Forum Moderators: skibum
This is my first post I have been reading and lurking for a while now, and got some great info, prob is I've got too much of it! and now I'm totally confused! here's my story. I'm brand new at this, I am in fact one of those people that you have been making money off for all of these years! clicking on adsense adds without knowing what they were, aimlessly surfing looking for info. Anyway I have recently given up "real" work and have become a stay at home mom drowning knee deep in nappies! so I need a diversion I also have a car loan that needs paying off and food and bills and minor things like that! I have an idea for a website a couple actually but have to start with one, and I thought right I'll see if I can make this pay so I started to read and read and get excited and thinking YES I can do this, then I read again and more and more and I got to This is getting complicated to..reading more and more and got to f$%%^ this! I'm not going to be able to do it! but I'm nothing if not a tryer! so here is my loaded question (after all that waffle!) and it is loaded cos I KNOW about all the varioubles particularly regading me and what I know.. Anyway do you think I can start a website, (assuming it's about something somebody might be interested in ) with my basic HTML and JAVA script knowledge, knowing nothing at all about the rest of the stuff you are talking about (SEO's etc..) get someone to find it and start making money off it? and more importantly how long does it generally take start happening or how can I speed up the process? or is it TOO LATE? I don't think so but some people make it sound easy and others not so I sometimes think some people like to spout so much to try and turn newbies like me off cos they are afraid of the competition hee hee.. Anyway I cld keep reading this forum all day long and never get round to starting my website! So anybody (particularly anybody who was recently enough like me) ready to share with me, what I should read? where I should look? for the right info to help me make the best website I can.. before I drown in information overload as well as nappies! btw if any other SAHMS there making a bit of a living from this (remember at the moment I 'm only looking for a little bit! I might get a taste of it though and want more!) wld love to hear from you, if you haven't died of boredom from reading this post!
Many thanks in advance.. a harrassed mother of 3 wild boys looking for some sanity!
Welcome to the information age! lol! Actually, html knowledge is more than enough if you want to start your site on your own. SEOs can be learnt, it just takes time. This forum is the best place to learn all that. First, you need to get a web host and a domain name. I assume you have read some internet marketing books, if not... I'd suggest sitesell or james martell.
Just to give you a brief idea:
Get a domain name which contains the keyword/theme that you are planning to start on. (for e.g. if you wanna talk about babies, get a domain name with the keyword "babies" in it.). Then write articles, each targetting specific keywords, including the keywords at the title, the header, the body, etc. The name of your webpages should also contain that keyword... e.g. baby-products.html. Don't keep hesitating, just do it... you'll learn at the same time. All the best!
SEO for instance means Search Engine Optimizations. There is a whole forum on Webmasterworld dedicated to SEO, it's basically optimizing your pages to rank well in search engines (SE's).
There are a lot of ways to make money on the web:
- Promote Affiliate products: you earn a commission on each product you sell.
- CPM advertising. You earn money by displaying banners on your website.
- CPC advertising. Programs like Google AdSense. They pay you for each click.
- Paid content: your visitors need to subscribe to view your content.
- Sell products on eBay
- And probably a lot more.
Depending on the way you choose it can take a while before you start earning money. And most affiliate programs only send you the money after a month (or even later). So if you could start earning money today it might still take two months before you receive any money..
I suspect most people who try their hand at this end up quitting because they aren't getting anywhere. I think in the beginning when you're just feeling your way around, success is 50% luck and 50% abiliity. Eventually it becomes more like 20% luck and 80% ability. You can, especially in the beginning, waste a lot of time pursuing dead-ends, choosing the wrong niches, not getting the traffic you need, etc. Google's decision to keep their SERPs stale has ratcheted up the difficulty at getting into this business, as well.
My advice if you want to try it: Do not hesitate; get something out there fast. Register a domain today. Put some pages up on it by tomorrow. This starts the clock running, at least. Then you're at your leisure to add to site, to create sub-sections in the future, or to register new domains and whatnot. If you care about turning up in Google SERPs (and you should), it has been obvious for a long time now that Google is weighing the age of your site as an important factor. I've got some sites that I put up months ago, they are rather basic and have a lot of room for growth and monetization... in the time I've left them alone they've obtained page rank, gained a few unrequested links, DMOZ listing, and receive daily clicks from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. At any time I can go back and build up these sites easily, as they've established a history and credibility with the search engines.
My point again, get something out there today and get the clock started.
And why can't I use the site search. Is it broke? Or do you have to be a "member" now?
Ska
Anyway do you think I can start a website...... and more importantly how long does it generally take start happening or how can I speed up the process?
Making money with affiliate marketing from free search engine traffic is akin to someone saying they want to make a living being a professional gambler.
Some people get lucky right off the bat and make a few dollars. Some have the experience to know how to choose merchants and keywords that will increase their chances of making money. Some are just very good at it and make great money using a whole bag of skills that can take years to learn.
To start a new site and have it show up in the search engines can take months. If you you need to tweak your site you lost more time waiting for those changes to take affect. What if you tried promoting a product that nobody wants to buy? Do you want to wait months for that feedback?
If I were you I would consider Ebay. I know of a person that buys paint kits locally from a surplus store. She pays $5 for them and sells them for $20. I know of another person that buys "lots" of items and sells them separately. I think the last thing he bought was a lot of 10 subwoofer enclosures and he had recouped his cost by selling just three units.
I know of another person that would buy cameras and then part them out on ebay.
Maybe find a wholesaler for a certain product.
People go to Ebay for one reason...to buy something. You can't ask for better targeted traffic.
Another option for you may be Adwords. You can get almost instant feedback on how succesful your campaign is. The problem is that you may have to spend a bit of time and money to learn the ropes.
Here is some more good reading
[webmasterworld.com...] (pay attention to vibgyor79's posts)
[webmasterworld.com...]
Good Luck
and good luck!
I called micheal campbell an online seo "guru" at the time and paid him for some consulting 4 or 5 times.
this REALLY helped a lot. I think he still does it. It helps to find someone like this as you can ask questions and sort out degrees of importance in relation to all the data your confronting.
Best Of Luck..
Just get started. Use what's already been posted in this thread and what you already know to start in the right direction. Don't be afraid to make mistakes.
Create good content and much of the rest takes care of itself.
I started my first website last may without any knoweldge of html or whatsoever. I created my first page at bravenet.com with the free hosting and stuffs. that was my first perosnal webpage describing myself and now i am owning 3 websites with some cheap hosting package. so my advice for you is:-
1) Get a WYSIWYG editor( Start with Dreamweaver is recommended, i started with frontpage)
2) Upload your pages online.
3) Read posts from webmasters forum
4) Wait for one year
5) Earn $300 per month ( my total earning now)
Good Luck.
Just do it. I quit my job at the end of last October and started learning HTML. First site up Nov. 15. Six months later I have learned HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML/XSL, and now learning PHP and mySQL. I've got 4 well-optimized web sites up, two have been completely indexed by the big search engines and earning ad revenue and affiliate commissions. Two are just starting to get crawled.
Read, read, read... and expect to make a lot of mistakes on the first site. It takes time to build traffic so don't expect to see any real income right away. Oh -- a hint from a newbie: Learn about important things like .htaccess files, 301 redirects, and how to read your log files before you do anything else.
RS
