If you want to earn money online, or work from home, then one of your main tools of the trade will be to have a website. So here are 10 Ways to Make Money With Your Own Website.

While I could sit and tell you all day why you should pay for a website, for many people starting out it’s just not something they want to do today, so you’ll be pleased to discover that there are some completely free solutions, as well as some affordable ways to get your own website.

The biggest advantage of having a website is that you have one place where you can tell people about things. If you’re selling your services or skills locally or worldwide, you can put information on your website. If you have made crafts or other goods you can put up a photo and description and tell people how to buy them from you. If you want people to contact you, you can use it to display your “advert”. If you’re working as an affiliate, you can simply send people to your website for the information they need.

10 Ways to Earn Money Online Using a Website

1. Start Your Own Blog

You can set up a simple blog, to create your own website online to chat and talk about things you’re interested in. A lot of WAHMs (Work at Home Moms) have really taken to this and they blog about everything from their life, their fashion buys, their kids through to their baking and cooking – and they earn money from advertising on their blog. People who are interested in things that you’re interested in will read your blog; many people find blogs a great source of information and recommendation.

Within blogging, you’ll come across the term Niche Blogging – a niche is simply a narrow set of interests within a general interest. e.g. instead of blogging about your cooking and baking, you could create a niche blog about baking only cookies. If you want to blog about your pet – and you have a dwarf lop eared rabbit, then blogging only about Dwarf Lop-Eared Rabbits would be a niche. A niche is, quite simply, only writing about one specific thing and becoming an ‘expert’ in it. Niche blogs do better than general blogs when it comes to making money – and you can quickly become an expert and people will spread the word about your blog because the information on it is so specific. Several people, recently, have started blogging about frugal living, ideas on how to feed a family of 4 for under £2/$3 per day, for example.

There is no shortage of ideas for a niche blog – and it can make it easier for you to focus your efforts if you’re concentrating on writing about one small subject.

When it comes to generating an income from your blog, it can be easier and more lucrative if you’re in a niche because your blog then becomes a specialist area that advertisers will pay more to advertise on.

If you want to make money online through blogging, then in my opinion, the best blogging platform to use is WordPress. This isn’t WordPress.com, where your chances of ever earning money are virtually nil as you can’t advertise on there, but instead using their (free) software. For this you will need to get yourself a website and install the WordPress software; many hosts enable you to do this with a couple of clicks in the Admin Panel, it’s an auto-install free software.

One host I use is Bluehost, simply sign up, get yourself a free domain name from them (you only pay for hosting – and it’s unlimited hosting, so you can put many domains into this one account if you wish), log into the Admin Area and find the WordPress install button and you’re away! After that I’d say it might take you 3-4 days to get a theme you like the look of and to have created your first few pages. What I like about Bluehost is that with one account I can add in as many domains as I want and there’s lots of great free software I can use that do really useful things for me. It’s also got unlimited domains, so with just one account I can simply add in more websites when I want to – I don’t have to buy any more hosting.

2. A Website For Your Own Business

If you’re already in business for yourself, or want to start your own business, you can make money from your website by enabling people to easily get in touch with you. On your website you can list all your contact information, provide articles about your services or products, provide useful tips/hints, supply as many photos as you want – and your potential customers can find what they’re looking for on your website.

A website will also reduce your advertising bill since you don’t need to fit so much into any advertising you’re doing in newspapers or shop windows as you can simply put your website address.

Most web hosting companies will have “free website building software” included, or you might want to get some free website software and learn to make your own web pages. First Page is professional website building software that’s completely free: Get First Page Here

If you’re looking for a free website, then look into Web Starts, who can provide you with an easy to use, modern, free website that has no ads on it: your free website will only contain your content, not annoying ads or pop ups because it’s on a free site.

3. Sell Your Own Products on Your Own Website

Whether you’re making hand-crafted goods, or simply buying items wholesale and selling them on, having your own website gives you the ability to showcase and display your stock items. If you’re unsure about selling items online (perhaps you’re unsure how it works), then start out by just providing your product details on your website and information on how/where people can buy them.

Many market-stall holders will have their own website, listing which markets they will be attending, or having a printable form for customers to print off to order goods by post.

Many eBay traders will advertise and sell their goods through eBay, but will include their website address in their listing or details, which will give the buyers greater confidence that they are buying from “a proper business”.

If you’re selling physical goods at the moment, then by putting a small sticker on each item with your website address on, you can increase your sales. This works espeically well for artists and people selling handmade soaps, etc. People will often buy from you, then a friend will ask “where did you get that from?” and all they can say is “somebody at the craft market”, they’ve no web address they can give to their friend. Also think about having small business cards made up with your website address on – and slip one of those into the bag of every item you sell.

If you want to build your own website, using easy software, then why not try out First Page, a fully functional, professional software package that’s free: First Page, or if you want a free website, then then look into Web Starts for an ad-free free website.

4. A Website for Trainers, Teachers or Coaches

If you’re skilled at something, whether that’s vocational or a hobby, then putting together a website can draw people to you. If you have a skill to teach, or are a tutor in a subject, then you can use your website to pass on information about your specialist subject. Over time, it could build into a very large resource, bringing interested people to you, who might book you as a tutor or trainer.

If you’re explaining something once to one person – and can capture that online either by writing it down, providing a free ebook or fact sheet, or recording a short video and putting it on YouTube, then for hardly any extra effort at all you have the ability to explain that one thing to hundreds of thousands of people online over the next couple of years. You can make your money through additional bookings, or you could provide the information to people because you have advertising on your website that pays you. Over time you might find you have enough material to create a membership site, or publish an e-book or even a physical book.

5. An Affilite Website

An affiliate website is something for Internet Marketers. If you build an affiliate website, then you’re building a niche site that specialises in one subject, with the intention of earning money online through advertising the products. As an affiliate, you sign up with advertising networks and pick programs to promote, you then get given a special link to promote. On an affiliate website you’d tell people about those products using your special link. As a way to earn money online, affiliate marketing is seen as one of the biggest income makers.

It is possible to get a ready-made affiliate website, one that’s already made for you, or you can simply write your own, page by page. Most affiliates will try both methods over time as they want the instant website, but also want to have more control over their online space.

6. A Classified Ads Website

One popular website to set up and run is a classified ads website. With this you’re simply giving people the chance of placing their adverts on your website. Usually there will be free adverts and paid adverts. You earn money when people place the paid adverts. You can create a classified ads website just for your local area/town, or across the world – the Internet knows no boundaries.

You can pick up scripts which will run your classified ads website, or you can hire a programmer to do this work for you. One quick way, in my opinion, is to use the WordPress system and then get a classified ads plugin that does everything for you. You could set up a classified ads website and have it all running exactly how you want it, in just a couple of days.

Apart from the advertisers on your website, you can use ad networks to generate extra income by advertising products on an affiliate basis on the page too, or even Google Adsense adverts.

Add a Free Classifieds Section To Your Website

7. Start a club, run a membership site.

If you’re really fanatical and interested about one particular subject, then why not start a membership site for other people who are also interested in it. Your membership site can be free, or paid, or a combination of the two. Over time, you can build your website up to the THE leading authority on your favourite subject.

Membership sites work really well for most people who put the work into making them useful and interesting. Having a membership site gives you a powerful and valuable “list” of people who are interested in one thing – and this brings a lot of opportunity for you to make money from advertising either on your site, or through your newsletter.

8. Start a Series of Minisites

If you’re only interested in making money, as an affiliate, then one type of website that’s popular is to make a mini site. Making mini sites is quite easy because you’re simply creating a 5-6 page mini website, stuffed full of information – with advertising on it. You simply make a mini-site and promote it, then make your next one. If you’re purely interested in making money and not interested in building one website that you keep up to date, then this might be your preferred route. There are several hosts who will let you have “unlimited domains” which means that within your one hosting account you can simply keep adding on more and more mini-sites without any extra hosting costs.

9. Start a Social Networking Site

Just like myspace and facebook, creating your own social networking site has become very popular, especially if you can create a social networking website for a niche, perhaps for people in your town/county, or people interested in one sport or interest – there’s even some springing for pets!

Making your own social networking site is easy as there’s lots of software available nowadays (even free) that you can do it with – and once you’ve set it up it’s the members who provide all the content for you – all you have to do is get the word out and get people to join up.

One way is use register your domain with Bluehost and once logged in, find the free Pligg software, which is a quick and easy Free Software Install.

Pligg is free social networking software that you can simply install with a couple of clicks on Bluehost – it’s proving to be very successful and Pligg sites attract a lot of traffic. Traffic = members, members = income potential. Income = cash for you.

6 Ways to Start Your Own Social Network

10. Create an Online Store

You don’t even have to have your own products – you can start on online store in many ways. Amazon provides you with free A-Store software, so you can create your own bookstore. eBay provides you with a system to build your own store at eBay if you do have your own products to sell. You can set up your own ecommerce site from scratch, using hosts free ecommerce software, most hosts will have this now, along with free ecommerce templates too.

Conclusion

Whatever you’re doing in life, getting your own website will mean that you can reach more people, more easily. A website is there for you 24/7, letting people get in touch and find out more information.

You can make your own website using software, or using a host’s free website builder software (usually online), or by using WordPress. Using software to create your own webpages is ideal if you just want to create a handful of pages, or so – it’s quick to learn and you’re in control. Using a host’s website builder is ideal if this is your first ever website and you’re unsure what to do. WordPress is great if you have big plans and want the moon on a stick, but want to be able to pick and choose how your site works and have full control over the content.

Resources to Make Money With Your Own Website:

• Bluehost: Get an account with bluehost and set up a WordPress blog or a website based on WordPress (in the settings tick “pages” instead of “posts” and WordPress works like a website).
• Web Starts: Free website with no ads, ideal if you want your own website
• Bluehost: Get an account with bluehost and install Pligg, the free social networking site software.
• FirstPage Free Website Software to create your own website: FirstPage

Photo by: A Magill: Money

The post 10 Ways to Make Money With Your Own Website appeared first on homeworker directory.