Very New to All of This: Need Help and Advice, Please.

First off, forgive me if this is the wrong forum to be asking this.

Anyway, here is the deal. I have been in and out of work a lot the last two years. I have, unfortunately, been laid off twice so I have recently started looking into ways to make some extra money online while I look for another job.

I have a Google Adsense account and I have done a little bit of blogging. I also submit Web content to another site and make a little bit of money there.

I am interested in starting my own Website -- possibly something sports-related. I am not really concerned about coming up with the content itself. I have written for newspapers before and do a bit of writing now, so I think I can handle that.

I honestly though have little clue about how to create a Website. Are there any good, free sites that have templates where a moron like myself can even be able to build a website? Also, would I be able to put an Adsense account on a site like this?

Also -- and forgive me if this is a really stupid question here -- would I have to pay to host this website? How would I go about doing this for free, if it all possible?

I am eager to get started on this. Even though I may appear pretty clueless on how to actually construct a Website, I do know a little bit about this whole business. I know that it takes hard work, I know that it takes quality content to keep people coming back. So I am not one of these people who thinks that I am going to be sitting on a beach retired tomorrow because I started some silly website.

I do, however, have a bit of writing experience so I figured that I might as well make a bit of money like the rest of you.

Anyway, please feel free to answer my questions. Thanks a lot.

Eric

 

Eric,

In general there are a few steps for this that you would want to go through:

1) Register a domain name
2) Find a service to host your website on
3) Build the website or use a template
4) Start adding content and adsense code
5) Optimization of your site for search engines and adsense
6) Marketing of your site

For #1&2 I would recommend "Dreamhost.com". For $10 you can register your domain name, and for about $10 a month you can host it. If you use the coupon code "FAVORITE" you can get $20 off the hosting cost (there may be better codes out there as well). There are free hosting services out there, but I don't know of any cheaper way that is as reliable and doesn't require that you display somebody else's advertising.

For #3, do a google search for "Web Site Templates" and you will come up with thousands of free options. In conjunction with this I would suggest you gradually teach yourself some HTML, CSS, and maybe PHP. Its really quite easy to learn enough of these to have a good website.

It sounds like you've got a pretty good handle on #4

For #5&6 I suggest you use the search function on this forum to search for relevant threads, there's quite a bit of useful information archived here.

Good luck!

 

Starting a website is not free, but it need not be expensive. But, there are a few things you need to learn.

You will need to come up with a domain name and register that. The cost is around U.S. $10 per year. I use GoDaddy and the cost there is $8.95. If you do not host the wesbite site there, you will need to set up DNS servers. Since you will be hosting your site somewhere else, your host will give you the names of the DNS servers to use. When the time comes, you will provide that information to your registrar.

If you are trying to get free web hosting, then your host may serve ads on your website. These could be in a bar at the top of the page or popups. This is a great option for a personal website.

However, if you are building this as a business, then you will want to get a monthly hosting plan. The cost is highly variable. The following examples are for companies that I have used in the past and that I did not have a problem with.

Canada's Black Sun charges CDN $10 per month for 500 megs of hard disk space and 5 gigs of traffic. They include MySql and PHP. They will give you the names of the DNS ervers. You provide that information to your registrar. They prefer to register your domain names -- at a higher cost than GoDaddy -- and be the registrar and host. There are lots of other options around the world.

The next step up are virtual servers. I have used TekTonic. The starter package costs US$15 per month. If offers one IP address and 10 gigs of space. With this, you are now into configuring your own DNS server and all other servers. This is just like having your own computer, with your choice of Linux operating system. It will come with perl, MySql, Apache, PHP installed, but not configured.

Once you have your domain registaered and a hosting situation resolved, you will need to work on web design. People are moving toward CMSes such as Joomla. The default package does not look that ugly and their website has links to other skins that have been created. With most CMSes, you can add and edit content; time when it appears; create forums and other inter-active features. You can also show Google Ads. The advantage of these systems is there are plenty of free ones. Joomla, for instance, works best on a Linux system and requires MySql and PHP.

You can try designing your own, but this is lots of work. I started life as a journalist. In 1988 I started publishing a newsletter. In the eraly 1990s I started migrating to the internet for distribution, initailly using email, and once the HTTP protocol was created, I started a website. Because there were no CMSes or anything, I needed to create my own. I decided to be able to add articles whenever I wanted and have the CMS know which section it belonged in and to create index and article pages. I had to create my own database structure to handle this and write my own program to parse incoming text articles, add headers and footers, etc. It took untold hours of effort.

The other part of the change was that I made the web version of the newsletter richer than the text. The net result is 95% of the newsletter subscribers moved to the internet version.

Now, mine is a subscriber-based model. AdSense is a little bit of gravy. It has been OK, and it definitely covers the cost of hosting my sites and maintaining all my computers. I have been trying to see if I could create sites where AdSense is the main source of revenue. So far I have found that it takes as much work to generate revenue from an AdSense site as a subscriber-based site. The implication is that you need to make sure you have considered all prospective revenue streams for your site.

It may be that AdSense is the best option to start -- expanding to some of your own ads as you grow -- and perhaps adding some referral income from books and other products as you develop -- and perhaps expanding into some kind of site-based merchandise at some future point.

I know this is a bit of armable. But, I hope I answered some of your questions and provided some ideas.

 

i can help you out with your web design if you want, i am also new to this, but i have done a bit of web design in school. you can checkout my website and contact me if you want to.

 

The least expensive way...

1. Find the cheapest domain registrar. GoDaddy, NameCheap, come to mine.
2. Next find a reliable and decent host. Pick you host like you would pick any business partner, with careful consideration.
3. Next Point the domain (via your registrar's control panel) to the host's nameservers.
4. Install WordPress.
5. Start blogging.
6. Once you have a few posts, like 20 to 30, setup the Adsense plugin, for wordpress and add your adsense code.
7. Now market your site like crazy.....
8. Monitor your results and optimize for subjects that people read on your site.

I have some posts on my weblog for beginners who are just starting out.

It's at www.webkeydesign.com, look at the Site Basics section.
4.

 

Hi,
You can start with a free hosting account and later when you make some money you can buy hosting and domain and then redirect your visitors to the new site using a .htaccess 301 redirection. Go for a short url domain instead of investing in a new domain specially when you don't have much idea about internet.If you can make it work for yourself then you can later launch a complete professional site. ( Your success directly depends on the number of people who will come to your site).

For html and website design you can start with just basic html like place an image on top followed by links to your other pages and then content . It looks something like http://www.ad4business.com but with much simple html coding , ( that page also has tables and flash).
Although if you know html then design whatever you like.

You can also sign up for a free blog service where you just type your content and it's published in html form automatically. There might be a few which don't load your pages with ads of their own. You have already been in blogging and this should not be difficult for you.
(I don't know much about blogging etc.)

Writing good content should not be difficult for you.

Earlier this year I had plans of starting a small hosting service where I intented to offer Total FTP access, PHP supported pages ( without SQL database), CGI access, .htaccess access , Robots.txt allowed and a short url like http://articles.ad4business.com
Replace the word "articles" to your username.
A small package which can hold like 150 pages of html content , ( 20-40KB each)and a few images to go in templet and here and there.

I wanted to sell this for $1 a month paid annually But I never started it thinking that there are many free services out there and was not sure if someone would pay for PHP , .htaccess ,cgi and short url in small hosting pack.
I'm not sure but if you want I can set up an account for you.

From what I know of internet business the success rate is very low and it requires constant attention and some good amount of hard work.
Make any investment big or "small" only when you have made a little first or at least know you can. There are so many factors that come into play when it comes to making money here.
Don't just depend on what you heard from someone , draw your own conclusions instead.
Again , your success in any business will depend on how better you are able to promote it and it's difficult online.

Try your hand in Blogging first as you are already familiar of it and there must be free ones available. Not sure about adding adsense though.The post above this has some mention of this.
Join a few affiliate programs if you are having troubles with adsense and blogs . You can easily insert your affiliate ID on blogs and the traffic that would click adsense could also click these.
There was a post here where someone mentioned how he started getting a decent income from affiliate products.
Try the search feature above

Additionally you can also use your "proof reading" skills to create a small business for yourself mentioned on your blog.

Regards
jeet