business,freelance jobs,telecommute, Interview, Resume, Career
7 Steps to a Money Making Website
Have you been considering setting up your own website to make money on
the internet? Perhaps you already have a business or a business idea and
want your own presence on the web. Or maybe you just know that you want
to make money on the internet but have no idea what is involved.
To give you an idea of what is involved I will outline the 7 steps you
need to take to set up your own money making website. This will give you
the basics of what is involved and allow you to do further research and
make progress in each of these seven areas.
Step 1 – Your business idea
If you already have a business or a business idea, you can skip this
step. If not, then spend some time writing a list of all the things that
interest you. The chances of succeeding in your new business are far
greater if you are doing something that you are passionate about. This
way it won’t feel like you are doing a job when you start spending time
on this. Don’t worry too much about a product at this point, just think
about the things you like to do – perhaps you like cooking, or playing
football, or foreign travel. Try to write down at least 5 things that you
enjoy.
Step 2 – Research your Market and Analyse the Competition
Once you have completed step 1, you need to find out if there is a market
in the areas that you are interested in. At the same time you may want to
avoid entering a market that is highly competitive. From my experience
the best way to analyse this is by using a tool called Wordtracker. Note
that the trial version is a cut down version of the much more powerful
full version and only includes statistics from one search engine rather
than multiple engines.
Use this software as a brainstorming tool and type in your interests that
you came up with in step 1 (or your original business idea). Wordtracker
will return related keywords, which you can then select and add to your
“basket”. At this stage it is best to keep an open mind and fill your
basket with around 1000 keyword phrases. Finally you can do a
“competitive analysis” on the keywords that you have chosen. This will
allow you to see how many searches a day are done on a per search engine
basis for each keyword phrase.
In addition to this you will also see the number of competing websites
and a value called a “KEI” which is a “Keyword Effectiveness Index”. You
have a better chance of succeeding if you choose keywords that have a KEI
above 100. If the KEI is above 400, then you have an excellent chance of
success.
Ensure that you spend sufficient time in this planning phase, repeating
the above process again and again until you have a good set of related
keywords with good KEIs. Once you have chosen your keywords you should
check out your competition by typing the keywords into Google and looking
at top websites for each keyword phrase that you have selected. The
Google and Alexa toolbars can help you with your analysis of competing
websites
Step 3 – Choose a Product
If you don’t already have a product in mind, the next step is to decide
on your product or group of products. Before you do this, try to do some
research and find out exactly what your potential customers are looking
for. What sort of questions are they asking? Google Groups are an
excellent place for doing this sort of research.
One solution is to join some affiliate programs (related to your chosen
keywords of course). Affiliate programs are usually free to join and pay
you a commission for directing customers from your site via a special
affiliate link. You can find a lot of information about affiliate
programs by searching for “Affiliate Programs” on Google.
Another alternative is to sell your own product. This could be something
that you have made yourself such as a craft item or an informative
e-book, or a product that you dispatch using a drop shipping service. It
is also possible to buy resell rights to e-books and software written by
other people.
Before you make a final decision, work out what your profit margin will
be and do a rough calculation of how much money you will make based on
the estimated traffic from Wordtracker.
Step 4 – Choose and Register a Domain name
The next stage is to decide on and register a domain name. There are many
websites selling domain names and you should be able to get one easily
for less than $10 per year. There is no need to sign up for a domain name
with your web hosting company if they are charging more than this as
domain names can be transferred easily between hosting companies.
Try to choose a domain name that has some of your keywords in it. It’s
also an advantage to have a name that is relatively short and easy to
remember.
Step 5 – Find a Web Hosting Company
There are hundreds of web hosting companies available. Some even provide
hosting for free. I advise against using the free services if you are
setting up a business, as this can look unprofessional, especially since
most of them use advertising on your site as a way to recoup the cost.
This is fine for a personal website, but if you are serious about making
money you need to choose a reputable web hosting company.
Ensure that you are happy with the disk space and bandwidth allowances
that your hosting company provides. Other things to consider are the
customer support services, reliability in terms of the percentage of down
time expected and the interface for uploading files. There are many
websites that offer reviews and comparisons of different hosting packages.
Step 6 – Build your Website
At last, you are now ready to start building your website. Many people
skip the research stage and dive straight into this part, but your
chances of success are much higher if you spend time on the research part
first.
Depending on your knowledge and experience in this area you may decide to
do this yourself, or pay for a web designer to do this for you. If you
are doing it yourself, it helps to know HTML, but there are also many web
page editors such as Front Page and Dreamweaver which you can use to
construct your website with little or no knowledge of HTML.
Try to ensure that your site is clean, uncluttered and easy to navigate
and that it looks professional. Have someone proofread your copy to
ensure that there are no mistakes. Also ensure that you use your keywords
from your Wordtracker research in the title of your page, the headings
and throughout your copy. Use one or two of your chosen keyword phrases
per page and don’t overdo the use of your keywords as search engines may
consider this as SPAM.
Step 7 – Market your Website
Finally you need to market your webpage. It is simply not true that you
can just build a website and wait for visitors to come without doing any
form of internet marketing.
Internet marketing is a huge topic, out with the scope of this article.
The sort of techniques that you may want to consider include reciprocal
linking, writing and publishing articles, pay per click (PPC) advertising
such as Google Adwords and Overture, classified and solo ads,
participating in discussion forums that allow a signature in your
postings and advertising on related (but not competing) websites.
These 7 steps take time and effort, but if you do your research and
persevere you are likely to see excellent results.
Don’t forget, that once you have been through this process once, you can
repeat it again and again until you have multiple websites making an
income for you while you sleep, or relax on the beach!
About the Author
Suzanne Morrison is the owner and webmaster of How to Start an Internet
Business. For those who don’t have the available time or experience to
follow these 7 steps, she recommends a Plugin Profit site – a ready to go
site with 5 streams of income, built for you within 24 hours
*
|