How to Build a Work-at-Home Website
Earn Income Through a Website
Website to Make Money? Why Not?
When you finish reading this article, you will know how to build a work-at-home website. What is a work-at-home website? Well, it is a website that help you earn money. If this interests you, then by all means, read on!
Prerequisites: What You'll Need
You'll need the following things in order to setup a work-at-home website.
- a computer--this is your window into the online world of the Internet
- Internet access--your ISP (Internet Service Provider will get you Internet access)
- email account--use something from your own domain, Google, Yahoo, or Hotmail; this way if you change ISP, you don't have to change your email
Step 1. Provide Free Information
Figure out what you want to sell; however, the best thing that I can think of to sell is niche information. I call it "niche" information because it is unique information that certain groups of people need. With over 1 billion Internet surfers out there, a small percentage of these surfers can be significant. For this work-at-home site, we will sell information for free. The good thing about information is that it doesn't take up inventory space; it doesn't spoil; it is easy to reproduce; it just exists in the ether as bits and bytes.
Step 2. Use WordPress
We will use WordPress (from WordPress.org) as the mechanism by which we will convey this information to the Internet population. WordPress is "the" leading blog solution on the planet. It is also, based on my opinion, the easiest blog to use and manage.
Step 3. Get Web Hosting
To create a work-at-home web site, you'll need to obtain a domain name and web hosting service. You can get free domain and web hosting from www.000webhost.com. Go ahead and visit that site so that you can apply for an account. Make sure to choose a domain name that is relevant to the type of information you are sharing and selling.
Step 4. Get and setup your blog
Once you have a domain and a hosting solution, download WordPress from http://www.wordpress.org. Follow the instructions at WordPress.org on how to setup and install WordPress.
Step 5. Begin populating site with useful information
With your blog setup, you can being populating your blog with useful niche information. I suggest filling your site with articles daily on the first couple of weeks to keep the content fresh. Thereafter, you'll need to at least post one article per week. If you can get others to participate and post useful information, then you can keep your content fresh more frequently.
Step 6. Drive Traffic to your site
With content populating your blog, you'll need to work on driving traffic to your site. One way to do that is to post your blog link to various forums and blogs. You also need to register you site on the most widely known search engine sites on the Internet--yahoo.com and google.com are two of the most well known.
Step 7. Monetize your site
Once you have lots of traffic flowing through your blog, it is time to "monetize" it. To "monetize" you'll need to apply for a Google adsense account.
There are other ways too, through affiliate programs. Don't worry about that; for now, focus on Google AdSense.
Step 8. Add ad modules
With a Google Adsense account, you can create ad modules which you can place in various sections of you blog. Studies say that the best place to put the ads are at the top left and the bottom right. Note that Google automatically determines what type of ads to place based on the content of your site.
Step 9. Wait for money
With the ads in place, all you need to do is observe and wait for the money to roll in. Be advised however that this isn't a get rich quick scheme; it is more of a get rich slow. In some cases, it may take over one year for traffic to really take off.
Step 10. Keep things fresh and relevant
Keep adding fresh content to keep people coming back. The more people visit, the higher the chance that they click on an ad. At this point, whether you make $10 a month or $5000 a month, you now basically have the basis for a work-at-home web site.
Summary
It comes down to this. Your work-at-home website basically sells free information. You can earn income through ads put there by Google, through a program called Google AdSense. If you find a good niche market, your site could easily take off; however, in general money will trickle in very slowly.
The money making potential is there. This is a get rich slow scheme for most; but for some who find the right information niche, this could be a big money maker. It does take some work.
Good luck and have fun out there!
