There are a number of reasons why you might want to set up your own website but first of all you need to think about how to create a website that works for you. It really depends what you want out of it – most people set up a website to sell something, say something or to make money.
I’m going to look at creating a website that could generate money from internet advertising. There are different types of internet advertising that could earn you some cash but bear in mind your site must look good and perform well in order to earn any significant amount so it might be wise to invest some time and effort into the design, usability and content on the site as well as getting visitors / traffic before you look at monetising it.
Here are a couple of ideas on how to generate income from a website:
One of the easiest ways to generate income is Google AdSense. It’s free and relatively easy to install and Google do most of the hard work for you. Google AdSense displays sponsored listings on your site. The ads are relevant as Google’s technology detects what the page the ads are being displayed on is about (so you can have different relevant ads appearing on different pages). You choose the size of the ad unit, the colours, font size etc. and then use some simple html code generated by Google AdSense to embed the ads into your site. You can then check in your Google account the number of clicks you’ve had and your earnings on a daily basis. This method has its pros and cons. You will get paid for someone just clicking on an ad but you may only get paid 2p per click (some ads do pay more!) and don’t think that you can just sit clicking on your ads all day as a method to get clicks – Google have very sophisticated fraud technology and your income will be recalled and your account could be suspended!
Another way to make money from your site is through Affiliate Marketing. This involves you promoting someone else’s products or services and if your visitor buys the product or service from a link on your site you get a commission. You can promote merchants in a number of ways. The easiest channel is to display an advert on your site which are traditionally in the form of a banner ad or you could write a piece recommending a product and include a link with your tracking code in to buy the product. There are numerous Affiliate networks that deal with large numbers of merchants and publishers to make this option a viable proposition to smaller publishers but your site will need to approved by the network and the merchant which will involve them check the quality of your site and the levels of traffic it receives.
But remember whatever method you choose, the more quality traffic you get the more money you will earn and the more potential you site will have!