Archive for the ‘How to Build a Website’ Category
How to Build a Website That Makes Money
How to build a website starts with an idea of some kind (even if it’s, “I want to find a way to work at home”) but always ends up with the web hosting dilemma.
Where? How? Why? Are they going to demand my firstborn to host a site for me?
I covered why not to use a free website host on part one of this web journey. Now that you know you’ll need to pay a little something, let’s look at both the basics, and what’s essential for a website that actually makes money.
Choosing a Web Host — Cost Isn’t Everything
There are cheap web hosting services. There are expensive web hosting services.
There are cheap services that end up expensive by the time you pay for all the extras.
There are services that look expensive initially, but end up being cheap because they include so much.
Is your head spinning yet? No? Good, let’s talk about what you need in a host to build a website that makes you money.
First rule of thumb: you tend to get what you pay for. Now I’ve hosted websites in lots of places, and I can tell you this for sure: if you buy web hosting for $4 a month, you will need to buy extras (“addons”) that will bump up your monthly price. Remember, we are talking about your business, and you will have to invest in it. You don’t need to go hog wild, but even $30 a month isn’t too much for the right package.
And where else are you going to start your own profitable business for $30 a month?
Basic Hosting and What You Need
For your own website you need:
- Domain name — your website address
- A place to host your web pages — called the web server or web host
- A way to write your pages and upload them to the web host so they are visible on the internet
That’s the bare bones; now let’s talk about how to build a website that’s profitable — that will take a little extra, and it’s not included in the $4 plans. To build a website that makes money you’ll need:
- A way to find a good, profitable topic, so that you can build a website that makes a profit.
- A way to learn about what the search engines really look for, and how to give it to them easily.
- A way to let the search engines know your site is available for spidering (for the search engine to review your site for inclusion in the searches). This is called “pinging”.
- A way to let the search engines know when you’ve added new pages or updated old ones.
- A way to earn money even if you don’t have a product to sell — this is called becoming an inforpreneur.
- A way to successfully design a website when you don’t know how to design a website.
True Story — Why All Hosts Aren’t Equal
The hosting service I use has everything I need to do everything, and works wonderfully. Still, I couldn’t resist doing a little experiment, just for fun. I wanted to compare the web host that I normally use ($25/month) against a cheapie $7/month host and see what happened.
I chose the same topic for each site, but each site had different content. They were written equally well, with photos, etc. I created about 20 nice pages for each site…
…and let them sit. Didn’t do anything else to them.
Then I checked their statistics at the end of 6 more months. The website where I have my $25/month hosting was getting more visitors per day than the $7/month hosting site got in 6 months total!
Needless to say, I’d just as soon pay the extra $18/month to get those kinds of results. Especially since I didn’t have to do a thing extra, aside from write the web page.
Free Look at Web Hosting
Yes, I am prejudiced to recommend the hosting company I use — but with good reason.
It works. I earn money, month in and month out. I work on my schedule and let the host do all the behind-the-scenes stuff that puts me sites in the search engine results pages. I thought it was true before I did my experiment, and I know it’s true after the experiment.
OK, crunch time — do you want more information? Do you want to build a profitable website that earns you money. And do you want to take a look for free? You can — just click here for why web hosting is more than just bandwidth.
And if you want some more true stories (aside from mine) click here for the special prize page; it’s what you get when you have your own successful business.
How to build a website that actually makes money? It’s really not so hard at all, with a little help and guidance from friends.