Welcome to my tutorial on How to Own a Website and Make Money!

As you can see just by being online, there are tons and tons of websites out there on the web. Therefore, you can conclude that it’s actually not that hard to own a website.

I’m going to break this post into two parts.

• Part I will be how to get your own website.
• Part II will be how to monetize your website.

Creating a website is easy. You can literally have a website up and running in just a few minutes.

Making money from your website is another story. It can absolutely be done by anyone, but it does take hard work, perseverance, the right training, and the right attitude!

Let’s dive into this.

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Part I – How to Own a Website

I’m not going to take you into all the nitty-gritty details of getting a website set up because I would rather send you to the experts who have taught me how to set everything up. The training takes you step by step through the entire process from start to finish.

You will learn how to set up a website, how to get it ranking in Google and how to monetize it. We’ll discuss all of this in Part II.

However, I will give you the basic steps to help you understand how it all works.

Step #1 – Think of a Topic

First, you need to decide what your website is going to be about. The biggest money-making websites are those that are about making money (ironic, right?) and those that are about health and fitness.

There are certainly other money-making topics, but I think those two are the BIGGEST.

You can make money in any topic though. You’ll need to create a lot of content around your topic so make sure you pick something you’ll enjoy writing about.

If you like rabbits, you can make it work. You can promote rabbit cages, food, chew toys, treats, leashes, water bowls…so many things!

If you like gardening, there are tons of things you can promote there too. You can promote hoes, rakes, rototillers, hoses, clogs, shovels, seeds, and anything else related to gardening.

You can promote pretty much anything, even crystal healing stones.

The key here is to pick:

• Something you’ll enjoy writing A LOT about (as mentioned)
• Something that people need help with
• Something that will make you money

One note about the make money and health & fitness topics. These are WAY too broad. You will never make it in the search engines with topics that broad. (More about search engines and why they’re important later.)

Narrow those topics down.

What are you interested in in health and fitness? Some ideas could be:

• Weight training for women over 50
• Intermittent fasting for weight loss
• The best running shoes

Same thing for the Making Money topic. How about:

• The best jobs for millennials
• Money-saving tips for big families
• Investing for beginners

Those are things I thought of just off the top of my head. Just remember to ask yourself if people have problems in these areas, and will they spend money to solve those problems?

Here’s a Training on How to Choose a Niche.

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Step #2 – Buy a Website Domain Name

Once you have a topic, you’ll then want to think about your domain name. Your domain name will be your own little piece of the web.

You want to pick a domain name that:

• Is easy to remember
• Is not too long

There are a couple of schools of thought on picking the right domain name. You can either:

• Pick a domain name that is very specific to your niche
• Pick a domain name that is more generic and brandable

For instance, my website name is just my real name. I could have chosen to build a site around anything because it’s generic and I can brand my name anyway I want.

Another example of this is Monster.com. Monster is just a generic name and the site branded it to be a website where you can find jobs.

The benefit of picking a generic name is that you can pick any niche you want and stick it with your domain. Even if you start and then decide to switch niches along the way, as long as you haven’t gotten too far into it, you can just switch. It’s no big deal because your website domain name isn’t attached to anything specific.

The other option is to buy a domain website name that is very specific to your niche.

Let’s say your niche was horse riding boots. You could buy the domain besthorseridingboots.com. (That’s available by the way if you want it. You’re welcome. lol)

The advantage of this is that you may get ranked in the search engines higher because your domain is very specific. If someone were to type “horse riding boots” into Google, your site will likely have what that person is looking for and Google will reward you for that.

Click Here to Learn How to Buy a Website Domain Name in 3 Easy Steps!

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Step #3 – Get Hosting

Once you have a domain name, you’ll need a place to stick it. That’s what website hosting is all about.

I personally use the hosting available at the training platform I’m going to tell you about a little later. I like their hosting because:

• It’s fast
• It’s secure
• You get a free SSL certificate (some hosts charge for this)
• It’s convenient to have my domains, hosting, training and support altogether
• Hosting is included with my membership for up to 25 sites

But, I want to give you an alternative solution in case that doesn’t work for you for some reason. The other great alternative for bloggers would be SiteGround.

Since I don’t personally use them, I don’t have a personal experience to share. However, if I ever switched hosts, I would switch to SiteGround. Why? Because every successful blogger that I follow uses them.

(To clarify, I know plenty of successful bloggers that use the same host I use. I’m talking about the ones outside of our platform.)

They say they prefer SiteGround not just because their hosting is safe and secure, but also because their customer service is impeccable.

That goes a long way.

Click Here to Check Out SiteGround.

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Step #4 – Choose a Content Platform

Now you have a topic. You have a domain. You have a host. (Maybe. Maybe you like the same host I use. Coming up in a bit!) Now you need a platform for your content.

It goes kind of like this:

Domain Name –> Sits on a Host –> Connected to a Content Platform

Sorry, that’s so rudimentary. I could create a beautiful graphic for you in Canva, but ain’t nobody got time for that right now. 🙂 Rudimentary or not, I think you get the picture.

There are some drag-and-drop content platforms like Wix or Squarespace. The benefits to these types of platforms are that they are really easy to use and you can make a gorgeous looking website pretty easily.

(They also both have their own hosting.)

Buuutttt…

Most serious bloggers looking to make money online use a WordPress site. Why?

• WordPress has mass amounts of plugins to help you customize your site
• It’s the most recognized platform among top bloggers

I had a site hosted on Wix for a while. It was fine. It was easy to put together. It looked good.

But the web builder was slow as hell, the pricing plan was expensive and when I thought of moving it over to WordPress, I would have had to build the site from scratch. YIKES! (I decided to just shut that site down.)

I seriously recommend you start and stick with WordPress.

They have tons of free templates you can use to make your site look beautiful. Or, you can go with a paid theme. Paid themes allow you to customize even more.

I use Thrive Themes for this site, and I absolutely LOVE it. Thrive Themes is all about getting your site CONVERSIONS. If you want to make money with your site, then I seriously recommend you check out Thrive Themes.

I never thought I would need to use a paid theme…until I tried out Thrive Themes.

(You can start with a free theme and switch later. Or you can start off right away with a conversion-focused site. It’s up to you.)

Click Here to See What Thrive Themes is All About.

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Let Me Show You How Easy It Is To Get a Site Up

I’m going to reveal to you the site I use now for my hosting, training, support and domain names. (Plus more, we’ll discuss soon!)

It’s just easy for me to have it all in one spot. I’m going to show you how simple it is to have a site up and running in less than a few minutes so you can see for yourself.

Here are the steps you would take to do this:

1. Buy a domain name. (See my post How to Buy a Website Domain Name for full instructions.)
2. Build a site.

That’s literally it. It’s so easy!

Let me show you.

First, to buy a domain, you would go to Websites –> SiteDomains.

From there, you would search for a domain and purchase it right in the platform!

Once you fill out your information and purchase your domain name, it will now be available in your SiteDomains for you to manage. I didn’t buy the one up there, but you can see that the domain for this site is in the system.

After you have your domain, you would go to Websites –> SiteBuilder.

Then you would hit “On a Domain I Own.”

For the purposes of this demonstration, I’m going to choose “On a free domain” just so I can show you the process. It’s the same either way.

You wouldn’t need to fill in a domain there in Step 2, unless you wanted to use a free domain. Then, you would enter a title for your site. Don’t worry. This can be changed later, so don’t think about it too much.

Then, you choose a theme. There are thousands of free themes to choose from. Again, this can always be changed later, so don’t worry too much about finding the perfect theme.

Once you pick a theme, all you have to do it hit that “Click Here to Build This Site!” button, and your site will be done in about 30 seconds or less.

I’m telling you, it’s so easy. I love having everything in one place.

Oh, that place is Wealthy Affiliate.

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Part II – How to Make Money from a Website

As I showed you, creating a website is easy. It takes seconds. Making money from a website or a blog is a little trickier.

It’s personally my favorite way to work from home and make money doing it, however, it’s not a “get-rich-quick” solution by any means.

It’ll likely take you 6 months or more of dedicated work before you start to see any income. Don’t freak out though. It’s worth the time and effort. (See these success stories to see why.)

However, what’s awesome about it is that once you get the ball rolling, it’ll continue to roll. And because of that, you can create lasting, passive income in this way.

Imagine working on a website and getting it to a point where it’s making money on its own. Then, you can create another website to create another stream of income. And another. And another.

Note: Start with ONE website first. Trust me on this! lol

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4 Main Ways to Make Money With a Blog or Website

There are 4 main ways to make money with a blog or website. I talk about them more in-depth here, but they are:

1. Ads
2. Sponsored Posts
3. Create Your Own Products & Services
4. Affiliate Marketing

I saved affiliate marketing for last because it’s my favorite. (At least for now. I reserve the right to change my opinion. 🙂 )

I like affiliate marketing because you promote other people’s products. That means you don’t have to deal with any customer service stuff. I like not having to deal with customer service stuff.

Anyway, since affiliate marketing is my favorite and probably the easiest to get started (besides ads, but I explain why I don’t love them to start in the post I mentioned above), that’s what I’m going to focus on here.

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How Affiliate Marketing Works

Here’s how affiliate marketing works. (I snagged this image from Wealthy Affiliate. I don’t think they’ll mind.)

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There are 4 steps to this process, as you can see from the chart:

1. A customer is looking for something.
2. You know what they’re looking for, and you’ve created content to help them.
3. You promote products that will help the customer and they buy it from your affiliate links.
4. You make a commission.

Let’s go over these a little more in depth.

Note: Want to see the training where this chart came from? It’s called Understanding How to Make Money Online.

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Step #1 – A Customer is Looking for Something

Think about yourself. You’re a customer. I’m sure you’ve done some shopping online. What did you do? You went to Google (or another search engine, but probably Google as most people do) and you typed something you were looking for into the search bar.

Maybe boots for horse riding? (I don’t know why I like boots for horse riding. I like horses, and I like boots, so why not?)

Now you’re going to look at the results and see what strikes your fancy.

From here, you can read more about different types of boots and then perhaps buy a pair that you like.

If my blog was that 2nd site, statelinetrack.com, and you purchased from there, I would make a commission. Pretty cool, right?

But I bet you’re wondering how you figure out what people are looking for? And how do you get your site into Google like that??

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Step #2 – Create Content on Your Site

In Part I, we got your website up and running. Now comes the important part. Creating content for it!

This blog post that you’re reading right now is content. I’m creating content for you because you wanted to know how to own a website and make money. Now I’m creating this post to try to answer your question for you.

If you owned a site dedicated to boots for horse riding, you would create content about that topic. (You write content about your niche. We talked about niches in Part I, Step 1.)

How do you know what to write about? How do you know what people are looking for??

Through keyword research!

Let me show you how I decided to write a post on this topic.

We have this awesome keyword tool in Wealthy Affiliate called Jaaxy. I went into Jaaxy and did a little research. I typed in “how to own a website and make money” and this is what I see.

I want to look at:

• Traffic. This tells me about how many people I can expect to come to this post if I can rank #1 in Google.
• QSR. (Quoted Search Results) This tells me how many other sites are competing for this term. You want to stick to under 100. 2 is amazing!
• KQI (Keyword Quality Indicator.) Given all the factors combined, how good is this keyword? This one is “Great!”. Awesome.
• SEO. (Search Engine Optimization.) What are my chances of this ranking on page 1 of Google? This goes to 100, and the higher the number, the better.

Note: Want to see if you can find a good keyword? Try Jaaxy yourself free right now!

Getting a post ranked in Google depends on many factors, but the biggest one is…do you have quality content around your keyword? Does it help people? Does it provide value? Does it answer someone’s question?

You can learn alllllll about the importance of keywords with Wealthy Affiliate’s training. Join as a Free Starter Member (no credit card required) and get the BEST affiliate marketing training around.

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Step #3 – Customer Buys a Product

You have a website. You’ve researched keywords and you have great content using those keywords. People are looking for those keywords, and you’re getting ranked in Google for them. Yes!!

During Wealthy Affiliate’s training, you’ll learn all about affiliate marketing programs, how to find them and how to sign up for them.

Amazon is a good affiliate program to mention. You can link to any product on Amazon and make commissions from it.

What happens is that after you sign up for an affiliate program, you’ll be given a special link. That link has some tracking code in it.

If you promote a product on your site, and they click on the link with your tracking information and they buy that product, the affiliate program knows this came from your link, and they will give you a commission.

Commissions can be from 4% all the way up to 100% in some cases!

Amazon’s commissions are low, but there are some benefits to using them:

1. They are trusted by everyone.
2. You make commissions on anything someone buys. Say your site is selling socks for horse riding boots. If someone buys those, AND a TV, you’ll get commissions on both.

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Step #4 – You Make Commissions!

Alright, we already talked about how that works in the last section. But this is the MOST fun part of it all! All your hard work has paid off. Now you’re making commissions.

What’s great is that your horse riding boots page could make commissions for a long, long time.

The biggest factor in making money online with a website is traffic. You need to get traffic to your site. You do that through keywords that you can rank for, and getting ranked in Google.

Wealthy Affiliate will teach you how to do all of this. That’s why I love them.

I mean, look at how many things we talked about that they provide:

• Training
• Domain Names
• Website Hosting
• WordPress Content Platform
• Keyword Research Tool

And we didn’t even talk about the support that you’ll receive. Not only do they offer 2/7 technical support, but you can ask a question any time of day or night in the Live Chat, and someone will be around to help you. (Or just chat and say hi!)

Just today I receieved help from one of our members in Private Messenger. I was having an issue with my site, and he gladly helped me out.

You get a community of thousands to support you while you’re building your business. It’s pretty great.

Ready to try it out? All you need is your email address. Seriously.

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Do you have any questions about how to own a website and make money? Anything else I can help answer for you? Owning your own website (and making money from it) is seriously fun and exciting. I hope you’ll try it out and see! Leave me questions or comments down below.

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