabilities, you can get much more out of it:

• WordPress users engagement: Engaging and sought-after kinds of content grow and nurture your site visitors into a community.
• Accessibility and social impact: New technology, accessible designs, and really helpful content establish you as a thought leader within and outside your community.
• Inspiration and creativity: Once you define your audience, you can direct your users by offering very specific, niche content that you would enjoy sharing and the users would enjoy consuming drop by drop.
• Trustworthiness: As you build trust with your users, loyalty is another payback you enjoy.
• Authority in multi-niches: Growing your expertise in one field gives a foundation to streamline a few expert projects that you can build in other niches and monetize.

How to monetize your WordPress website?

Now, let’s break it down to a few pick-and-monetize tools for WordPress sites that are at your disposal right now. Let’s start with the key points and move gradually to more specifics.

Display advertising

The display advertising model is when you’re paid for placing someone’s ads on your WordPress website for monetization. Instead of searching and negotiating with each specific advertiser, you can partner with a network that gives you the opportunity to work with thousands of advertisers and selects suitable ads for your traffic.

You get 100% fill rate and a variety of ad formats for publishers that have proved their high-paying capabilities. This may be a Native Banner or a Popunder. Don’t worry, we’ll come back to that in a minute.

Depending on your blog niche or category, the ad network will display relevant ad offers to your audience. It’s an actual breakthrough way of getting passive income because you only need to place ad codes and continue blogging as you’re used to. The ad network will then pay you for every 1,000 of ad impressions, clicks, and even conversions.

So, here is how to adapt digital ads and start making money.

STEP#1. Get access to an ad network

To place a code on a web page, you first come and take it from Adsterra. Registration is easy and takes less than 10 minutes. Fill the form and wait for the email with the confirmation link.

STEP#2. Add a website

After you verify the email, you can log in as a Publisher. Welcome to Adsterra! You’re on the Websites page, where you need to add a domain whose traffic you will then monetize. Please hit the ADD WEBSITE button.

Once you click ADD WEBSITE, a new window pops up. Please examine all the fields attentively and fill them out one by one:

• Add your website URL.
• Choose your Website category from the list. The category is the niche of your site or its main purpose. If nothing suits, please click Other.
• Available ad units are types of ad codes you want to appear on web pages. Select one ad unit (each time you can add just one code: Popunder, Social Bar, Native Banner, or Banner, etc.). Let’s choose Popunder or Social Bar this time as we’ll need it for the next step.
• You can also put filters to remove ads that you don’t want to run (like those with sound).
• Click the big ADD button.

STEP#3. Get an ad code

After you add a website, you’ll see its status. It’ll be Pending status for a couple of minutes. Approved sites are green. Wait until Pending status changes to Approved.

Once you see the site’s status change to Approved, choose it and click GET CODE near the ad unit you added recently.

Depending on the ad unit / ad format you picked previously, Adsterra will generate a unique script for your website. Pay attention to instructions, as they help you place the code correctly. Here below is the example of a Popunder code.

STEP #4. Place ads to drive a revenue

Ok, you have successfully generated your ad code / ad script. Let’s see how and where you can place it to start getting earnings from driving traffic and paid content. We’ll go step by step to make each action clearer.

Display ads on every page (best for Popunder and Social Bar)

Ok, you have successfully generated your ad code / ad script. Let’s see how and where you can place it on your WordPress website to monetize from ads. We’ll go step by step to make each action clearer.

CASE 1. Use WordPress Theme Editor to place Popunder or Social Bar

1. Log in to your WordPress admin panel. Usually, it looks like this: https://[yoursite.com]/wp-admin.
2. Find the Appearance section (generally, it’s on the left) and click on it. Choose Editor or Theme Editor.
3.  Find the Theme Header or header.php file.
4. Copy your Adsterra code (see STEP#1).
5. For Popunder: paste the code before the closing “</head>” tag. For Social Bar: paste the code before the closing “</body>” tag.
6. Click Update file or Save. That depends on your WP version.

CASE 2. Using the WordPress Widgets section to put an ad code

Choose this way when you can’t make changes to your WP theme.

1. Just like in the first case, log in to your WordPress admin panel.
2. Find the Appearance section and choose the Widgets tab.
3. Select Custom HTML from the list.

See how it works on the screenshot below.

4. Check the theme element (we ticked the Sidebar) and click Add Widget; the widget will open in the element section. Paste Adsterra Popunder or Social Bar code in the Content field. Make sure you have copied the whole piece of code. Otherwise, it won’t work.

5. After you paste the code in the widget, click Save. You’re ready to monetize your WordPress website with Popunder or Social Bar ads!

If you use more than one Popunder, they may conflict with each other and lower your CPM. It is better to ask your manager to increase the frequency of impressions on one specific ad format rather than multiply them.

Display ads on a selected post or page (best for Banners)

On the Adsterra platform, take the same steps you took to get a Popunder or Social Bar.

On WordPress, place the codes exactly where you want the banners to appear on your page. Anywhere in the page body (but NOT between the “HEAD” tags)  

You can place the ad codes with Custom HTML widgets as we did earlier. There are 2 ways to edit custom widgets.

Way 1:

Choose Appearance, then pick the Widgets tab, choose the Custom HTML element from the list and click Add Widget. Place the code in the Content field and click Save.

Way 2:

1. Click Appearance > Customize from the main toolbar.
2. Choose the Widgets tab.
3. You can now pick any Widget  (they are named according to their placement: home sidebar, footer, etc). Click Add Widget.
5. Now it’s time to choose the type of widget. You need the Text Widget.

6. After you choose Text Widget, remember to switch to Text mode (see the picture below).
7. Copy and paste your Adsterra code in the blank field.
8. Click the Publish button.

We strongly recommend using one banner of each size per page for better performance. If you need extra ad units of the same size, please contact our managers.

Earn money using WordPress website and an ad network (Wrap-up)

• Start with fewer digital ads; one or two will be enough. It’ll be easier to monitor how effective your ads are and how your audience reacts to them.
• Place banners on the most visible spots. But make sure they don’t overlap the blog post’s content or navigation buttons.
• Please copy and paste ad codes instead of typing them in. This will protect you from typos.
• Please don’t put the same code twice. In this case, your statistics will be incorrect. To place two Banners in your blog post, generate two codes of different sizes, instead. 
• Some ad units include advanced settings that are available on request. For instance, you can ask your Adsterra manager to change the frequency. It determines how many ad offers one user will see within a given time. Learn how this setting might affect your CPM.
• Combine ad codes to increase the revenue. For example, Popunders will appear outside a website, so they don’t consume any space. You can combine this unit with, say, a Banner or Social Bar. Profit!

We’ve laid out one of the most effective ways to monetize a website as WordPress (alternatively it can be any other platform) by placing online ads. Bloggers resort to an ad network if they need a new source of passive income or improve their current earning method. Which one?

Let’s decode this right now, observing one model by another.

Affiliate marketing

Now let’s look into additional ways to monetize a free WordPress blog.

Bloggers promote products or services and earn a commission from each sale made through affiliate programs/referral links. So, affiliate marketing is a powerful way to WordPress monetization.

A few techniques to keep in mind to achieve recurring payments:

• Niche blogging: Focus on a specific niche to attract a dedicated audience. Use tools like SEMrush to identify high-demand, low-competition niches to boost your affiliate marketing efforts.
• Content integration: Integrate affiliate program links seamlessly into your content, such as through product reviews, comparison or “versus” guides, and tutorials.
• Engagement boosting: Use a plugin to add a subscription popup and collect emails for further connection with your engaged audience or a countdown widget highlighting limited offers. Later on, you could place affiliate marketing links to emails, as well.

Sponsored blog posts

As your blog gains authority and blog traffic, brands may be willing to pay for some sponsored posts or paid content. It’s nice to have a media deck (media kit) with a catchy presentation of your blog and important figures about traffic: volumes, average reading time, bounce rates, CTR, etc.

One of the hottest forms of sponsored post content is unboxing. Though unboxing is mainly a video format, many bloggers post full-text descriptions with lots of photos as sponsored content.

Sell content

You can monetize your WordPress blog by selling exclusive membership content or hard-to-obtain content. This is an ideal model for marketing pros, graphic designers, web developers, or coaches. This one is about getting people to subscribe to your premium services on a permanent basis. 

You will still need to provide valuable blog content for free—to attract more organic traffic to your WordPress—but some of your subscribers will access totally unique advice and assets. Technically, you can place a paywall plugin to your admin panel and select the assets with restricted access to your exclusive content. In this respect, the MemberPress plugin is one of the top-ranked ones.

Sell exclusive content

You can monetize your WordPress blog by selling exclusive membership content or hard-to-obtain content. This is an ideal model for marketing pros, graphic designers, web developers, or coaches. This one is about getting people to subscribe to your premium services on a permanent basis. 

You will still need to provide valuable blog content for free—to attract more organic traffic to your WordPress—but some of your subscribers will access totally unique advice and assets. Technically, you can place a paywall plugin to your admin panel and select the assets with restricted access to your exclusive content. In this respect, the MemberPress plugin is one of the top-ranked ones.

Ask for donations

If you create outstanding posts, provide exclusive advice or deliver hard-to-find information, you can integrate a payment gateway or donate button into your WordPress.

Donations are a widely used reward model in blogging: game streamers, writers, and health and beauty bloggers often use them. For instance, GiveWP is the most frequently downloaded plugin with fast support. It supports cards, Stripe, and PayPal payments.

Final words

We have examined different methods of growing profits with sites, with WordPress plugins or without it.  One of the fastest ways is to resort to an ad network that will pay you for displaying digital ads.

You can try classic formats like Popunders or super-engaging Social Bar. If you search for ads to blend with page or blog content, we recommend trying Native Banners, as they are user-friendly and are resistant to ad blockers. Anyway, the preferable strategy is to start with one or two ad units and monitor traffic behavior with Adsterra statistics.

Blogging must be rewarding! And it seems like you’re ready to make money with your WordPress site. How about starting off right now?

Monetize WordPress website FAQ