Monetize Your Site

We know monetization is important for many site owners. We support many methods of monetizing the hard work you put into your website.

You will find many of these options available from your dashboard at Tools → Earn. Read on to find out how you can turn your website into a source of income.

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Create an Online Store

Plans: Business, eCommerce, and Pro (Legacy)

You can create a full-featured online store to sell anything directly through your website. Using the free WooCommerce plugin you can sell products, handle shipping, collect taxes, and more. You can find more information on the WooCommerce website.

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Pay with PayPal

Plans: Premium, Business, eCommerce, and Pro (Legacy)

Use Pay with PayPal to accept credit and debit card payments via PayPal. Whether you’re selling a physical or digital item, collecting payment for a service, or asking followers to show their appreciation financially, you can add a Pay with PayPal button to your site in a few clicks.

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Collect Payments

Plans: Personal, Premium, Business, eCommerce, Starter (Legacy), and Pro (Legacy)

Our Payments block features let you collect recurring revenue from your site visitors for anything from memberships and subscriptions to ongoing donations in support of your website. When a visitor signs up, you’ll start receiving regular payments from them — either monthly or yearly — creating a predictable revenue stream for your blog or website. Provide subscriber-specific content in combination with the Premium Content block.

Watch an overview video covering all these payments features to learn more:

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Premium Content

Plans: Personal, Premium, Business, eCommerce, Starter (Legacy), and Pro (Legacy)

With the Premium Content block, create monthly or yearly subscription options to share select content with those who pay for it – text, images, videos, or any other type of content. Only subscribers paying you monthly or a yearly fee will be able to see the content. Offer different subscription levels and customize the premium content available at each level.

Watch a how-to video on adding the Premium Content block to your website.

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Memberships and Subscriptions

Plans: Personal, Premium, Business, eCommerce, Starter (Legacy), and Pro (Legacy)

Both the Payments and Premium Content blocks mentioned above allow you to create subscriptions or memberships on your website. Learn all about creating a paid membership site with WordPress.com from our special tutorial site with more information and step-by-step information to get going.

If you’re just getting started, we recommend watching this video on what memberships are and how to add them to your website:

Watch a how-to video on how to get started specifically with a premium membership blog, membership website, paid newsletter, or crowdfunding campaign.

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Requesting Donations and Tips

Plans: Personal, Premium, Business, eCommerce, Starter (Legacy), and Pro (Legacy)

You can solicit donations or tips from your readers using the Donations block.

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Advertising via WordPress.com

Plans: Premium, Business, eCommerce, and Pro (Legacy)

If you’d like to make money on your WordPress.com site with advertisements, use our official WordPress.com advertising program available for site owners. The program features ads from external ad networks such as Google, Facebook, AOL, and more. Learn more about how it works.

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Advertising via Other Providers

Plans: Business, eCommerce, and Pro (Legacy)

Advertise through third-party ad networks like Google AdSense, OpenX, Lijit, BuySellAds, and Vibrant Media, or selling advertising space on your site. When you sign up for other services, they will typically provide you with a piece of code to add to your site. You can do this by following the steps here.

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Affiliate Linking

Plans: All

You can add affiliate links to your WordPress.com content as long as the primary purpose of your blog is to create original content, and as long as the code for the ad is supported.

When blogging about books you’re reading, the music you love, clothes that strike your fancy, gadgets you’re drooling over, or whatever interests you and your readers, feel free to post relevant affiliate links using either text or images.

There are a few restrictions on what affiliate programs are allowed. We do not allow affiliate links for gambling, get-rich-quick schemes, multi-level marketing programs, disreputable merchants, pornography, malware, or phishing-type scams. We also do not allow sites that exist primarily to drive traffic to affiliate links.

An easy and popular way to get started with affiliate links is Amazon. Read our support documentation for specific instructions on adding Amazon Affiliate links to your content.

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Plans: All

You can publish sponsored posts on WordPress.com. We define a sponsored post as any content that promotes a specific product or service, which you were encouraged to post by the company or individual who makes/sells/provides it. Including this type of content on your site typically results in some kind of compensation for you in the form of payment, freebies, etc.

We do not allow sites where the vast majority of content is sponsored content. Sponsored posts also may not include any content that violates our Terms of Service.