How to Start a Blog or Website and Monetize it

Before you can start making any money online, you need to get online so that you can start building your website! You will have to learn how to register a domain name for your website and get it hosted online. It may surprise you just how easy this is!

What is a Domain Name?

For those of you that don't know what one is, a domain name is the address of your website, which is sometimes referred to as a URL. These are most commonly recognised as ending in '.com' but there are many others out there, such as '.biz', '.tv', '.co.uk', '.jp', etc.

What makes a good Domain Name?

The difference between a good domain name and a bad domain name can cost a website several thousand visitors a month. This is why it is important to spend time picking a good one.

There is an art to picking a good domain name. Really long URL's like 'BernieMoonsDailyTelevisionBlog.com' can be harder to remember and sound boring. Try to limit your name to two or three short words. Your address needs to be easy to remember, think about if you were to tell a random stranger in the street your website url, would they be able to remember it after an hour or so. If the answer is no, then you need to think of a shorter, catchier one.

Some of the best domain names are descriptive of what you website is about, for example 'studymarineengg.com' tells people instantly that it is about Marine Engineering

Perhaps you are a Photographer and you want to make a website to display your professional portfolio online, YourNamePortfolio.com might be a good choice.

You can use key words to help you decide before you commit to one. List all the keywords that are associated with the website that you want to make. Then see if you can use a combination of them to create your domain name.

To make sure that your domain name is easy to remember, make sure that you don't use any hyphens or punctuation marks within your url address. It makes it much harder for people to remember. If your site is 'MyName-Blog.com' then people will more likely visit 'MyNameBlog.com' instead, leading to lost traffic.

For the same reason, make sure you use a url that ends in '.com' not any of the other '.co.uk' or '.biz' because people automatically are more likely to enter '.com'. This may make it a bit harder to find a suitable domain name, but having '.com' is worth it!

How to Register a Domain Name

You register a domain name by paying a small fee to a registering company. This gives you full ownership of that url for the set period of time that you have paid for.

You should make sure that you register your domain name at a proper registering company, so that they will look after your domain and provide any support that you may need. You can try a company called GoDaddy for your domains. They are the largest domain registrar in the world. Besides GoDaddy, there are many other alternate domain registrars that are worth their weight in salt.

What is a Hosting Provider?

A Hosting provider gives you online space to place all of your files that are needed to get your website online. You rent disk space and bandwidth for about $5 a month. This way, your site is available for people to visit 24 hours a day.

Disk space is the space that your website is stored in. Every single letter from your site is stored here and each of those letters uses 1 byte of space. Images and video use considerably more space, for example 30 images may use up 3MB, whereas 5000 pictures would use 500MB.

Bandwidth is the total amount of data that the host server allows your website to send in a month. The more traffic that your site gets, the more bandwidth your site uses.

Choosing not to use a host requires you to invest in your own dedicated server which is much more complicated and costly than using a hosting provider. This is advantageous for websites that have huge numbers of traffic. Having your own dedicated server, instead of a shared host can prevent a site from slowing down.

Which Hosting Provider should I choose?

There are many different hosting providers that are available online. You need to choose one that is right for the job.

You need to find a host that offers good support to you. This is very important because should any problems arise with your website, you need to be able to get in contact with their support team who will help you out. Also, hosting providers can have limits on the amount of disk space and bandwidth. Finding a host that offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth will be beneficial in the long run as your website grows, plus you won't be hit by any additional charges.

There are many free hosts that you could use, however they don't give you permission to add any adverts to your website, which is a big part of generating income for your website. They allow little control over the structure and design of your website, often giving you a cheap template that looks rubbish. If you want to make money online, don't use a free host!

You can try HostGator and one of the biggest advantages of HostGator is that they allow easy installation of WordPress with just one click. There is no extra charge for this, whereas other companies can charge you extra for this. Besides HostGator, there are many other alternate host providers which are equally good.

How to Host Your Website

This is really quite simple. Once you have found a hosting provider that you are happy with, you need to choose a hosting plan that is right for you. These can very in price, but offer additional features, such as a larger number of domains.

Connect your new Domain name and Host together (The below example uses GoDaddy and HostGator, but you can chose their alternatives)

To join the two together so that they are both linked, you need to login to your GoDaddy account. From here you need to navigate to 'Domains > My Domains' and click on the url that you purchased for your new website.

From here, click on the 'Nameservers Icon' and change the default 'nameservers' to the ones that HostGator will have emailed you. These should be something similar to;

NS1.HostGator.com

NS2.HostGator.com

That's it! As easy as that. The two are now linked together and you will be able to start constructing your website.

How to Build Your Blog Using Wordpress

What is WordPress?

WordPress is amazing software that allows you to create a beautiful blog without needing to be a techno-nerd. It allows you to simply add content, be that articles, blog entries, pictures, videos or more, edit how your site looks, by changing themes, and you can add thousands of different plugins, such as a Twitter feed or Facebook icons.

WordPress is a CMS (Content Management Software) that makes it easy to fully manage your blog. Being an Open Source program, WordPress is FREE to use and has a huge active community that help one another.

How to Install WordPress for your Website

It is easy to install WordPress for your website. Simply log in to your Host provider and go to your cPanel. If you used HostGator, scroll down to 'Software & Services' and click on 'Fantastico'. Click on 'WordPress' and start a 'New Installation'. Simply fill in the information required for your new blog, such as username and password and click 'Install WordPress' and then 'Finish Installation'. Within a couple of minutes, it will be installed!!!

You will now be able to log into your WordPress website and see what your website looks like.

How do you make your website look good?

Having installed WordPress your site probably looks a bit basic and boring. Don't worry this is just a basic default theme that is pre-installed. You can change everything on it, be it the background, images, the layout of each page, you can add videos, social media icons, the list of possibilities is endless.

WordPress Themes

Many websites are let down by their appearance. It doesn't matter how good your website content is, if it is displayed in an unappealing way, you will lose traffic.

The good thing about WordPress is that there are thousands of high quality themes that you can use for your website. They are easy to install and make your blog look great instantly.

You can try using WooThemes - they have a variety of very high quality themes that you can use for your site, offering both FREE and Paid themes.

What makes Website Content so Important?

Website content is vital for your business as it is this that which brings people to your website. You can't begin to think about earning any money from your website if you are not prepared to put the effort into producing good quality content.

You have to attract people and make them choose to come to your website. The best way to attract visitors is to offer them value that they want to read/see. This can be in many different forms, such as news, images, opinions, videos, tutorials, etc. As long as people perceive that what you are offering is of value to them, then they will visit your website. The trick is to do it on a consistent basis that keeps them coming back for more.

The more effort that you put into making your website content better, the more people will visit your site and the more traffic you get, the more money you will make. It's as simple as that!

Ways to produce quality website content

Write what people want to read! This may sound obvious, but there are many sites out there that don't do this. They concentrate on such a small niche, that nobody visits the website, resulting in not enough traffic to make any sort of money from it. This however could be remedied by broadening the reach of the target audience. Remember that your website's aim is to attract as many people as possible (without being too broad!) so produce content that would satisfy them.

Use a great headline!

You need people to read what you are writing, whether that be in a detailed tutorial or a daily blog. A great way of getting people's attention is to use an attractive headline. At the same time you need to keep it reasonably short, whilst clearly stating what the article is about and making it sound appealing. This can be more difficult for certain subjects, but a good headline can be written for anything, you just need to be a bit creative!

Include Videos!

People like watching videos because they are much more attractive than reading text. This is a great way to promote your website to people as it offers them a more exciting way of finding out about you. It doesn't matter what your site subject matter is, you can be creative and think of a way to include a video. You could include video tutorials, video competitions, video interviews, etc.

Include Pictures!

Pictures are a great way of brightening up your website. Nobody likes boring, dull looking websites. Even if your site is about a boring subject, quality images can brighten up the appearance, making it more appealing to visitors.

Include a Forum!

A forum is a great way for your visitors to interact with one another. This can help build a community around your website that keeps people coming back.

Adverts!

Many websites display adverts on their web pages. These can vary in size, with the most common being; Wide Skyscraper 160x600, Banner 468x60, Square 250x250 & Leader board 728x90. These can be placed anywhere on your pages. It isn't however as straight forward as simply adding an advert, there are many different forms of advertisements out there that can be used. Understanding these can help you earn the most from them.

1. Pay Per Click Advertising - These types of adverts pay you every time someone clicks onto them. You have to sign up to a provider, who will give you code for you to place on your site. This code allows the provider to send contextual ads to your site (either image or text based) that are relevant to the content of your site. Google Adsense is the most famous and widely used provider of this service, but there are many others out there.

These types of ads vary in profitability. It all depends on how many clicks you are getting. The more traffic that you get, the more likely that some will click onto them. This can be helped by the positioning of your ads, as certain parts of your web pages are more valuable than others, such as the beginning and end of an article.

2. Cost Per Mile Advertising - This type of advert is similar to 'Pay Per Click', however instead of earning for every click that you get, you get paid according to the number of impressions that you receive. This is worked out for every 1000 impressions that it has. For example, a website that gets 200,000 page views per month that displays a $1 Cost Per Mile ad will generate you $200 a month!

Just like Pay Per Click, Cost Per Mile adverts can pay you more depending on where the advert is placed on your website. The higher the ad is placed and the bigger the ad is, it will generally make you more money.

3. Advertising Space - You could instead cut out the middle man and make money by selling your own advertising space. This way advertisers would pay you an agreed amount for you to display their advert for a set time.

Affiliate Advertising!

This method can net you some serious money if done right. It takes much more time to set up, but the rewards are much bigger. Affiliate advertising allows you to plug other peoples products, services, website, etc. In return, you get a commission for every sale that resulted in your recommendation. This is often worked out on a percentage of the sale price, maybe 10-20%, sometimes more depending on the individual product. You have to do a bit of research for products that you can do affiliate ads for, sites such as ClickBank are great for this and list loads for you to use. There are many ways of implementing this type of advertising.

1. Text Link Ads - Text link adverts allow you to place ads within the text of your websites. These just appear as a normal link, but for every visitor that follows that link that results in a sale, you get a percentage. There are plenty of sites out there that that can supply you with plenty of text link ads, such as Text-Link-Ads.

2. Product Reviews - Simply write a detailed review about a product (that has an affiliate scheme) and publish them on your site, just add a link at the bottom. Obviously it is better to review products that are related to your website, as you are catering to your target audience.

Make your own Product!

You don't have to rely on making money by selling other peoples things, you can make your own. Write your own book or eBook and sell it on your site. If you are good at programming, write your own software program and sell it on your own site. Sell your own art work, photographs, sculptures, etc. What ever you are good at!

How can I attract people to my website?

Attracting traffic to your website is one of the most important parts of making money online. The more people you can get to visit your site, the more money you can potentially make.

If you have the money that you can invest in advertising for your site, then that's great. You will be able to attract visitors in many different ways. However, there are plenty of simple FREE methods that are great for start-up websites.

It's vitally important that you don't give up at this early stage. It can take time to build a steady amount of traffic for your website. Unfortunately, the main reason why people fail online is because they don't put the effort in and use the wrong methods to attract large numbers people to their site - it won't happen overnight, but if you invest the time and effort working on the right method, it will reward you in the end.

Traffic building techniques

Social Media Marketing!

Social Media has taken off in a HUGE way! Everyone seems to be on it these days. That is great for us web developers because it allows us a way to interact and advertise our presence to huge amount of people.

1. Twitter - Twitter allows people to communicate with each other across the world. You may only have 140 characters, but that is plenty to get your voice heard by lots of people. You need to tweet regularly about things that are happening with your website, such as; new blog posts, competitions, events, tutorials, videos, interviews, etc. Mix that in with general tweets from you that are related to your website niche, such as related news stories.

The next step is to start following people that are related to your website subject matter. Find some of the biggest names in your niche and follow them AND whoever they are following. This allows you to target potential visitors of your website. They will see that you are of interest to them, so they will likely follow you back. Friends of friends will start to notice you and your tweets, resulting in continual growth of people following you.

2. Facebook - There is an estimated 600 million users of Facebook worldwide, that's almost 10% of the earth's population! Facebook can be used as a tool to try and attract some of these people to your website. By creating a 'Fan' page for your website, you can advertise your presence to lots of online people, letting them 'Like' your page and tell their friends about this new cool website that they have just found.

Obviously, just like Twitter, you need to be posting updates to your page regularly. Updates, news, upcoming events, workshop dates, etc. with links to your website. This will all help to drive traffic to your website.

To increase your Facebook presence, networking is very important. Like Twitter, find people who are interested in your niche and become their 'Friends' and/or 'Like' their 'Fan' page. Some of these will begin to follow you back, which starts the process of building your profile.

Once you have built yourself a bit of a reputation within your niche, you can try to attract more people. A good way to do this is to politely ask high profile people within your industry to become fans of your page. This way, when they do, all of their followers will see that they are friends with you, which will attract more people to you.

3. Other Social Media Sites - There are loads of additional popular social media sites that you can use to advertise your site. Sites like Instagram, Digg, LinkedIn, MySpace, Stumbleupon, etc., all have huge amounts of members.

Video Marketing!

If you are using videos as an alternate way of producing content for your website, these same videos can be used to also help promote your website and attract traffic. Many people just make short videos advertising themselves, which is great. But the best type of videos to make are ones that offer something to the viewer.

There are many video websites out there that you can post yours onto, it doesn't just have to be YouTube. Just remember that the aim is to get people to your site. A good way to do this is to display links to your website at both the beginning and end of each video as well as underneath the video where you can write descriptions. If you watch the video back and there is no reference to your website at all, then nobody will ever visit your site, making the whole video pointless!

Blog Marketing!

When you are just starting out, it can be difficult to build an online reputation. A method that you can use to increase your presence is blog marketing. This method involves posting comments on other peoples blogs. Simply find blogs that are in some way related to your website subject matter and start commenting on them. Post valuable content that people want to read and you will grow your reputation.

Many blogs use 'Disqus' that let their readers add comments. The good thing about 'Disqus' is that you can add a link to your website under your profile name, this way whenever anybody clicks on your name, it will take them to your website. Again, you will need to be adding quality comments for people to do this, but this is a great way to increase your online presence. Therefore the more blog comments you make, the more links to your website there will be.

Forum Marketing!

There are loads of online forums focusing on different subjects. If you can find an online forum that specialises in your niche, then you can begin to build an online presence.

Like many blogs, a lot of forums don't let you place links to your site, or if they do they are links that can't be clicked on. These are called No-follow Links. A quick search on a search engine for 'Do-follow Forums' will reveal loads of forums that will be beneficial. These types of forums let you comment as normal, but let you add links in your signature that people can follow directly to your website.

How can I get people to revisit my website?

To get people to keep coming back to your website, you need to give plenty of reasons why they should. If you think about it, it's just common sense. You need to continually add to your site in a variety of different ways. Add new blog posts/articles, tutorials, videos, pictures, interviews, competitions, news, events, etc. Doing this regularly gives people an excuse to click on your site and catch up with what's new. Not only that, but it shows to new visitors that your site is not dead, there is an active presence online.

Techniques to bring traffic back to your website

Apart from regularly adding content that we have discussed through out this training course, there are a number of other ways to encourage people to come back to your site.

Email Marketing!

This is a great way of getting people back to your website. The key is to build a large email list of your customers/visitors. When people register to become a member, you get their email address. When people sign up to your weekly newsletter, you get their email address. The more ways there are to get someone's email address the better.

With an email list, you can build a brand, recommend products, promote any events/workshops that you may be holding and more importantly to can encourage people to keep returning to your website.

Newsletter!

These are a great way to encourage people to return to your website. Within your newsletter you can keep referring people back to your website. You can automate the whole process as well, letting it run on auto pilot (example - AWeber).

RSS Feeds!

These are great for informing people about your latest updates. Feeds update themselves automatically when you add to your blog. People that have chosen to subscribe to your RSS Feed are automatically told about your new content, giving them incentive to check it out (example - Google Feedburner).

Be Friendly!

If someone takes the time to email you with a question, then put the effort into replying. Even if you don't know the answer to the question asked, perhaps you could refer them to somebody that does, or be honest and say I don't know! The fact that you have shown to actively respond to a visitors question can go along way.

If you are getting lots of emails about the same question, then that might be a good subject to write about in an upcoming blog post. You could send emails back thanking the individual for the question and stating that you will be writing an in depth post outlining the answer for him.

Post comments on your own posts answering peoples questions, refer to people that have asked questions in videos, etc. This all helps to build a community around your website. Doing this sort of thing shows to your visitors that you aren't a faceless website that doesn't interact with its viewers, that you are willing to help if you can.

Network!

Get in contact with other people that are involved in your field of interest. You may not get too many replies if you still have a small reputation, but that will change as you grow your online status. You could offer to link to their website in return that they similarly link back to you. This can help your credibility and increase your reputation.

Yesterday we learnt how to keep your visitors coming back for more. But that isn't the end of building your first website, you need to be able to manage and maintain your site, so that you can be able to adapt any part of your business if its not working. Thankfully, there are many things that can help you do this. Today we will be looking at some of them.

Useful tips to help manage your website

Google Analytics

This is a great tool that you should be using for your website. Google Analytics allows you to track every aspect of your website to see how it is performing. This is vital for your business as it allows you to pinpoint the different parts of your website that are working and which are not.

Google Analytics lets you track how many visitors you have had, where in the world your visitors are from, your top content, most visited pages, traffic sources that are sending visitors to your site, new visitors, bounce rate, average time on site, keywords and so much more!

Backup your website

Making regular backups of your website is very important! There are plenty of things that can go wrong with a site that can result in you losing everything, such as; getting a virus, a hosting problem, someone hacking your site, etc. There are ways to prevent these things happening, but its comforting to know that should anything happen, you have a recent backup that you can republish.