Some of the common questions are. “Well, how do I make a website and how do I make money off it?” The answer is pretty simple. You can follow this step by step tutorial on how you can create your very own free online website with free web providers like Blogger, or with your own hosting provider, to make money online. Okay, lets get started.
1. Choose Your Hosting Provider
Here, I’ll list a couple of free well known hosting providers, which allows you to create your very website completely free using a sub-domain of course. If you want to register your very own domain, I recommend registering one from GoDaddy because they are the cheapest. You can look for promo codes to make domain registration even cheaper for the first year as well from the Digital Point Forums. If you want your very own free co.cc domain instead, register for one here completely free.
These are all great free hosting providers that will provide you all the essential disk space you need to easily start your very own website and be able to display advertisements to make money. That, we will learn later on. Free hosting sites are great practice dummies before starting your very own serious website.
If you want to consider paid hosting for your serious site, some great starter hosts that will completely fit all your needs in terms of dealing with web disk space and bandwidth are listed here. You should consider paid hosting if you are serious about managing and making money off your own website because there a lot of things that come into play, such as, stability, brand, and etc. Also, it is pretty cool to say to your friends that this your very own personal website that you are managing to make money off.
Blogger Users Don’t Have to Read This
Some great free online blog platforms are Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla. I have not tried any others web platform such as ZenCart, simply because I only own a blog. If you were wondering, this blog runs under the blog platform Wordpress. The plugins that come along with it, are simply awesome.
2. Choose a Web Template
Choosing a web template can be rather hard. When deciding which best fits your website, you must already have an idea of what you want your website to be about, because if you made a site dedicated to candy, and your blog template says batman, would that really make sense to you?
These are all free sources that give away free templates for you to use for the respective blog platforms, free of charge.
Blogger Template Sources:
Wordpress Template Sources:
Drupal Template Sources:
Joomla Template Sources:
3. Building Your Website
After setting up your website with your hosting provider or after signing up with one of the free hosting providers, you can now simply add content to your website. None the less, content is the most important key to building up a reputable website that can both provide users the information they are looking for, and at the same time make you money. Without content, your site is of no value to anyone but your self. Be sure that the topic you are writing about isn’t too board nor narrow, and is somewhat of your interest in writing about it. Adding some great functionality, such as widgets and tools to your websites are great in terms of adding more value to your website. The more complete your site looks, the more valuable it becomes.
Once you have added some valuable content to your website, move on to the next step. Make sure it is of it’s highest quality because your content will determine whether or not visitors will come back or not.
4. Start Promoting Your Website
4th step is promoting your website. Without readers, your site is like a dark alley. You must have some activity to engage readers to come and read your stuff, and hopefully come back again if it is good. There are many methods of getting readers, or in webmaster language, web traffic. I’ll list a few great sources to get some great online traffic.
- Social Networks
- Forums
- Commenting
- Search Engines (Information in the Google SEO category)
- Friends
Also, never fall for those traffic exchanges or sites that say they will give your site free traffic. Most of the time the traffic is of little worth and the exchanges is just a time waster
5. Now, Monetize Your Website
This is where the money comes rolling in. Once you have somewhat built up a large community of readers, there are many ways to making money online off them indirectly where both the readers and the writers both are happy, and mutually benefit from each other. Readers get valuable information. Writers get a bit of income.
- Through banner advertisements, like I have. (PPC)
- Through affiliate links. (-)
- Through sales. (PPS)
- Through impressions. (CPM)
- Through networks.
- Through leads. (CPA)
These are all great sources to making passive income with your website. A great list of publisher programs that you can enroll your site into, to maximize it’s earnings and make the most money online are listed here. Although it says, these are alternatives to Google Adsense, try Google Adsense simply because it is one of the best sources of income for our website. If that doesn’t work, simply hop onto another network and decide which is the better network to promote for your website. All websites have different methods that work best for their own particular website. You just have to find out which works best for your site on your own to maximize it’s true potential income to make money.
Web creation is today’s buzz. Almost everyone wants to have their own personal website with their own personal domain, but how exactly do you register a domain name? Domain registration is one of the most easiest and not to say, one of the most cheapest services you will ever buy for your web needs. Domain registration shouldn’t be looked as a complicated process, it is rather an easy process really.
Picking a Domain Registrar
Domain registration… The first step would be to look for the most cheapest domain registrar and in most cases, it is GoDaddy. With GoDaddy, prices range from sometimes $10.69/yr for domain registration, to sometimes $2.19. I recommend searching up the latest coupons before purchasing any domains from any domain registrar. Registering your domain with any domain seller is fine, however, most of the time webmasters are picky in terms of who their registrars are, simply because of security and the pricing. Here are a few reputable domain registrars that most webmasters trust.
Registering your first couple of domains on any of these providers is a great choice. They provide great support and on top of that, affordable pricing.
Picking the Perfect Domain Name
Before fully registering a domain name, you must fully understand and decide what you want your domain to be called. This shouldn’t be a hasty step as picking a domain name will be the image of your website. In terms of picking out your domain name, remember that having a memorable domain name is the best in the long run. I like to lay it out in a table like this.
- 1 Worded domains, Best
- 2 Worded domains, Awesome
- 3 Worded domains, Mediocre
- 4 Worded domains, Long
Don’t let this table dictate your overall decision, however, it is a great reference for those who are unsure. Catchy domain names are most often more remembered. This is a marketing technique that will forever be powerful.
How to Register a Domain Name
The process of registering a domain name is a simple process of picking out the perfect domain, then purchasing it. Here are a few video presentations that I found off YouTube that can prove to be beneficial on how to register a domain name step-by-step.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYbSIG_87QU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhQ06S5vwLE
Linking the Web Host to the Domain
After you have finished checking out your domain, your next step is to link your brand new domain to your web host’s name servers. If you don’t have an affordable web host, then that means you won’t have a website, however, we can solve that. Here are 5 Ideal Web Hosts That I Recommend.
In my case, if you did a who.is search for my domain, my name servers are from Fivebean. Your objective is to do the same and link your domain to your web host by changing your default name servers to your web host’s, so you can get started in building your website with your brand new domain. If you don’t know what your web host’s name servers are, simply contact them, then adjust your default ones. Once you have adjusted your domain’s name servers, in a couple of hours, your web host will pick up the domain and you should see that you can now use the domain name that you just purchased.
Keyword research is very important in terms of picking out which keywords best suits your site’s theme as well as which will show longer lasting results. In most cases, webmasters try to find low competitive keywords that are easy to rank for and have a high search volume with tools like the Google keyword suggester, however, there are some common mistakes webmasters are making in terms of keyword researching.
The 5 Keyword Research Mistakes
- The first mistake when people are using the Google keyword suggester tool, purposely made for Adwords, is that when they find the right specific keyword, they leave the option on ‘broad.’ The more accurate way to see the search volume for a phrase is to change ‘broad’ to ‘exact.’ I see too many webmasters repeat this mistake and rank for a keyword that they think is gold, but to later find out it is worth almost nothing.
- The second is that people simply don’t research with multiple tools. Although Google’s tool is the most accurate of them all, no tool is 100% accurate. It is best to compare results with other keyword tools like the one from Wordtracker to guarantee your hitting a keyword that is actually worth trying to rank for.
- When looking at how competitive a keyword is, you should put the keyword in quotes, like this. (“Keyword you want to rank for”) Then, you should put the keyword in Google’s search engine with the allintitle: command, to give you an idea of how much competition you have to dealt with beforehand.
- People are not realizing that tools it self cannot determine everything accurately. One can and should use common sense as well. Anticipate what people would search up, and try to rank for that keyword if it is uncompetitive.
- Competing for a really competitive one word keyword. Unless your Microsoft or some big multimillion company, you won’t see results for a high tier keyword like “money” anytime soon. Long tail keywords are the way to go and are easier to rank for. Some long tail keywords even out shine single word keywords in terms of search volume.
Google SEO has always been an on-going battle for many webmasters, luckily, Google is taking action. For the most part, Google’s major concern are the users doing the searching, where quality and relevance is all that matters to Google – reason why Google’s algorithm was invented, to get rid of spam and rank high quality sites on top. Google’s ideal goal is to serve users the best relevant results and in order to do so, this involves Geo-targeting, looking at web surf behaviors, and much more. In other words, Google is looking at a lot more factors now more than ever to rank a site. There was once a time where getting a simple link from a trusted source was enough to rank universally for any good keyword, nowadays, it is a lot more complex. Google is now taking into consideration bounce rates, search behaviors, time on site before a surfer leaves, and many more factors to rank a certain site. They are really trying to push webmasters to create better quality content that is engaging for users. It has been noted that back when search engine optimization was still very young, there were only around 128 factors in deciding a site’s rankings, nowadays, the tides have changed and we are now looking at above 200. As you may know, Google doesn’t like to reveal much information on how they rank sites, however one thing still stands clear, is that Google wants to push high quality sites up and low quality sites down. If you take into consideration in adding quality content to your website that has some of these engaging components like pictures, videos, and audio and much more, you are looking at the right path. Quality search is the future and in order to stay in the game of SEO, one must adapt.
Here is a video from 2008 with Matt Cutts talking about the future of Google Search and how webmasters should adapt to the new factors being presented in their ranking algorithm.
It seems that Google is now having another eye on web analytics and now not just on links on determining search engine rankings.
Another video from Bruce Clay at PubCon in 2008 regarding what he anticipates about the future of Google rankings. If you don’t know much about Bruce Clay, you can read more about him here.
In essence, we are now looking at a new field of “optimizing” for the search engine Google. Now, it isn’t just looking at building links to rank higher or JUST on-page optimization, there are many other factors as well that determines a site’s rankings. The more Google becomes more sophisticated, the more factors we are going to be looking at as webmasters. Google is really trying to clean up it’s mess on really trying to eliminate low quality sites that just clog up the search engine results and they are willing to look deep down at web analytics in order to push spam.
And what connection does these 2008 interviews regarding Google search have on us today?
If you haven’t noticed, Google has most recently pushed it’s new caffeine update search results in one of Google’s data center. You can bet that they have been testing some of the factors mentioned in the videos and have incorporated some in their algorithm. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they incorporated social buzz from sites like Twitter, Digg, and Mixx, as one of their factors in their algorithm. Google officially plans on slowly pushing the FULL caffeine search results to their live search results after the holidays. This is just another step further into advance search and Google is willing to take webmasters and users all the way.
Ranking for the search engines is a huge topic because it is universally the best place to get organic traffic, traffic that is targeted as well as being valuable. The reason why search engine traffic is such a great source to get new visitors is because it delivers constant streams of targeted traffic that you can monetize easily. How the traffic is targeted is because since search engines like Google allow users to type what ever query they want, chances are, if someone searches up how to make money, they are looking for just that. You can think of the search engines as a funnel and what comes out of the funnel, is direct targeted visitors who are interested in whatever relates to their query.
If you are just beginning Google SEO, you probably hear a lot of webmasters say start with a long tail keyword. What is a long tail keyword? A long tail keyword is more lengthier search query that is generally easier to rank for than the general broader keywords. For example, if you wanted to rank for Make Money Online, it is generally better to start with How to Make Money Online because not only is it easier to rank for the longer one, it is more directed and targeted than the broader keyword Make Money Online. This definitely means that if you rank for a longer tail keyword, the visitors are generally of more quality and are more specific of what they are interested in. As for the broad keyword, Make Money Online, it may be harder to depict.
Also, another bonus to ranking for longer tail keywords is that since they generally have much lower competition, meaning less competing sites that want to also rank for that keyword, you are more likely to see traffic sooner than lets say trying to rank for Make Money Online. Because it could take months, even years but as for longer tail ones, it could just be weeks or even days to see results.
There are many bonuses to targeting the long tail keyword. Generally because it takes less time to get actual results with long tail keywords than the broad keywords, you are most likely to feel at ease and see progress. As for the ranking for the broad keyword, progression may be slow and the competition may be stiff because remember there are only 10 search results on the front page of Google. And if you are trying to rank for a general keyword like money, there could be weeks without any improvement in the search results because it is that competitive!
In no means do I mean that you should target only long tail keywords. After you have conquered a few long tail keywords and you think your website has become more of an authority in the search engines and you are seeing that you out rank most posts you write about, you can then trail off to ranking for the more competitive terms. In my eyes, it is all about consistency and trust to gain authority in the search engines. Stick to what you do best and commit. Regardless of what most experienced webmasters say, I see a lot of new webmasters fall for the same mistake over and over trying to rank for a broad keyword that would take months, even years to rank for.
An overview is to take it easy with broad keywords and target long tail keywords until you believe that you may have a chance. The first keyword MoolaDays tried to rank for was Ways to Make Money Online, then we jumped to Make Money Online and other relatively hard, money related keywords. One thing I can say is that once you have taken down a longer tail keyword, it becomes much easier to rank for a broad keyword. Take it step-by-step because you will not only see results faster, it is a good practice overall for your mind (a lot of webmasters give up or go crazy when they take the opposite direction going broad to long). It just takes patience as well as commitment to succeed in ranking for these terms. A lot of people overlook these values.
How to Effectively Market With Email Marketing
Building a email list in any form of business, is a must simply because it is a new found method to getting repeated visits and possibly even sales. Email marketing, allows users to become consistent readers or in other words subscribers. The main purpose of email marketing and building a list of interested readers is so you can communicate and entice readers to do the action you are leading to. Whether it be purchasing one of your products, or visiting a certain website, building a subscriber based newsletter is essentially beneficial for any form of business. You don’t want customers to take a look at your website and go, you want to incorporate methods to better increase your conversions. And with the help of email marketing, you will learn exactly why building a newsletter is beneficial for both you and the customers.
The purpose of email marketing
Essentially why email marketing is mandatory for any form of business is because it pulls in relatively new customers become repeating buyers. There are few areas where email marketing covers, which you can benefit tremendously just from incorporating a certain form of email marketing:
- Personalization: We know that emails are for personal uses. Ever acquiring an email from someone, generally is always taken to a personal level. Email marketing utilizes this feeling and can be used for your benefit.
- Quick Communication: In addition to personalization, email marketing makes it very easy for customers to get up-to-date information relatively easily. This quality not only helps to increase sales, it will keep loyal customers happy as well.
- Builds Relationships: Nowadays, with the technology available to marketers, it is possible for marketers to bring email marketing to a personal level and incorporate dynamic names within their email. This will not only increase your overall presence with your customers, it will make them feel more secure the longer you stay intact with your customers in your newsletter. Which means, possibly more sales, sign-ups, and possibly new visitors from referrals.
Now that you know the benefits of maintaining an email list of loyal customers, it is time to take action and put email marketing to use. To incorporate email marketing, I tremendously recommend one of the following methods:
- FeedBurner – If you operate a blog or only want to maintain a newsletter for the purpose of only releasing web updates, FeedBurner is simply the ultimate solution (best of all, it is free). Otherwise, if you plan on sending weekly messages, I recommend a different solution listed below.
- Aweber – Aweber is probably the leading email marketing solution which most marketers rely on due to their impeccable easy to use interface as well as their fast reliable servers which you can trust. Their prices are fairly decent and I believe about 80% of marketers I have seen, use Aweber for their email marketing campaigns.
- MailChimp – MailChimp is a relatively new solution which I see a fairly large number of marketers use for their email marketing campaigns. Although it is one of the newer solutions nowadays, I’ve heard that they do not disappoint when it comes to delivery.
After you have found a provider, your next step is to learn the very basic fundamentals on how to write a good clear subject line which subscribers in your newsletter will undoubtedly check on what you have to say. Knowing how to entice subscribers to click on your email with a good subject line is crucial to really making email marketing work. If no one opens your email, all your effort goes down the drain. That is why it is very important to know how to lure readers to click on newly released emails through tested techniques. Here are some methods I recommend you using in your email marketing campaign, if ever.
Incorporate the three benefits that I have listed above (relationships, personalization, and communication) and use it for your advantage by writing enticing subject lines. Here are some examples of subject lines you can study in your email campaign.
- Make Money Online Today – Bad
- Make Money Online Today By Reading This – Better
- Read This Report on How to Make Money Online Today – Fair
- Hi [Name], Read Our Report on How to Make Money Online Today – Great
- Hi [Name], Did You Receive our Report on How to Make Money Online Today? – Best
As you can see, there is a difference between each subject line and as it transitions, it becomes more attractive. The hardest part besides building up a list for your newsletter, is trying to make readers open up your email. With good practice and good usage of using personalization to your advantage, you can almost guarantee that the majority of your readers will open up your email.
You are not only limited to using personalization and using questions for your advantage, there are many other effective strategies to make a subject line clear and attractive to readers.
- Use scarcity for your advantage (ex. 10 Free Reports for Next 10 Customers).
- Leave readers hanging with the subject line, don’t give it all away (ex. Today I am going to reveal my secret money making method).
- Offer incentives or start a special promotion.
- Use big well known reputable names within your subject line.
- Preach about your success (ex. I made $3,000 this month from Internet Marketing and how you can too!).
- Don’t have to be literate and only capitalize important words or phrases within your subject line.
- Relate your matter to certain recent big events.
- Talk about your personal life or experiences.
- Use numbers as well as symbols when necessary.
And the list can go on and on. There are many ways to effectively market with email marketing and once you have a good subject line, your subscribers are practically sold. A great technique I have found to be very useful for me is to become a subscriber for a well known Internet “guru”, which utilizes email marketing and study their methods. Uncover how they cleverly sell their products and determine how quick, or slow their process is and use that knowledge for your self. Chances are, the so called “gurus” have already tested their methods and tweaked their methods hundreds of times to increase conversions. If you study their methods, you don’t have to go through the same process, except skip to the most effective methods because that is what is being openly presented when you become a subscriber. Utilize email marketing for your business ventures and most of all, study how your competitors as well as well known gurus, go about making profits from their list and what techniques or creative ideas they incorporate to increase their sales.
We are always adding to the list, be sure to check back often
This article is intended to help you obtain free information for your small or startup business. Please leave us comments, questions, or success stories so that we can improve this guide.
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