Preferably, you should choose a topic that you are familiar with and that you enjoy. The worst thing you can do is choose a topic you are not comfortable with and your site will suffer. So, if you are an avid fisher, why not create a site about fishing? If you love music, create a music site. - Choose a reliable host. There are tons to choose from. We suggest that you do your research, and remember, Google is your friend. Be sure to Google every hosting company you are considering. Read what others have to say about them. You might even find good deals in the process.
- When choosing a host, be sure to buy the correct hosting package. Importantly, monthly bandwidth and diskspace. For small sites, it's safe to purchase a package with 5-10 gigabytes worth of monthly bandwidth. Similarly, be sure the hosting package provides enough disk space for your site to grow and expand. 200 megabytes of space should be sufficient for small sites.
- The key to any successful site is content. Try provide original and interesting content that people would actually need and/or read. Copying and pasting content from another source doesn't cut it, and you could be infringing copyright laws. Be creative.
How Do I Make Money?
After your site has been developed, it's time to make some money. There are various ways of doing so. The most common ways are through direct sales and advertising.
If you have something to sell that is related to your site's topic, sell it on your site! For example, if you have a fishing site, why not sell fishing poles, bait, or hooks?
But what if you have nothing to sell? Then why not sell yourself! If you have a skill that you can provide to others, why not offer it? If your site is about webdesign, why not offer a service where you design sites for customers? If you have a knitting site and can knit yourself, why not offer knitting services?
What if you have don't have merchandise or a service to sell? Then the most popular method of generating a profit through your website is by selling advertising space. There are several affiliate programs that will "buy" space on your site for you to display banners in various sizes. Most of these companies pay monthly and are a good source of steady income. Below are a list of recommended affiliate programs.
Sign Up with Affiliate Programs
Below are a list of recommended advertising affiliate companies to join. Most require a site with decent content and a top level domain. Be sure to read each companies Terms of Service and Frequent Asked Questions (FAQs) for further details.
PayPopUp.com : PayPopUp is one of the smaller but very reliable ad agencies. They offer standard size (468x60) and leaderboard (728x90) banners. Not only that, they offer layer ads, popups/popunders, and interstitials. To top it off, they pay for raw impressions!
Casalemedia.com : Casalemedia offers one of the highest quality popup and banner ads. They support leaderboards (728x90), skyscrapers (120x600) and medium rectangles ( 300x250). They offer great rates and even provide real time statistics.
MammaMediaSolutions.com : MammaMedia is another fantastic ad agency. They offer CPM and CPC campaigns. They support skyscrapers (120x600), standard (468x60), and leaderboards banners (728x90). Similiarly, popup and interstitials campaigns are available.
Google Adsense : Google Adsense is the premier CPC program. Look no further than Google. They support every banner size imaginable.
