Making Money With A Website: Step By Step Beginner’s Guide 2018

Updated Jan 5, 2018

This is the Ultimate Step-By-Step Beginner’s Guide to Making Money with a Website!  I will take you through things you have to think about and what you’ll need to succeed in your new online business.

You will learn all the necessary components to get started online easily and quickly.

Getting online these days is not hard to do because you have so many choices of platforms to choose from that doesn’t require coding and it’s all so user friendly.

There are 6 steps in learning how to make money with a website:

1. Decide what kind of website you’ll want and what it’ll be about.
2. Choose domain name, web host, and get your site ready.
3. Build content for your site
4. Get traffic to your site
5. Monetizing your blog or website
6. Make money and expand

I will go into each one of those steps in detail and hope you will follow along!  I’ll also have a Conclusion at the bottom to wrap things up!

 

My #1 Recommended Way of Making Money Online:

 

STEP 1: DECIDE WHAT KIND OF WEBSITE YOU’LL WANT & WHAT IT’LL BE ABOUT

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This is an essential first step as the rest of your journey will surround this critically decision.

 

Will You Sell A Physical Product?  

If it’s a physical product, what kind of products will you sell and will you make them yourself or buy them from a manufacturer?

These are important questions to think about it because there are big differences in costs and time involvement with either direction you go to produce the physical product.

You’ll also need an e-commerce website for this to create product listings and accept payments from your customers.

If you get the right e-commerce platform, you don’t have to do either of the above and still sell physical products!

Yes that is right!  There are services like print-on-demand that won’t require you to carry inventory or make your own products, and can still sell physical products.

If this sounds good to you, this can be very lucrative as well but these are your online choices to make money with a website if you want to sell physical products.

 

Will You Want A Blog?

If it’s a blog, what will you write about?  A blog can be about any topic you’d like but you don’t want it to be too broad or too narrow neither.

You’ll want to find something that serves a certain group of audience, called a niche.

The most successful blogs out there has to do with helping people so think about a group of people you think you can help.

Think about what you’re passionate about in life or what interests you the most.  If you choose from your heart and how you can serve your audience, you’ll have a better chance of success than what makes you the most money.

Whatever topic of your choice, remember it should be something you can write a lot about and will be excited to work on every morning.

 

 

STEP 2: CHOOSE A DOMAIN, WEB HOST, AND GET YOUR SITE READY

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Because this is a beginner’s guide, I will choose two platforms for you to choose from to get everything you’ll need to get started for domain, web host, and get it all ready to start.

 

E-Commerce Website

If you want to sell physical products, it’s best to use Shopify – they are the number 1 leading e-commerce site that includes hosting for you.

Once you sign up, you will open your Shopify shop with a chosen shop name.  Your URL will inital be yourshopname.shopify.com but you can also buy your own domain to add to it so your shop will be on its own URL like yourshopname.com.

Through the set up, you’ll be able to easily have your site ready for product listings in no time.  They also have a great support staff to you through the set up as well if you need any help.

This platform is great because you can connect with third party apps like PrintFul where you can choose to do the print-on-demand as I mentioned earlier and not have to carry any inventory.

All you would need is the design that you want to put on the t-shirts, tote bags, or mugs you want to sell.  It’s easy to do as well and they have a lot of products to choose from.

You can either create the designs yourself on PhotoShop or have someone do it for you on Fiverr or other freelance service.

Having a Shopify store will be easy to manage and you can add a blog to it easily too which I highly suggest as that is a easy way for you to get organic search traffic to your shop.

 

Blog Website

If you want to build a blog website instead, I highly recommend another one-stop-shop kind of platform like Wealthy Affiliate.

I say it’s one-stop-shop because not only does Wealthy Affiliate is a domain registrar, they also have web host, and offer you TWO free websites to start that can be set up in less than a minute with WordPress ready to go!

Their free websites are on their SiteRubix website builder so your URL will be yourname.siterubix.com or you can upgrade and buy a domain to have your own URL such as yourname.com.

Their site builder is so easy to use, you’ll have your blog ready with WordPress in less than a minute like I mentioned above so all you just need to figure out is what name you want for your blog!

In addition, the Wealthy Affiliate platform has in-depth step-by-step training to further help you learn how to use WordPress and get your website build out properly with a strong foundation.

Their training continues to teach you how to write the content, do keyword research that will bring in the mass traffic you’ll want, and learn how to use affiliate marketing to monetize your blog.

They also have a huge community of members to help you through any questions you may have or many other features too like Live Chat and access to the Owners if you upgrade to their Premium membership.

You can start for free with their Starter membership and stay free as long as you want to enjoy your first 10 lessons.

Members are more likely to succeed if they have access to all the training available on the platform which includes weekly live webinars on specific topics as a Premium member.

For more details on Wealthy Affiliate, read my full review here!

 

 

STEP 3: BUILD CONTENT FOR YOUR WEBSITE

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Congrats to getting to this part!  It means you have a website live on the internet!

Now, you will have to get website filled with awesome content, so whether if your website is a shop or not, building content on your site is crucial.

Writing content on your blog, reason why you need a blog for your shop, will bring in organic search traffic, so the more you write, the more traffic you’ll get.

This is why having a blog is so important and knowing how to write is also essential in this process which starts with keyword research.

What you want to find are keywords that are high in search traffic but low in competition.  This is the best way to get the maximum amount of traffic to your site.

The keyword research tool at Wealthy Affiliate has 3 criteria that is used to pick out the best keywords to use.  You can learn about how to choose keywords in those first 10 free lessons you get when you sign up for free there.

There is also a keyword research tool that I use called Jaaxy (read full review here) that also uses the same metrics used on the Wealthy Affiliate platform.

Besides knowing which keywords to use, there are different types of blog posts you can write about such as tips, how-to’s, and product reviews in your niche.

For more ideas, I have a full list of types of blog posts to write about here.

Whatever you write about, you need to ensure your blog is updated often and on a schedule.  The more search engines know when new content goes on your site, the more frequent they come back to crawl your site.

This will help your posts get indexed and ranked on a regular basis.

As you build more content, you will slowly build an audience and you’ll be able to make money with your website really soon!

 

 

STEP 4: GET TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE

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There’s no doubt your blog posts will generate you free traffic but in the beginning, this will be slow as search engines take time to get to know your site and trust it.

So having those blog posts may take a little while before it all gets indexed and ranked high in the search results to bring you the loads of traffic you want.

But remember, blogging is like this, once your site has authority though, you’ll be getting tons of search traffic!  This is for certain if you continue to write and create new content for your blog.

Therefore, in the beginning, you may try other ways and will need to use other sources to get traffic to your site as well.

Here are a few ways I would suggest:

• Social Media – Whether you like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or Google+, this is a great free way to get traffic to your blog.  Take the time to set up all the profiles to the ones you want, you don’t have to do all but 2 or 3 would be great.  Then build a following like I have with my methods here, it says Instagram but it also applies to Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.
• Sharing Posts to Facebook Groups – This is a great traffic source because it’s very targeted.  What you do is set up your Facebook Fan Page and post your blog posts on there or other content.  Then you find groups to join that are you in your niche.  Once approved and you find out you can share your posts on there, then share your Page posts to these groups.  If you don’t know how to do this, here’s a post that has all the instructions.
• Blog Commenting – This will help you gain traffic from other blogs you comment on.  Again, this is another free source of traffic.  You will get more attention if you can write more than others on the comments so you will stand out.  Share something personal related to the topic you’re commenting on and you’ll find lots of traffic going your way.
• Networking With Other Bloggers – Meeting other bloggers is a great way to get new ideas and learn from them.  You can exchange posts on your sites and link to each other or do other collaborations which will benefit both parties.  If you have a few of these connections then you’ll be have some good referral traffic.
• Paid Traffic – The last type of traffic I’ll touch on is paid traffic but I wouldn’t take this step too early.  I have learned that you should do this once you have more traffic to see which posts are converting for you first so you know which posts to scale.  Using paid traffic is really to scale your business, not get it off the ground.  Paid traffic source can be bought on social media platforms, Google Adwords or Bing Ads.

From the beginning, social media was my #1 traffic source until my organic traffic caught up and now social media traffic is my #2 source.

As you build your site, you may learn more and more ways to promote your site as I’m sure there are many more ways including doing some offline promotions.

For the start of your blog, I wouldn’t worry so much about traffic and more on building content as this will be your number one source of traffic in the future for your blog.

 

 

STEP 5: MONETIZING YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE

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For websites as an online shop at Shopify, it’s obvious you are monetized with selling physical products so most of these suggestions in this step will be for blogs.

However, some of these suggestions can be implemented on your online shop too if you wish or on the blog of your online shop.

 

Affiliate Marketing 

The biggest and most popular way to monetize your blog is through affiliate marketing which is earning a commission from promoting other people’s products.

You can sign up for affiliate programs of the products you want to promote for your niche and those companies will give you an affiliate link that you’ll put on your site to track your readers going from your site to the site where they will buy the products.

If you promote products that help solve your audience problems, that is the best way to use affiliate marketing.  You need to be honest in your product reviews and show your readers how you can solve their problems.

This value-add type of post will earn trust from your readers and will be more inclined to click on your links to buy!

Another reason why I tell you about Wealthy Affiliate is that they specialize in training people on how to use affiliate marketing to monetize blogs so this would be the perfect place for your to start your online business at.

You will get amazing lessons to follow which is step by step at your own pace and there are business tools available for you to use to make things easier.

There is also an unheard of support system at Wealthy Affiliate that I don’t know where I’d be without it.

I had tried blogging before a few years ago on my own and completely failed but with the help of the Wealthy Affiliate’s training and support system, this time I cannot fail.

Read all about Wealthy Affiliate here.

Affiliate marketing is absolutely one of the easiest and lucrative ways to make money with your blog and it suits all beginners.

With the widespread use of affiliate marketing, more and more companies depend on affiliates to bring in online sales for them.

As more people come online to do their shopping, affiliate marketing will only increase as the years go by.

 

Ads On Your Blog

Another easy option to monetize your blog is adding Google Adsense or other ad networks like it.  You’re allowed 3 Adsense units per page and sometimes you can earn a lot for a click… I’ve had clicks that was worth $4.50 and all they had to do was click on it, not even buy.

You can also do sponsored ads where people pay you a certain amount per month to put on your sidebar.  Many people like this option too as it’s a fixed income and expectable.

 

More Options

Other options include writing your own ebook or sell digital products, this is a great option and highly profitable as you just have to do the work once => great source of passive income!

If you’re good at what you’re doing, offer consulting services to your readers and help them do what you do!  People will pay to learn from you or get help by you.

Instead of consulting services, you can offer online courses instead.  You will need to create video training as that will be the best way to do it but again, you will do it once and can sell it over and over again.

If you don’t want to create anything, this is why affiliate marketing is such a great way to monetize your blog.  Some of the most profitable people make six figures a month just on affiliate marketing commissions alone!  So there’s lots of potential here.

 

 

STEP 6: MAKE MONEY AND EXPAND

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The fun part, making money!

Once your blog or website is making money, you will have some options to expand or add to your plate.

Maybe it is at this point you will add those digital products I spoke about in the above section, or start building your email list and YouTube channel.

Building an email list and having a YouTube channel both will contribute to your bottom line when they get big enough.

Everything takes time to build, including your blog and online shop so that’s why it’s good concentrate on the main thing before expanding.

Through email lists, you can access your customers directly instead of sending them off your website to buy something.  You can then promote directly to them over and over again as long as they stay on your list.

Having a YouTube channel can drive traffic to your website as well as earn ad revenue on the platform.

However, they recently changed it so that you can’t earn any ad revenue until you have 10,000 views on your whole channel.

This was done recently to weed out the bad videos and protecting  advertisers from having their ads run on sensitive or inappropriate content.

None the less, it’s a great medium to use for product reviews and have your affiliate linked in the video as Cards or underneath the video in the description.

Another way to expand is to add more blogs or more online shops.  Once you know what to do, you can just rinse and repeat for more profits!

It’s really endless and it’s up to your imagination to keep expanding and continue to keep making money!

 

 

CONCLUSION

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It all starts with what you want to do!

If you want to start an online shop, go here to Shopify to sign up!

You won’t regret having one of the best platforms to run your online shop on.  They also have so much resources to learn from and 3rd party apps to connect to that will support all your online shop needs.

If you want to start a blog and monetize it affiliate marketing, go here to Wealthy Affiliate to sign up for free or go here for my full review!

You not only have the best web hosting on there for WordPress, but you’ll have all the training and tools you’ll need to become success in your niche!  Bonus is the community it comes with, you’ll have all the help you’ll need, including myself!

In order to make money with a website, you need to take ACTION!  That’s really your first step.

Without action, there’s just reading, reading, and reading.  Don’t get analysis paralysis!

Get your online business started today!

 

if you have any questions or thoughts on making money with a website, please do not hesitate to leave me a comment below.  I always respond to my readers! 🙂

 

 

Let’s make money online!