Can you suggest ways to monetize a website?

Affiliates with any of the websites that you are already promoting.

Offer premium spots for a monthly fee.

Two options I could think of, beside ads.

Could you ask for donations? After a quick glance, it looks like you have a really useful collection of illustrations. Maybe people would donate as a thank-you.

Could you commission some "pro" works alongside the free ones, or agree some sort of referral fee for their existing paid works? If there's an illustrator you refer a lot of traffic to, perhaps they would accept this sort of deal in a "pro illustrations by this illustrator" section.

I've bookmarked the site, by the way. Looks great!

Why not ads? There are so many ad networks that would accept a size of this size.

Besides this, get in touch with some premium designers from sites like Dribbble and say you'll do 50-50 share if you sell some of their premium illustrations.

You’ve got a lot of great stuff on there. Nice site too! Well done. Although there are a lot of sites giving free illustrations I still think there’s an opportunity to monetise by simple charging a nominal amount of $10 for one month usage or $50 for the whole year. A lot of people need a batch for one off projects so would happily consider paying that in my opinion. Even $5 if you have to.

Also consider reaching out to illustrators (loads on Instagram) and either building a simple directory 4 examples and click to contact for custom illustrations. Keep the price low at $30 per year which could be a useful resource for agencies or those with deeper pockets.

We have https://versoly.com/affiliate

It is recurring so once you get paid customers you get a monthly check :)

I won't lie in the short term ads are most likely better money. But if we optimise the promo it could be nice.

A thought I had would be to have more of a "illustrator profile" concept, where illustrators create accounts and their submission are linked to their accounts. Then all illustrations that people like are tied to those accounts. Then if any users really like an illustrator they could contact them for custom work/commissions.

This would then make way for something like a "Featured Illustrators" section near the top, and could allow illustrators to pay a small fee to be featured? That or maybe just a basic premium membership for illustrators. Of course all of this will take quite a bit of work, so by no means an easy lift.