The two common ways to make money with your website are selling products or selling advertising. I will focus on selling advertising since it's easy, free, and ANY website can do it.
Google AdSense
Google's AdSense has revolutionized the way people make money on the Internet and is by far the easiest way to make money online. Now virtually any website can make money, with virtually no limits to what you can earn! Google Adsense automatically delivers "targeted" text ads to your website giving your readers what they are looking for. For example: If you have a website about how to make money on the Internet, Google Adsense will display advertisements about creating websites, making money on the internet, or web hosting solutions.
Google Adsense is FREE and easy to use!
Signing up for Google Adsense is absolutely free and takes only a few minutes. Simply fill out a form online to create your account and you're done. After your account is created, simply copy & paste your ad-code onto your website and start making money online! It is literally that easy. Of course how well you do and how much money you make depends on many factors, mainly the amount of traffic & visitors that come to your website. A website that gets a #1 or #2 search result in Google or Yahoo can easily get many thousands of visitors per day, and earn thousands of dollars per month.
After building your website make it easy to find
The key to making money with your website is traffic (people traffic, not automoblie traffic). The more people that come to your website (traffic), the more money you can make from advertisers. The key to getting people to your website is Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of getting your website into search engines (such as Yahoo and Google) and getting it listed at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). If you build a website about Widgets, you want to be sure that anyone searching on Yahoo or Google for "Widgets" sees your webpage at the number one position, and not some other webpage.
Basic Steps of SEO
- Submit your website to DMOZ.ORG. DMOZ is the 'mother' of Internet Directores
- Submit your website to the major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. All the major search engines allow you to submit your site so they can start adding your pages into their search index.
- Solicit links from other websites to your website. When a site links to your site, it's like a 'vote' that your website has good content. Search engines take into account how many other sites link to your site when deciding what to list in the SERPs. Links from other sites also make it easier for search engines to find your website
- Read and learn! There are entire books, websites and forums dedicated to making websites "search engine friendly". Two good sources are www.webmasterworld.com and www.digitalpoint.com.
Advertising For Your Website or Blog
Got your website all setup but want to bring even more visitors FAST? Then paid-advertising might be the best option.
Google AdWords
Google's Adwords service is by far the largest and most effective internet-based advertising system on the web today. Using Adwords, website publishers can display simple, easy to create text ads that are displayed on Google's search-page results and on websites in the Adsense publishing network. With Adwords your advertisement be in front of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of internet users in minutes. Advertising with Adwords is very easy and signing up is free, and most advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their advertisement. If you sell a product on your website, Adwords is an almost guaranteed way to bring targeted traffic (people looking for your product) in minutes.
Add new content (pages & stuff) and lots of it, then wait
After creating your website and learning SEO, the next step is to wait (unless you opt for paid advertising). It can take anywhere from weeks to months for the search engines to begin listing your website. Use this time to add unique and interesting pages and information to your website and keep it growing.
Earning money with your website will take some time: Use the time to your advantage
As I stated above, it can take time before you start getting people (traffic) to your website. Use this time to learn more about making your site better, and make it better. Making money with a website is not a get-rich scheme, and it takes hard work, dedication and patience, but the payoff can be well worth it. If you're not into building a website to generate money, it can be a fun, inexpensive and rewarding hobby.