Do you wonder how so many people know how to get a website started, and how in the world do they make money at it? I'm still new to all of this, too, but I've found that it's really not that hard to start a website. There are free web hosts that you can go with for a free website, or paid web hosts. Then there's the whole aspect of making money at it. Below I've got some information that has helped me, and hopefully will help you get an idea of where to start if you are interested.
Free websites
Free websites are a great place to start if you aren't looking to make money. They have their downsides, though. Instead of having your own domain name (sahmsnwahms.com is considered a domain name), you have your chosen domain name added to another domain (for example, if sahmsnwahms.com provided free webhosting, and I wanted a personal one then I could have one that had this domain: caneel.sahmsnwahms.com). Another downside is those hosts have to pay for your free web hosting somehow, so you can't place your own adds on the site and make money, but they will place ads on the site for you. You can't control these ads and while they will usually have ads that are related to your site content, they are usually numerous and include annoying pop-ups. See the free site that my friend and I started to bring awareness to low progesterone in pregnancy, and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about: Saving Babies. While we are very happy with the service we have received with this host, we've had to deal with these downsides. Also, you will probably have a limited number of template options and search engines don't like to recognize your site as much. For this reason, Saving Babies may move to paid hosting at some point.
If you are interested in a free site, though, here's a few options you can check out:
741 (This is the free web host that my friend and I used for Saving Babies before getting our own domain)
Bravenet is wonderful! (CLICK HERE: ) I don't have experience with their hosting services, but we use a lot of their free tools on our Saving Babies site and a few on this one. I've always very good experience with them and we even considered going with them for paid hosting.
Paid web hosting is the way you want to go if you are going to want search engines to recognize you as legitimate, and/or you are wanting to make some money with your site. There are a ton of paid web hosts out there, and my husband and I exhausted ourselves researching them before making a decision to go with HostExcellence for this site and another one we run. Ultimately, it came down to the fact that we were getting tired and we liked HostExcellence's plans for mulitple domains and the fact that they had a site builder with tons of customizable templates (many of them do, but some of the good ones on the review lists don't). We also liked the amount of storage and bandwidth we were given, among other things. So far, we've been extremely happy with them and their 24/7 live chat help is superb. I couldn't have started without it! They could probably have a few more features available, but it's not been a problem with bravenet providing free stuff.
If you are wanting to compare hosts, here are some review sites that may help you make a decision, but basically if you are as clueless as we were starting out, you're just going to have to pick one eventually. You can really get physically exhausted trying to compare them!
Okay, now that you have an idea of what kind of hosting is available, what do you do? How do you make money? Where do you start? Below are the sites that I found VERY helpful!
There is also an open source (free) web design software called Nvu that you can download and use to build your site if you don't want to use a site builder that comes with your hosting plan and don't want to pay for FrontPage or Dreamweaver. Nvu combines the best of both and is becoming popular.
There is one thing that you can do that won't cost you anything. Google adsense can be set up for free (
Sign up for AdSense. ) and you can make money doing this. BUT it takes time, time, TIME and patience, patience, PATIENCE and WORK to see significant income this way. It takes a while to get the kind of traffic you would need to make this a reliable source of income.
Link Buddies (LinkBuddies bring the world to your web page!) is free and will provide your banner ads on other sites in exchange for you doing the same. The banner ad on the bottom of this site is an example of this. You can create more traffic to your site this way.
LinkShare (see button below) is one of a few affiliate programs you can join and get commission for placing links and ads for merchants on your site if people click through your site to make a purchase. Affiliate programs can also be a good way to make money from your site, especially the affilate program Google Adsense (see ad at the top of this page). For more information about affiliate programs and Google Adsense, check out some of the informative links listed above.
Wondering how to create those banner ads? Check out Ad Designer. It's free! Click the button below.
Any information or advice found from SAHMs n WAHMs is not intended in any way to replace that of your healthcare and/or legal professionals. Any views expressed in any forums affiliated with SAHMs n WAHMs are not necessarily the views of SAHMs n WAHMs.
