How ToStart A Website ( And Profiting From It )

Build a website that has a ton of quality content , optimize it well, and implement several monetization methods that you can financially benefit from. What are those methods? I will do this in a later post in a more practical manner. As a brief overview however, consider the following few ways to make money from a niche content website once it is developed and attracting a decent level of recurring traffic:.

This is not a comprehensive list by any means, rather some introductory ideas on how you can potentially monetize or make money from a website or blog.

Some of your time and a couple hundred bucks over estimate will usually get you there. To be successful however, you must take your time and conduct the necessary due diligence up-front when selecting a topic or niche. This initial step often makes or breaks people who attempt to make money from this business model.

Because many new entrepreneurs want to jump into the game quickly, often wanting to sell what they think is the best thing on earth. They may be passionate about the topic they have in mind, but they often forget that in order to be successful selling something in this case information , you need to sell what the market wants and demands, NOT what YOU want to sell. With that said, a good topic with market demand, your willingness to invest your time and a handful of online tools such as a domain name URL , a hosting package where you host your website for the world to see, and a website building platform such as WordPress or Adobe Dreamweaver are sufficient to get started.

There are some turn-key solutions available today that I discuss heavily on my blog which have dropped all barriers to entry. A 16 or a 60 year old can get online just as easily and have a website up in a jiffy. Absolutely no HTML or programming skills are required, although learning the basics can give you a marginal advantage over your competition. Below are the steps to create a niche website in order of occurrence. The list below is a mere introduction to each step.

I plan on talking about these in detail in the future. But what is that right topic for your niche website? It is a topic that has a significant enough demand, or search volume, yet not as many competitors, or search results. How do you find such topics? The Google Adword Keyword Tool is one free resource you can use to guestimate the search volume generated by various keywords within a topic. Simply type in any word relevant to the niche you are contemplating and hit enter or click the relevant button to generate results.

The results will show you various attributes, including monthly local and global search volume for various relevant keywords. I usually multiply the search demand by 3 to account for the other two big engines Bing and Yahoo , as well as the several other smaller ones in the online space. Do a simple ratio of keyword supply and demand and you will be able to rank keywords and topics in order of most favorable to least. Many go wrong right about when they have found a topic with a high demand to supply ratio. Because they feel this is the be-all end-all of the prep work.

However, this is just the beginning of your research stages. I highly recommend researching this topic further to see whether actual demand for products and services pertaining to your topic exist. Here is an example. Spirituality and religion is one of the most demanded and supplied topics online, probably only next to sex, money and weight loss. You will see close to a billion results. But how many sponsored ads do you see on the top or right hand side of the screen? Maybe a couple at most. This tells you that vendors are not spending money to highlight products and services in this niche, at least from an advertising perspective.

What are you looking for exactly? You are looking for products, services and advertisements that fit your contemplated niche or website topic. These represent the flow of money that people exchange to deliver and receive items and services of value in your niche. Once you are settled on a topic you need to start narrowing in on the keywords that you will use to build your website. Because search engines like keywords. How do search engines work? Web surfers type in key words and phrases, and Google goes out to scour the world and provide you with links that contain those words and phrases, ranked in order of most relevant to least.

The entire internet is one big game of keywords and phrases. If you want to be found online, you want to ensure that your website contains keywords and phrases, which web surfers are searching with. Use the Google Keyword Tool mentioned above to determine this.

33 Proven Ways To Monetize a Website (or a Blog) - www.newyorkethnicfood.com

The disadvantage in using free tools like Google is that the process is very much manual, cumbersome and tedious. Not to mention that you have to search for keyword supply and demand separately. Depending on the size of your website the bigger the better in my opinion , this activity alone can take you hours, days, weeks and can bore you to death. There are more automated tools available online that streamline the process relatively easily. These tools not only give you the best keywords in terms of demand within your niche, but they also tell you the supply and profitability ratio.

You can read more about the tools I use here. Many simply jump into content creation and start building their website with no rhyme or reason. Just like an architectural blueprint matters when building a home, a site structure matters when building a website. Because the various web pages within your website each serve a purpose and can help each other gain higher search engine rankings if interlinked correctly.

Website blueprint is a topic that can be talked about quite extensively on its own to answer the questions why do it and how exactly to properly plan and build a website. I plan on discussing this in depth in the near future. For now, think about your website as a pyramid, where the pointed tip top is your home page and all underlying pages make up the base. Now there is a big space between the top and the bottom, so what goes in the middle? What goes on the bottom? How deep should the pyramid be?

Answers to all those questions will be provided in future discussions either here or on my blog. Building the website is actually the easiest part of the process in my opinion. It is however the most time consuming. If you have done your research well, have gathered the right set of keywords to target and have laid those keywords out in a sound website blueprint, executing on the website can be done relatively easy. This discussion assumes that you are familiar with basic search engine optimization.

If you are not, I highly recommend you visit my blog and familiarize yourself with what SEO is and come back here to resume this post. Building your website entails just a handful of steps. Rinse and repeat the process for the rest of your webpages and you have yourself a website. The answer is the keywords we use, the way we use them in each webpage, as well as the linking and interlinking we do within each web page is done in a very specific manner consistent with the niche content site model.

When building a niche content website, each webpage is targeted for one main keyword. Each webpage also has four additional supplemental keywords totaling five keywords which are sprinkled within the content of the webpage. Specific instructions on page creation is also a topic that can be talked about for days. I will be breaking this topic down into several sub-topics that go into the step-by-step detail in the near future.

This is probably the most important step in the entire process. Well optimized webpages equates to a well optimized website, which is guaranteed to attract free, organic search engine traffic growth over time. Many skip this step amidst the anxiety of getting their website up and running on the internet. Truth is nobody likes a lemon. There are varying opinions on whether or not search engines penalize websites with stale or broken links.

Frankly, I do not care. The little bit of additional effort you put up- front today can yield heavy dividends down the road. Remember, no one knows what and how search engines think. So do the best you can to provide a high quality product. Take some time and search your website for missing images, broken links and convoluted HTML code.

There are several free resources online that will help you do this. Although search engines will eventually pick up a highly optimized website, why not expedite the process if you can? Building and submitting a sitemap takes five seconds. Take this file and upload it to the root directory of your server. Some would debate an HTML sitemap does you no good. It takes another five minutes to do it. Include a link to the HTML sitemap on your footer or navigation menu.

Beware of scams that charge you to submit to 4,, different search engines. Each of the major search engines have instructions on how to submit your sitemap to them. The process is relatively easy and straightforward. However, for those who have websites and blogs that are updated frequently, a BIG inherent challenge that you face is that your sitemap is not automatically updated each time you add new content.

I have found a solution to this BIG problem which I talk about on my blog in more depth. Just search for the topic and you will find it.

33 Ways to Monetize a Website (or a Blog)

Once your website has been submitted to search engines, give it some time to soak and gain traction on search results. Search engines take their sweet time in evaluating, trusting and indexing or ranking websites. While they do this, take the opportunity to put together a digital product for sale and distribution through your website or blog. Having your own product is not a mandatory step in this business model, but is one that I am highly in favor of that I use in most of my niche content websites.

Having your own product guarantees that you have something to sell, and not rely so much on affiliate programs that you have very little to no control over. Your product can be as simple as an eBook, online video series, hard DVDs, or anything else for that matter. You can either create this yourself, or outsource the process. As long as the product is quality and delivers value, you will be just fine while selling it. Distributing digital products is also very easy. There are turnkey platforms available such as ClickBank that will streamline this process for you quickly and easily.

Draft a 10 to 12 issue newsletter series that is brief in nature but delivers high value to your readers by including some tips, strategies, educational facts, etc. Entice them to sign up for your newsletter by promising a free 12 week email course, free daily tips for two weeks or something similar in nature. For example, have a look at this Bamboo Plant Care niche website I developed.

Notice the email capture box on the right side? Notice how it offers a free Mini Course? Scroll a bit below and you will find that digital product I mentioned above. Now click on any other page of this website other than the homepage and notice the ads on the left and right columns? Scroll to the footer and notice the Donation button? This is a highly optimized niche website that generates free, organic search engine traffic and monetizes that traffic through advertisement, digital product sales, donations and affiliate sales affiliate links are embedded within the various webpages and newsletter series.

Once your visitors have signed up for your newsletter, course, etc, you have your chance to wow them with free information that builds relationship and trust. You can then push your product and other affiliate products in latter issues. If you do this step right, your visitors will already be presold, or warmed up for your offer. It will be that much easier to execute the sale when the offer comes around.

Right about now your website should be indexed, or relatively close to it. You will start getting one or two visitors every few weeks, or even months. Yes, the progression is very slow initially until you kick off marketing initiatives discussed below. Now is the time to sign up for advertising platforms such as Google Adsense. Sign up early and let the platforms take their time to get back to you.

What Are Niche Sites?

The ads you saw on the website above were Google Adsense Ads. This is how I usually kick-off my marketing campaign. Directory submissions are simple to execute, and one way to quickly build some back links to your website to stabilize its place in search engine indexes. I recommend using a submission tool or a paid service to expedite this process and submit to hundreds of directories over time. Check out my blog for more info on this. You need to spread out your link building efforts over time to appear as natural as possible to search engines. If you are not going to do anything else after you build your niche website, make sure you engage in article marketing to ensure each of your webpages is indexed with search engines.

This is also a good way to start building back links not only to your home page, but also to each individual webpage within your website a concept called DEEP linking. Here is what has worked for me very well each time. Instead of the age-old advice of linking to your home page using anchor text, link instead to a webpage within your website using anchor text that is relevant to that specific webpage. For example, say you have 35 webpages, create 35 articles and submit them to a top article directory like Ezinearticles.

Make sure each article is linked back to one of the 35 pages on your website. As far as anchor text is concerned, say you have a website on Kitchen Cabinets , and one of the webpages is about bamboo cabinets , make sure that the article that links back to this webpage has the phrase bamboo cabinets in the anchor text link.

This step is optional, but if executed can quickly build a ton more back links to your website, therefore further solidifying your place in search indexes. You can either manually bookmark several pages of your website, or use one of many automated tools available online that not only bookmark quicker, but can also bookmark on several social bookmarking websites at once.

This strategy can be very powerful if used the right way and spaced out over time. Your marketing efforts must look natural to search engines, so take your time.

The more you rush, the more you will raise a red flag. After you execute the steps above over the course of a couple months, your website should be ripe at the point where it is ready to be monetized. It is just a matter of time before traffic starts picking up, so take the time now to implement monetization methods that you are comfortable with. You can always tweak and experiment over time so do not be afraid to try a combination of various methods. Personally, a killer combination that has worked very well for me on all my niche websites is the following: Yes, I do get trickles coming in from kind souls who enjoy the material on my websites.

Monetization is a heavy topic and one that I will discuss in an entirely separate series of discussions. There is much more you can do depending on your appetite, capacity and interest level. The steps above however as sufficient to get your website to a point where it can deliver a decent amount of passive income on a residual basis. When your website gets to that point, you will have a bona fide income producing asset on hand, one that has a value and can be sold or kept to generate cash flow.

In fact, I recently sold one of my niche websites. In my next post, I will attempt to take one of my niche content websites and dissect it so that I can discuss each of the points mentioned above in more detail and share with you the results of each step. Of all my side gigs back then and now, this is a topic I am extremely passionate about because this is how I generate most of my income online today.

Niche content websites are also the reason I laid off the pedal on real estate investing. The ROI is simply much more, with almost no down side to it. From my perspective, why fork out cash and expose part of your investment to risk when both can be avoided by generating passive income from niche websites online? I invite you to join my passion and read more about this topic on my blog. What would you like to see covered in more detail?

What is missing from the recipe above? Hello Sunil, your post is really great and really deep!! By reading your article, I think newbie will get very good information for starting online business. Of course, if someone wants to help their prospects long-term, they also need to provide them with what they really need to get to the next level.

Promise them what they want. Give them what they want. I agree with your approach George. Often times entrepreneurs pull the trigger too soon without proper market research, go ahead and launch their business and later find out there is not much demand for it. Great post and just what I needed to read right now! Your tips here should help to guide a lot of those people to future success, I will be sending my readers this way!

I agree that finding a niche with hungry buyers and little competition is key, but I think too many people do not enter a niche they genuinely like. I cannot imagine writing about Bamboo plant care, but maybe someone is interested in that niche enough to write lots of original content. What do you think? I am not at all interested in Bamboo. However, it was a profitable enough niche for me to get into. I have a dozen niche websites as I write this after having sold a few profitable ones in the past. Of all, only 2 pertain to areas that I am personally passionate about.

What I am passionate about is the process, which I talk about extensively on my blog. I am not including my blog in the dozen sites, because my blog is what my passion is from a content perspective. Thanks for the quick response.

A Step-By-Step Guide On How To Build A Profitable Niche Content Website

I can definitely see how using outsourcing can enable you to run as many as a dozen niche websites. Pay someone else to slog through writing the content. I am coming from more of a beginners perspective, in terms of being relatively new to niche websites.

I am also writing all of the content for my first niche site. I am working on building up my first niche website so that it makes a steady monthly income, and then I will take some of that profit and look to start other sites. At least that is my plan. Yes, I see that you enjoy writing for your Extra Money blog, which makes sense since you can leave the niche sites alone.

I have already seen some good results from my first niche site, but am working on building much more traffic to turn it into a big time earner. Your plan is good and is what I too started with. Therefore, their backlinks must be pushing up their rankings. Simon — first welcome. I agree with you completely, if only more entrepreneurs took their time initially to plan out their endeavors I think we would see more successes.

I have been a victim of jumping in too soon myself. It can be painful. Attracting advertisers must be your primary goal, as that is what will make your financial aspirations a success. Know what advertisers or ad placement algorithms are looking for in an advertising venue i. What you want in a site, then, is to attract—and keep—a lot of visitors. The longer they stay, the more likely it is that they will eventually leave your site by clicking not on the back button, but on your advertiser's links.

To generate the most traffic, and thus the most revenue, be selective in your target market. While every demographic has its strong points and weak points, studies have shown that younger people are generally more optimistic and more adventurous—and thus likely to click on an advertisement more readily.

Keep in mind that the goal is clicks, not sales: Once the visitor has clicked out of your site, it's up to the merchant to make the sale. You get paid, regardless of the outcome. Search the web for trends and ideas for websites, and include the year in your search so that you avoid wasting search results on what was hot in For example, searching Google for "website ideas " returned nearly a billion results.

From there, it's just a matter of combing through to find ideas that pique your interest. In the halcyon days of the early 21st century, you could create a business name, and find a domain to match. These days, it's virtually impossible. However, you can be creative with hyphenated names. One good way to proceed is to secure a ". This has the advantage of being the most flexible in terms of design and installation of custom code.

Alternately, you can sign up with a service such as Blogger, from Google, or Wordpress—both of which will not only let you put your site name in front of their service name e. The advantage, aside from that, is that Blogger and Wordpress give you a great number of really well-designed templates to make your site look visually awesome.

The downside is that generally takes having a "pro" version i. Using the templates provided, or a site of your own design or from a designer , put together your website. What you do will be based almost entirely on the market you are attempting to reach. Again, though, whether you are ultimately offering a personal service, like "Cleavon's Auto Repair Site," or a total web-centric site like "Sara's Mouth-Watering Recipes," the goal is to keep people on your site.

That means content is king—same as it ever was. If you're offering a service, your site could have content specific to your specialty. Cleavon, for example, might have some basic articles on changing oil, fixing a flat, or a FAQ about all those little sounds a car might make. Sarah could feature, along with recipes, information such as weight and measure conversion, the differences between types of flours, and anecdotal tales of kitchen disasters and successes.

In both cases, going beyond the basic service provided gives visitors a reason to stick around—and click on ads! Don't post one or two articles and call it a day. Remember that this is your income stream we're talking about developing, so think of it as your job—part time or full time, you have to devote some time to it every day if you want to see the paychecks come rolling in.

The more you write, the more interest your site will hold. The more interest your site holds, the more people will follow it. Never lose sight of that goal. Part 1 Quiz What is the benefit of using a hosting service like Blogger or Wordpress? They make you more searchable. They come with templates.

You can earn more money through hosting services. They're less expensive than doing it yourself. Sign up for Google AdSense. AdSense will place ads for goods and services that are relevant to your site's visitors, based on the content of your site. You get paid every time an ad appears on your site, or an ad is clicked on. You get paid a very small amount for each impression view or click. Therefore, the more traffic you generate, the more clicks and impressions you will have, and the more money you will receive.

Every time you post, every time you make a change, every time you change a period to an exclamation mark or correct "teh" to "the," let the world know via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and all the rest of the social media world. The key is to spread the word. Have accounts on all of the above, and make sure you have prominent links to your website on all of them.

Start an email campaign as well. Once a week, publish a "best of my site" HTML email—frequent enough that people enjoy the content, but not so much that it becomes spammy. Pay attention to your metrics. Find which ads work best, and do more ads and pages like those. By continually refining your process, each visit will be a higher value for revenue generation. Sign up as an affiliate. Companies use affiliate programs to boost their online sales, and most of these affiliate programs are free to join.

Every time a visitor buys an item through the affiliate link on your website, you earn affiliate commission. Part 2 Quiz How often should you send out your newsletter or mailing list? Every time you make a change on the website. Every day Try again! Every week That's right! Every month Not quite! Yes, just place ad units inside of the website. Not Helpful 16 Helpful What if you do not know what to do to get started? I'd like to make a money-earning website but I have no idea how to! Focus on what you're good at.

What interests you, what do you enjoy? You really can do anything, but you can't just blag it, you have to stay true and honest to what is possible for yourself and your enthusiasm will only come across if you're genuinely into that interest. Not Helpful 35 Helpful Can I click the Google ads from my computer many times and earn money? No, Google tracks your IP address, and under their terms and conditions, you, the owner of the site, cannot click on the ads.