Making money via a website for beginner advice needed

bonehead903028402

Hi was wondering if anyone here had any advice on starting a website and making money.

I have an idea for a website for my local area I already have a facebook group which gets visited a lot but would like to turn it into a website and try to make some money from it.

I know you can make money from adverts and stuff but I don't really know how.

Does anyone have a website they use to make money or know anything about it.

I know you can get websites for free through other people but would I be best to buy one and how much would this cost and what are the best ways to make money.

EmmaHerts

You can get a template for free, just google free templates/websites. You could sell ads to local businesses or perhaps place Google ads on your site.

One.com has a year's free hosting deal at the moment.

SailorSam

DELETED- Sorry posted on the wrong thread.

mrsyardbroom

I have a website that makes a bit of money every day. I use web editing software to write the content and then I publish it to my site using a file transfer programme. The site is hosted with Orchard Hosting and they're excellent but there are many other web hosts. Some have free templates and web building software that you can use but I prefer to edit the pages using my own software. I make money through affiliate marketing and through AdSense. There's loads of websites and forums where you can get advice on making money once your site is up and running. You can have a shop on your site where you can link to other people's products. Some firms will provide a shop window for you. I prefer to download datafeeds that I can store in my databases online. I've written php scripts so that the products are displayed on the page with links to the merchant's websites.

spiritus

bonehead903028402 wrote: »

Hi was wondering if anyone here had any advice on starting a website and making money.

I have an idea for a website for my local area I already have a facebook group which gets visited a lot but would like to turn it into a website and try to make some money from it.

I know you can make money from adverts and stuff but I don't really know how.

Does anyone have a website they use to make money or know anything about it.

I know you can get websites for free through other people but would I be best to buy one and how much would this cost and what are the best ways to make money.

What's the idea for the website ?

.....only testing you

Seriously, how many visitors/friends do you have for your Facebook group ?

Do you have any knowledge of setting a website up ?

Lienshare_2

bonehead903028402 wrote: »

Hi was wondering if anyone here had any advice on starting a website and making money.

I have an idea for a website for my local area I already have a facebook group which gets visited a lot but would like to turn it into a website and try to make some money from it.

I know you can make money from adverts and stuff but I don't really know how.

Does anyone have a website they use to make money or know anything about it.

I know you can get websites for free through other people but would I be best to buy one and how much would this cost and what are the best ways to make money.

The easiest way would be to create a page within Facebook itself, would save you a lot of hassle.

en-gb.facebook.com/pages/create.php?ref_type=pagelet1&ref_id=6205625674en-gb.facebook.com/pages/create.php?ref_type=pagelet1&ref_id=6205625674

Add this in front of the link above, http:// - not allowed to post links.

Cervus_2

There are a few Content Management Systems (CMS) you can get for free that make updating and posting new content to your site extremely easy. I can't post links as I'm a new member so run a Google search for Joomla, Mambo, or Drupal (these are probably the most common CMS's). If you're thinking more of a blog site then Wordpress would be your best alternative as far as software goes.

One.com has an offer on where you get a years free hosting, but please bare in mind that they use a different control panel to most other hosts (it's rather basic, too, in my opinion and lacking some features). If you can find an host that uses cpanel as their control panel (I know GeekStorage do but if you check around you may find a cheaper alternative) then there is a feature called Fantasico that will allow you to install the above software (as well as numerous other stuff like shopping cart, forums ect) extremely easily.

With regard to getting it to make money. Advertising is a good place to start, but bare in mind that without a large volume of traffic you're not going to make a fortune. Google Adsense is the obvious place to start, but try to get several different adversing platforms to maximise your revenue.

Get some affiliates on board. There are numerous websites and companies that pay a fixed amount or a percentage of any sale to people that found their site through yours. If you're going to be recommending products and things of that nature then this is well worth looking into. Join sites like CommissionJunction, AffiliateWindow, Webgains ect who have a large selection of clients that offer commission to you for generating them some sales.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

InsideInsurance

A website that makes money is a business. People make the mistake of thinking that just because the cost of entry is lower than renting a shop or office etc that it is easier to make money. If anything the low barrier to entry makes it more difficult because every person thinks they can do it and so where as the high street has maybe 50 shops the internet has 50,000,000+ shops.

If you are wanting to make money then in the first instance forget the tech and especially forget the unimportant things like which CMS to us or which hosting company etc and start with a pen and paper and write out a business plan.

Where are people going to come from? Why they going to want to come to your site? What is going to make them come back? What can you sell them? What can you cross sell them? etc

Once you have a plan created you can then start looking at the solution/ tech

interlcore

InsideInsurance wrote: »

If you are wanting to make money then in the first instance forget the tech and especially forget the unimportant things like which CMS to us or which hosting company etc and start with a pen and paper and write out a business plan.

Where are people going to come from? Why they going to want to come to your site? What is going to make them come back? What can you sell them? What can you cross sell them? etc

Once you have a plan created you can then start looking at the solution/ tech

I agree with this. I too am looking to make money from a website. I know (nearly) all the tech stuff but have yet to lauch as I don't know what my website will actually be. Yet. I have to figure out what will get people to come to my site.

Lienshare_2

InsideInsurance wrote: »

A website that makes money is a business. People make the mistake of thinking that just because the cost of entry is lower than renting a shop or office etc that it is easier to make money. If anything the low barrier to entry makes it more difficult because every person thinks they can do it and so where as the high street has maybe 50 shops the internet has 50,000,000+ shops.

If you are wanting to make money then in the first instance forget the tech and especially forget the unimportant things like which CMS to us or which hosting company etc and start with a pen and paper and write out a business plan.

Where are people going to come from? Why they going to want to come to your site? What is going to make them come back? What can you sell them? What can you cross sell them? etc

Once you have a plan created you can then start looking at the solution/ tech

It isn't that difficult to make money online, I have been doing for 4 years.
The OP stated he has a group on Facebook, instant traffic, hence the suggestion to create a page specific to his needs.

The problem is everybody always seem to over complicate things.
Keep it simple, forget cms.

InsideInsurance

Depends what you define as "making money online". If you are literally taking about making 1p a month then yes you can do that with no planning, no research but potentially a fair amount of effort. I have seen hundreds of sites that were built without the fore work and most dont even pay their domain/ hosting costs because whilst technically the person knew how, for example, to make a reverse telephone lookup they didnt think how to generate traffic, income etc.

Most people want to maximise their return on investment and to do that you either need to be very lucky or do the leg work up front. Failing to plan is planning to fail (to maximise the opportunity). For the sake of a couple of sheets of paper, a 7p biro and a few hours of your time is it really worth skipping?