Yes! You’ve decided to earn money and are now wondering how to build a website to make money.
Naturally, you went to the internet and by chance found this article.
Luckily, you’ve landed at the right place. I started my first website in 2014 and created this website in 2018 so I can confidently say I know what I’m doing.
In this post, I’ll share the steps to building a website to make money.
I’ll be talking about:
- Finding a profitable Niche
- Domain names
- Hosting
- Content Management systems
- Navigation
- Content
- Monetizing
- Payment Processing
There are hundreds of methods for making money online through websites but every effective method starts with…
1. Finding a Profitable Niche
Money isn’t a magic thing that you can acquire.
To earn money someone has to be willing to give you that money. People won’t do that without getting something they perceive is equally valuable in exchange.
To achieve that requires credibility as the website’s creator and faith in what you can deliver. The best way to gain credibility is to focus on a niche and become a specialist.
Most people would rather put their trust in a specialist than a jack of all trades who knows little about everything. This is why it’s a best practice to start with 1 niche.
For those that don’t know, A niche is a subgroup of the population interested in a particular subject, activity, or product.
When choosing a niche you focus on 3 things:
- Profitability
Do they have the money to pay for your products and services? - Competition
The number of competing websites in your target niche. - Popularity
Are there enough people in the niche so you can get a sustainable income monthly?
The ideal situation would be to focus on a popular niche that lacks competing websites and is willing to pay for a solution to their problems.
Unfortunately, the perfect niche isn’t always available or might not coincide with your goals. This is why through marketing research you try to get as close to that as possible.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are great for finding profitable niches.
Through keyword research, you can find out how many people are searching niche-related terms on search engines which gives you a good idea about the popularity.
You can also see if million-dollar enterprises or small websites dominate the search pages.
Finding the right balance will help a lot with speeding up the progression of your website as a business.
Afterwards, you should…
2. Get yourself a domain name
The second step is to acquire a domain name for your website.
A domain name is similar to an address. You can use it to find the space on the internet that stores the content you’re looking for.
An example of a domain name is this:
“realdigitalsuccess.com”
You type this into your browser (which functions as navigation) and you’re directed to where a website’s content resides. You can purchase your domain name at what we call a domain registrar if it’s not taken already.
Most domain registrars have a search engine on their website in which you can type in the domain name you want to use and it can tell you if it’s already taken.
Ideally, you want something that’s easily brandable. When people see the website name on Google they know in broad terms what kind of content they can expect.
Time to brainstorm!
I advise you not to take months to make up the perfect name.
A good domain name can do a lot for a website but it isn’t the end of the world if you can’t come up with the perfect name.
Nobody knows what a “Google” is but it’s arguably the most successful website ever created. In the end, your actions will decide if your website is going to be successful or not.
Now that you have your domain name you need to…
3. Choose proper hosting
A host provides your website with a place to reside on the internet.
A host stores all the information (Text, pictures, videos, etc) on a website so that people can access it from 1 place.
Depending on how much space you need to store all your content the price can differ. It’s not uncommon for hosting to get more expensive the more your website grows.
There are a lot of websites that provide hosting such as Bluehost, WPX-Hosting, and others.
For SEO reasons, I’d recommend a hosting company with servers located near the locations you most frequent for loading time reasons.
4. Choose a content management system
This is the tool you’re going to build the website with.
A content management system or short, a CMS helps with arranging all the content on your website in the way you want it customized. This means menus, widgets, text fonts, colors, picture placing, and everything else website-related.
The most common content management system that’s being used nowadays is WordPress. It equips you with themes that can make your website aesthetically ready within minutes.
There are other content management systems such as Joomla, Drupal, Magento, etc but I’d recommend sticking to WordPress.
I say this because of its popularity more support content and resources are built for it.
If you’re passionate or want more creative control you can download WordPress plug-ins and theme builers to help you.
Some are available free on the WordPress directory while other premium plugins will require you to pay money.
A few examples of Theme builders are Elementar, Thrive Themes, Lead Pages, etc.
These theme builders come with more options than a standard theme will give you but still simple to use thanks to drag-and-drop systems that don’t require coding.
5. Guide people with excellent Navigation
People often underestimate the importance of the Navigation of their website.
Depending on the purpose of your website, it can make or break the potential of building an income-generating website.
People need to be able to access the content they want to see with little effort. If this can’t be achieved they’ll likely go to another website with better navigation.
Identify the pages that are the most important to your business and find a way to make them easily accessible from everywhere on your website.
Most of the time this means incorporating these pages into your primary menu.
6. Establish authority through content marketing
Content is not only a great tool for marketing but it can also help with gaining credibility.
If you’re trying to build a brand or trust you want them to see as much content as they can take in.
It showcases your involvement in niche-related issues and brings your ability to solve their problems to the forefront.
There’s a reason search engines value websites that produce fresh content.
Start writing content about the fundamental topics in your niche and build out your initial “website architecture”.
A great way to start this is by first making content about the basics and answering the most frequently asked questions in your niche.
This will also help with getting recurring customers because they know your website will be established as the go-to place for information in their minds.
7. Decide what Monetization model fits your goals!
There are a lot of ways to answer the question of how to build a website to make money, but
If there’s one constant within all the answers it’s traffic.
Everything revolves around increasing traffic a.k.a. website visitors.
If you have a lot of attention you can make money selling products, advertising for companies, referring your website visitors to companies, etc.
When deciding on a monetization method you need to keep not only your niche but also your wants in mind.
Some monetization methods bring in a lot of money but aren’t sustainable while others deal with the opposite situation.
A subscription-based product vs a 1-time sold product could be an example where both these situations occur.
8. Acquire a Payment Processing Tool
A payment processing tool provides a way to pay for the products and services you sell.
Some payment processing tools create external checking pages that you can direct people to while others provide plugins that don’t require you to leave your website.
Some monetization methods won’t need a payment processing tool such as affiliate marketing but in most cases, if you’re selling products and services it’s important.
9. Build a Brand
It’s becoming more important to start building a brand around the website. This means more than designing a logo and using specific colors for your website.
Try to get your name out there by collecting testimonials, writing guest posts, collaborating with impactful figures in your niche, and more.
The more your brand is out there, the higher your chances are to succeed in creating an income-generating website.
Final Words
Simply creating the website won’t be enough to make money.
You’ll need to invest in marketing which can be done through search engine optimization, paid advertising, social media marketing, etc.
Pick 2 marketing channels and learn as much as possible about them.
That’s all for today.
I hope this post was of value to you. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
See you at my next post!
