There are number of ways one can use to monetize a website and it all depends on how much traffic the website is receiving. It also depends on the nature and location of the traffic.
If most of the traffic is coming from US, UK, Canada etc then plenty of monetization methods can be used. However the following methods can be applied on almost any type of website to make money from it.
1# Google Adsense
Adsense is a PPC program which pays the website owner on the basis of per click on the advertisements. A website owner will need to register a free adsense account and then paste the HTML code for a ad unit in the website. Adsense automatically displays relevant ads in the website. Once the visitors click on the ads, the website owner is paid for the click.
To sigup go to http://www.google.com/adsense
However Google Adsense, only allow quality websites to participate in Adsense program.
2# Affiliate Marketing
A website owner can also display relevant products of third parties to sell. A portion of commission in every sale is given to the website owner. For example if the price of a product is $100 and 50% commission is offered from its creator, then the website owner can get $50 in every sale made through his/her website.
A unique Affiliate URL is given for each product which tracks the number of sales from a website.
You can pick a product from any affiliate program. For example ClickBank.com, CJ.com, ShareaSale.com etc...
3# CPM Ad Networks
There are websites that pays based on the number of impressions. Normally the payout is for 1 thousand impressions for a advertisement. Depending on the nature and location of the traffic you can get anywhere from $2/thousand impressions to $5/thousand impressions.
There are several CPM Networks available. Here is a list of cpm networks you can pick from.
4# Direct Advertising
A website owner can also sell direct advertisements on his website. For example he/she can sell a banner in the header for $50/month, banner in sidebar for $30/month etc...
5# Product/Service Selling
A website owner can also sell his own products on the site. For example an eBook, Software, Application, any Physical product. Apart from the products website owner can also sell his/her services.
These are some of the well known monetization methods almost every website owner use on websites.
