Make Your Own Website (and Money)

Do You Want To Make Your Own Website?

After browsing this website you should think these two things:

It is possible for you to make a website
It is possible for you to make money with a website

It might not be quick and easy - but it is possible.

It took about 6 months for this website to become profitable. And by profitable I do not mean big dollars – I simply mean that revenue is a bigger number than costs. In other words, it took six months to stop losing money online and start making money online.

Due to the nature of this website I wanted to start from scratch. Learn everything the hard way - trial and error. I did not want to purchase a pre-built website or take an online course. I had lots of free time so I was able to stumble my way around the Internet and learn the basics.

Learn As Much As You Can Before You Start Your Website

Of course with this aimless approach I wasted a lot of time. There were lots of dead ends and information that I wish I never came across. The Internet is saturated with tips and advice about making money online. Most of the advice is from people who have not made a dime on the Internet and are just trying to sell you junk – a scam.

If you are eager and interested in making online but are a beginner with no experience then you need to be very careful. You will be bombarded with 'get rich quick' schemes and programs. 99% of them do not work and are simply after your money. The Internet is a live mine field – one bad step and you waste a lot of time and money.

Making money online is a great experience. You work at home and at your own pace. You learn new things everyday. You work for yourself and enjoying what you are doing. And best of all you end up creating something that you can be proud of.

There are a couple ways to start making money with a website. The first is to do what I did and spend lots of time figuring everything out yourself by visiting forums, reading ebooks, randomly visiting websites etc.

The problem with this method is that at the beginning it is really hard to be certain your are doing the right things. You will spend lots of time reading poor and false information. And you risk the worst case scenario – spending lots of time and money on something that is doomed to fail.

The second method is the one I would recommend to anybody that wants to make money with a website. Get a reputable Website Starter Kit. It is worth it because of the time you save and dead ends you avoid. Instead of bumbling your way through a pile of useless information, you can get the proper information right at the beginning. You can focus on building your online business the correct way instead of spending your time on a method that will fail.

It comes down to saving yourself time by ensuring you have all the right information. This should not be a surprise because that is how it works with all endeavors that require an education. For example, if you want to build your muscles and tone your body, you can simply walk into the gym and randomly try things and see what works and what does not. In time you will either figure out what works or you will find that nothing works and give up. The better approach is to get a professional trainer who will teach you the best way to build muscles and tone your body. By following the trainer's instructions you are assured that you are doing the right thing. Muscles will grow and the body will tone.

How Do You Want To Make A Website

There are 2 approaches to creating an website business:

Approach 1: Be involved in the technical aspects of making a website. Do you have basic computer skills and a little knowledge of HTML and are willing to learn more? You need a domain name, hosting package and a website template to help you get started. (The Free Website Starter Kit)
Approach 2: Avoid technical website stuff. Get a simple to use, no coding required, Website Builder. Do you want to make a website, but do not want to get involved in the technical coding part of website making? You need a domain name, hosting package and a Website building tool that lets you build the website without any technical knowledge required. With this tool, if you can use Facebook and read your email, you can make a website. (Website Starter Kit - Easy Website Builder)

It is up to you to figure out what method suits you best. You probably already have a hunch which approach is best for you.

Approach 1: You Enjoy The Technical Aspects Of Website Building and Want To Make a Website With HTML and CSS.

This is the approach I took. I had some experience with HTML and CSS so I was not afraid of creating a website. I simply registered a domain name, got a hosting package and started to make a website.

But I made the mistake of making a website from scratch. I wasted a lot of time getting even a basic website built.

A much better approach is to start with a website template. That is why I created a The Free Website Starter Kit to help you get started with your website.

The Free Website Starter Kit is for you if you want to create a website and be involved in all the technical website building aspects - but you would also like a little help.

The Free Website Starter Kit is a compilation of everything I learned by creating this website. My credentials are this website. If you like what you see and would like to create your own website then this package is for you.

The Kit helps you get started with your own website. It provides you with the following information:

How to create a website (with the help of the website template provided)
How to setup a web hosting account and domain name
How to decide on a Niche
How to write content for your website
How to get traffic to your website
How to setup AdSense and generate revenue
How to become an affiliate and generate revenue

You receive a complete website. The website is a fully functioning website - ready to go online. All you need to do is a few style changes to make it unique and add your own content. Your website can be up and running in a matter of hours. Here is what it looks like.

With this package you are in full control. You are provided with knowledge and a complete website template. You become a webmaster responsible for all aspects of creating, maintaining and monetizing the website.

This package is perfect for you if you want to be in control of every aspect of the website and if you want to be involved in the technical side of being a webmaster.

Approach 2: You Just Want A Website Without Having To Learn All The Technical Stuff

If you do not want to get involved with the nitty gritty of HTML, CSS, FTP and all the technical aspects of having a website, then you need a website building tool.

A website building tool provides a point and click, drag and drop, easy approach to building a website. With this tool all you need to worry about is creating the content for the website. All the technical aspects are handled by the building tool. No need to fiddle around with HTML, CSS or figure out how to upload your website to the host - everything is done for you.

Website Starter Kit - Easy Website Builder that will enable you to have your website live in a matter of hours - without having to know anything about the technical aspects of making websites.

How Can You Make Money With A Website - What You Need To Know Before Your Start Your Website

When I started this website I knew very little about websites and how they make money. A lot of time has passed since then.

The great things about trying to make money online is that you have a powerful taskmaster. Strict, never generous, nothing for free, fair, unyielding and does not give favors. The taskmaster is the Internet itself. The Internet does not care if you win or lose. It has no emotions. If you do things right you are rewarded, if you do them wrong you fail – no ifs, ands, or buts.

It is not easy to make money online with a website – you need to fight for every dime. The Internet is a market place just like any other in the real world. If you want to be a success you will need to be persistent, creative, informed, and willing to accept failure.

This taskmaster forces you to constantly learn and try new things otherwise you fail. Everyday you see that you have made no money, you see that no new visitors are coming to your site. You can be stubborn and not learn anything new but the only result will be failure. The Internet does not care how hard you try, or how many hours you put in, or how much money you spent. Either you fail, learn, and try something different; or you simply fail.

No overnight success. No magic formula. No three easy steps to thousands of dollars a month. The Internet is not a magical fantasy place where money is easy. The Internet is full of people competing against you. Every webmaster is fighting for the limited amount of Internet users who can only visit so many websites a day. Everybody is fighting for those visitors, everybody want them to visit their website.

The Internet is no different than the old fashioned market square. Pretty displays and vendors shouting and sticking wares in your face fighting for your attention. This is exactly what having a website is like. You are one in a million trying to sell something to the shoppers and passersby’s. You make a pretty website and then try to get people’s attention.

If you were the only one with a website then making money online with a website would be easy, unfortunately you are not the only one. You must compete against people with the same intentions as you.

Think Of Your Website As An Apple Stand

The biggest lesson I learned was this: think of your website as an apple stand in a large open market. Would you expect to make money by just plopping down a bucket of apples and waiting for the people to come by and buy from you? Why would people buy apples from you? There are lots of other apple stands for them to choose from – why buy from you? What would you do to get people to buy apples from your stand? To make money with a website you need to ask yourself: what will you do to get people to visit your website? How will you differentiate yourself from all the other apple sellers out there?

Make Money With a Website - The Key Concept

Before you start; before you dive in and begin learning HTML, CSS, and basic website design. Before you pick a domain name and topic for your website. Before you start to write pages of content and search for images to decorate. Before you start doing any of these things you need to know the key concept of making money with a website.

You will waste a lot of your time if you simply create a website, write some content and pretty it up with images and font colors. There are already literally thousands of websites out there about every subject imaginable. Without putting lots of thought into what your website will be about you are most likely just going to end up throwing another website onto of the Internet junk pile.

What ever idea just popped into your head has already been done before. Somebody has had it before you and has made a website. They made it pretty and followed all the latest in good website design. Whatever simply popped into your head has been done already.

Anything that just pops into your head will not work. Remember - you are competing against other like minded people. Like it or not you are not that special that great ideas just pop into your head. There are people whose job it is to think up great website ideas – they spend their days thinking of the next best thing. They will already have thought of what just popped into your head. You need to go beyond the initial idea pop.

You need to find a way to make your website different. And this will not happen with an idea that just pops in your head. You need to do research. Real research. Once you have an idea, spend hours on the Internet looking at what other people are doing with that idea. What can you do to make it different? What can you do to make people want to come to your website rather then all the others? What can you do to make people want to buy your apples rather then from the stand right next to yours?

The key concept to making money with a website is: unique.

Unique can mean many different things. It can mean original, or least expensive, or highest quality, or most accessible, writing style. The point is that it has to have some element that makes people want to choose your product over all the other ones you are competing against. People will not waste their time with you if you have nothing unique to offer.

With the apple stand example unique can mean:

your stand is right at the market entrance
you have only big apples
your apples are blue
your apples are the least expensive
you sell half apples

Whatever it is you do, it must make you stick out from the crowd - it must offer something different.

It is easy to see with the apple stand example how to be unique. But what most people new to websites do not understand is that websites also require uniqueness. You need to find a way to differentiate your website from all the other websites out there. If you fail to do this right off the start then the next 6 months will lead to a dead end. For six months you will be making a pretty website and writing content – spending hours and hours in front of your computer. Then after six months, or more if you are really stubborn, you will realize that it is not working. A total failure – no visitors and no money made.

After these six months you will finally sit back and start to think about what you did wrong. And the conclusion will be that there is nothing special about your website. There is no reason for people to come to your website – no reason for people to buy your apples.

Save yourself at least 6 months of grief. Ask yourself this question. Why will people come to my website? What makes it unique?

What Is A Unique Website?

Your website is the product. It is a store. You can sell one of three things:

Information
Somebody else’s product
Your own product

Selling Information On Your Website– Do You Have Something Unique To Offer?

Unless you have been to the moon, attacked by Bigfoot, been kidnapped, invented something amazing, a movie star, or anything out of the ordinary – making money by offering information is difficult.

The problem is that you are not that unique. Yes, you are special and an individual with your own experiences etc., but unfortunately not special enough for anybody to care. You are special in your own little world but on the Internet you are just one in a million. You are like everybody else and therefore you will have lots competition.

What can you write about that hasn’t already been written about by somebody else? Why would people want your information? It is just the same old, same old – been there, heard that, what else you got?

If you have a unique experience then an information site is ideal. People will want to read it from your website because it is unique – it is your experience that is rare and interesting. But if you are going to create a website about making money online or personal development then you are begging to fail. Unless you have some unique twist, some different angle, you will be lost in an endless forest of competition. You will be a needle in a haystack – and the worst part is that nobody will even be looking for you.

So you have two options. Write something unique based on your own unique expertise and experience. Or if that is not possible, you will need to focus on the presentation. How can you rewrap the information to make it unique? What can you do to your apple stand to make it different then all the other apple stands?

This is where you will need to do a lot of thinking and research. How are you going to take the information that is already out there and present it in a unique way? Different writing style, use of videos, a totally different angle and perspective?

For example, imagine your website will be about Gerbil Care – A website about how to take care of your pet gerbil. Do a search for gerbil care and you will find hundreds of websites about how to care for your pet gerbil. So the information is out there – the world does not need another gerbil care website. People have already have the information.

You need to think of a way to make a gerbil care website that presents the information differently.

Here are some examples that take information already available on gerbil care and present them differently:

Have the information presented from the point of view of the gerbil. A gerbil telling the readers what he likes and dislikes.
Instead of the website stating what you should do to have a healthy gerbil, have a website that describes how people have accidentally killed their gerbil.
Using YouTube have your website video based. A couple of sock puppet gerbils describe how to properly care for gerbils.

The point is unique presentation. The information is not new, but the presentation is.

Selling Products On Your Website

Selling products is similar to selling information. Unless you created a unique product not sold by anybody else, all you are doing is trying to provide better information about a product than everybody else, or a better purchasing experience than anybody else.

Being an affiliate is difficult because people prefer trusted sources like ebay.com and amazon.com. Between these two websites you can almost buy every product on earth.

As a product affiliate you need to convince people to buy the product from you instead of somebody else – somebody they trust like amazon.com. Just like a website that sells information, if you want to sell products you need to present them in a unique way. You need to provide a good reason why people should buy it from you instead of amazon.com. Again the key is uniqueness. You will fail if you just put up a website and paste the text from Amazon – why would anybody buy it from you if they could buy it from Amazon?

Challenges You Will Face Trying To Making Money With A Website

As with any pursuit worth doing there will be challenges. Creating a website that makes money is no exception. As you probably already know most people fail. The number that floats around is 99% - which basically means that everybody fails and only a few are the lucky ones. A lottery – most likely you will fail, but there is always the chance that you will be the lucky one.

The most important challenge that you need to over come is understanding that making money online is not easy. If you want to succeed you will have to be patient and you will have to do a lot of work.

It Is Not Easy

Get it out of your head that you will slap together a few pages of content, make a logo, tell your friends, and then just sit back and watch the money roll in. It does not work that way.

At lot of people fail and quit because they get surprised by how much work it is. After all, they want to make money online because it is easy. Yet, they are working more hours and seeing fewer results. After six months of trying they give up - countless hours lost for pennies earned.

The problem is that they got surprised by how much work it was. Then either they quit because they do not want to do all that work, or they quit because they assume that they are doing something wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be a lot of work, they think to themselves, how come I have to work so hard? I must be doing something wrong.

Understand now, before you begin, that it will be a lot of work. That six months from now your website will not be a success. That you will have put in countless hours and have only 50 visitors a day. Realize that now so that you are not surprised by it later - so that you do not do all this work for the next six months only to quit. Realize it now so that after six months you can keep going with your website.

Prepare yourself to do a lot of work. Success will not come easy or fast. But if you keep working and learning then you have a chance at having a successful website.

Creating The Website Is the Easy Part

A common mistake is to think that all you need to do is create a website. Once you learn how to use HTML, CSS and create pretty graphics success will follow - all you need is a website. This kind of thinking is completely wrong.

Of course being able to create a website is necessary, but it is one of the least important aspects. An 8 year old kid can build the website for you. Or for a couple hundred dollars you can have it professionally done. Website creation and design has turned into a commodity. You can purchase completed website templates that require almost no HTML knowledge to maintain and update. Website creation and design should be the least of your concerns.

You should focus on two things:

What your website will be about (the content). Will people want to visit it?
How will people find your website? How will you drive traffic to your website?

Before you crack open a single HTML book, or download website building software, make sure that you have the two things above figured out.

What Will Your Website Be About?

Research your topic. Do a search for websites similar to the one you are planning to build. How many websites are there like yours? How good are they? Do they look like they make lots of money? How old are they? What can you do that will make your website different than the current ones available?

Doing your research and answering these questions will help you figure out what your website should be about. Find a hole in the market and build your website to fill it. Do not just build a website that you think will do well without doing research – if you ignore doing the research then there is a 99% chance that your website will fail. Why 99% - because that is the percent of websites that fail and they fail because they are trying to do something that has already been done and does not need to be done again.

How Will You Get Visitors To Your Site?

Besides building a website that fills some market demand (a website that people will want to read) you will need to figure out how you will drive traffic to your website.

You could have the prettiest website in the world and which describes a cure for cancer. But if you do not promote your site nobody will see it. It does not matter how great the content is or how much time you spend building the website, if you do not promote it you will fail.

Websites exist in infinite space. Unlike opening up a store on a street corner, there is absolutely no chance that a passerby will stumble upon your website by accident. There is no chance that somebody will random type in something into the address bar and land on your website. You need to go out, find people and bring them to your website. Go out and leave signs that lead people back to your website - people need to be shown that your website exists.

Promoting your website is by far the ‘hardest part’ of having a website. It is also the most aggravating and the one you will spend the most time on.

The problem is that website promotion is more an art than a science. There is no formula to getting lots of website traffic. There is nothing that you can do to get a certain amount of traffic. It is easy if your goal is 10 visitors a day, but if you want 1000 visitors a day then you will need to work hard.

There are many ways to get traffic. Have a look at How To Get Website Traffic. Here you will find the standard methods of getting the initial traffic to your website. These ideas will enable you to get a base traffic flow – to get your website out there. Every webmaster has their own favorite technique or method that works best for them. You will need to find out what works best for you and your website.

But be careful. Getting traffic is the holy grail for webmasters, so everybody and their dog will try to convince you that they have the holy grail and try to sell it to you. Do not be fooled into parting with your money and wasting your time with these scams. The easiest way to know if it is a scam is if the words ‘free,easy,rich,1000’s visitors’ are together on the same page. Getting traffic is not easy and nobody would reveal how they get traffic for cheap or free. Same rule applies for website traffic as for the holy grail – if the guy on the street is selling the holy grail for $9.99 then it is not the holy grail.

The Amount Of Promotion Required Depends On Your Content

At the beginning you will need to promote your website. How much and for how long you will need to promote depends on how good your website is. And that is the rub; obviously you will think that your website is great, that people would love it - if only they knew about it. So everyday you promote expecting that today is the day the website will finally take off.

The only way to find out if your website is really good, and not just based on your opinion, is to promote it and see what happens. There are 3 possible outcomes:

Your Website Has Great Content

Let's imagine that your new website has the cure for cancer as the content. That is truly great content! After you finish building the site you begin to promote. You leave some comments on other blogs, write an article and post on forums. A few people will visit your site and read your content. They will love your website and email it to their friends.

My guess is that within a few days you can stop doing your own promotion – other people will do the promotion for you. People will email your website and link to it from their website.

This is what happens when you have great content – you only need to promote for a while till the promotion happens for you.

Your Website Has OK Content

Great content means that lots of people are interested in your website. OK content means that it is good content but people who are interested in it are harder to find. For example, a small niche website can have good content but not everybody is interested in the content. Gerbil care is an example of a small niche site. The content is good but you need to spend a lot of time promoting your website because you need to find the people who are interested.

Or OK content can mean that your writing style appeals to a certain type of person only. Out of every 100 people only 1 likes it. It is good writing, but only a small percentage of the people see it as such. You need to promote more to be able to reach that small percentage.

If you have OK content then you will need to spend more time promoting. Your website will succeed as soon as enough people know about it. But because the niche is so small and the potential visitors few and far between it will take time to build up your traffic. Everybody is interested in the cure for cancer so the website will self promote easily, but only a few are interested in Gerbil Care.

With OK content you stand a chance of succeeding – you will simply need to do more promotion.

Your Website Has Poor Content

The worst thing that can happen is that you have poor content and do not realize it. In this situation you will waste a lot of time and cause yourself grief. Months will be spent promoting and for months you will see no results.

You will become bitter. How come that site is a success and mine is not. I promote everyday and nothing happens. Everybody else must be cheating, or Google is not fair, or that webmaster is a jerk for not backlinking to me. All that anger and heartache and wasted time because you do not realize that your website is not good.

If your website is not good then no amount of promoting will make it a success. No amount of link exchanges or tweets from friends will help. You may have a few good days but in the end the site will fail.

You might become so desperate that you start trying to cheat the system by paying for backlinks or joining link farms. This might help your website for a little while, but sooner or later it will fail. These are just life support mechanisms – as soon as you unplug the website it will die – it will never become a success on its own.

How To Tell If Your Website Has Poor Content

It is a hard to admit your website has poor content. But you need to be honest with yourself. Just because you wrote it does not mean that it has to be good. It is possible that you are a bad writer or web designer. Bad websites exist, someone must be making them, and someone must think they are good. Try to look at your work objectively.

Do not bother asking your mother or friends for their opinion – it cannot be trusted.

The best way to determine whether your website has good content is to promote it and see what happens. Are the number of visitors steadily increasing? Month by month are things getting better? If your website has poor content you will not see progress. You promote and promote and nothing happens. This means that you are the only one promoting because nobody else thinks your website is any good to promote it for you.

On the other hand, if your website stats keep improving month over month that means other people find your website good and are doing some promoting for you. It becomes a snowball. As more time passes more people promote which causes more people to promote. But if you website has poor content nobody will promote for you and your stats remain steady and flat over time.

Have a look at the How Is This Website Progressing page to see how I determine the progress of this site.

Conclusion – Can You Make Money With A Website

There is a lot to having a successful website. So many factors, so much to learn. Sometimes it can be daunting and hard to determine whether it is something you want to do and can do. Can you build a successful website?

There is only one way to find out - build, learn, tinker. The best evidence that you can have your own website: I did it – so can you. I started knowing nothing about making money with a website. By building it, learning and tinkering I have made it into what it is today.

This website is my baby - I love it. Successful or not, I enjoy spending time on it. Of course I hope it will be popular and make a lot more money but for now I am happy that it simply exists.

This website started off as an idea. A whim with no past – one day I just decided to make money with a website. I had no previous experience but tried it anyway. Now it is what it is and I do not regret a single minute spent on it. You should try it.

Any Questions?...Contact Me

As you might of guessed this website makes money if you get your hosting, domain name, or the Website Builder tool from www.worldforwebsites.com. I am not ashamed to admit it because there is nothing wrong with it, when you make your website you will also suggest products that help your visitors.

This website makes money when you buy, but the fact is that I want you to be happy and confident with your purchase. The happier you are, the better my reputation. A better reputation means more sales.

So please, if you have any questions, if there is something you are not sure about, use the form below and ask me. I will do everything I can to help you - afterall, this website makes money by helping you.

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