Have you been thinking about creating your own website? And do you want to earn money from it? This is one of the most popular ideas when it comes down to earning an online income. But why do so many people like it? And is it really worth your time? If yes, how should you make this come true? This step by step guide will help you find the answers to all the above questions.
But first, let’s see if it’s a good idea to create a website and try to earn money off of it.
Is It Worth Creating a Website?
To answer this, I’ll give you a good reason why it’s a great idea to own a personal website.
Having your own website is very helpful to succeed in the online world. Why is that true? Well, most people have social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest…) set up. If you make it good enough, it can become a great place to ensure your online presence.
But what’s the difference between owning a website and a social media account? Having a website is much more professional looking, especially if you’re trying to earn an online income. If you set up your own website, this will give you more credibility.
You can use your website to tell your possible clients why you deserve their trust. If you do this, your visitors will be happier when choosing you to take care of their things.
Whenever we talk about website creations, the first thing that comes to our mind is that it might be a work of experts. If you’re not so much a techy person, this could easily be true in your case. No, we are not making fun, but actually, we have a complete guide of steps for you.
You can build your own professional site by following these steps one by one. We are sure that once you go through this guide, you’ll be sure that even a beginner can create his own website and earn money from it. See the guide below:
Why Use Our Guide?
You will definitely think that it’s worth choosing our guide for learning website creation. We have reasons for this:
- Our complete guide is full of up to date information that is easy to read and to understand for beginners.
- You get a website that is built up for a specific platform and the setup can be done in just one hour.
- We ensure guaranteed results and you will get the response for every query about your working website.
Steps to Follow
To create a website you must go through some basic milestones that are necessary to start the creation process; these are:
- The First step is to choose the right and reliable platform for building a website.
- The second one is to choose a specific domain name and hosting for the site.
- The third step is to take care of the configuration of your site created with WordPress
Below you can find a summary for this process:
#1 – Choose the Right Platform
This is the root of your website and is important to select a strong platform for giving it strength and security.
What does a Right Platform include in its Features?
Choosing the right platform is a task that is to be performed with deep study of various available options. The benefits and limitations are necessary to be checked before making your final selection. Following are some important things to keep in your mind while selecting a perfect platform for your site:
Locate the Best Content Management System:
A CMS is an important tool to use in the creation and customization of the site. This is responsible for the feature that we need to write and publish content on our website. This can be installed with just a single click and is given in the box by the host provider. It allows the creator to add pictures, include portfolios, text contents or any other important data after signing in as an admin. The customization of the appearance and templates and the add-on of plugins for adding operable functionalities are done with the help of CMS.
Top CMS Options to Choose From
- WordPress: This platform is considered as the best option for the beginner who is building his first website. It is compatible with both the low and medium traffic rated websites due to its considerable scalability. Most of the top popular websites from the world such as Time Magazine, CNN, TED, and many others are using WordPress.
- Drupal: This platform is suitable for complex and high traffic websites and is used mostly by professionals. You can switch this suit after reaching a level of expertise in website development, but till then it’s the worst choice for you as a beginner. But it’s better if you stick with a easier to use platform.
- Joomla: Although it offers better performance than WordPress and also easier to know your way around than Drupal, it is still not too recommended for beginners due to its complexity.
Instead of regretting your choice later we suggest you to choose WordPress. It’s the best choice for starters and it has all the features needed for a new site.
Why is WordPress the Best Option for You?
Many favorable points prove that WordPress is the best option for beginners:
- Easy Installation: It comes with one click installation on most of its hosting services and is really a time savvy method. This is also free and available with many free themes and plugin options with extreme support by the providers.
- Powerful Community: It will guide you in the initiation, and when you face any difficulty, then you can get your queries answered by a usual Google search operation easily and mostly among the first three search results.
- Responsiveness: The platform is capable of adjusting its various available themes according to the device’s environment. This feature reduces the need for hiring expert developers for modifying these properties.
- User-friendly: WordPress is highly reliable to its users because of easy to use functionalities. It offers excellent themes and plugins at a very reasonable cost and is also usable for non-programmers. The platform is secure and suitable for the website related to generating revenues.
- Multiple Hosting Choices: WordPress gives you multiple options in hosting such as self-hosting, shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting. Most hosting providers are expected to take care of all the website issues you might come across, except the content.
- Available Website Backups: This feature is helpful in getting your data recovered in situations of hacking.
Downsides of WordPress
As you know, each platform has both upsides and downsides. WordPress also has some drawbacks that are listed below:
- It can be difficult to handle high rates of traffic on your website with WordPress, but it’s not impossible. This depends much on the host you choose.
- Most of the users say that the free themes and plugins aren’t of good quality, but it’s not proven. The themes are developed with quality in mind and high security.
- The security can be breached, but it can be fixed by detecting the issue in the meantime.
After these drawbacks, we still prefer WordPress as the best choice because it has solutions for each of its downsides. You can compare these available options for selecting the best according to your requirement.
#2 – Selecting a Unique Domain Name & Website Hosting
This is the second step to follow while moving forward in the Website Creation Process.
What is a Domain Name & Hosting for a website?
This is a basic question asked by the first time website makers, and we have an answer for it. The URL that is used to search for a website by typing its name into the address bar of a search engine is called the Domain name, for example, websitename.com is a domain name.
The Hosting is a server for the site that is responsible for storing all the important data and files of the website. The server is a computer system that stores and operates with your data such as allowing access to clients for reading your website contents. The operations are completely secure and done under the administration of the website host.
How to Choose a Domain Name?
Before making a choice, ask yourself about the niche on which you want to focus. The decision about your niche helps you to choose a right Domain Name. We recommend choosing the area of your expertise and knowledge. This is quite mandatory, especially when you think about monetizing your site. You can choose from 3 basic options:
When you are building the website for a business then the name of the company or brand can be used as the domain name.
For a personal website, you can also use .com version of hosting and for a website related to hobbies there may be no limit to the available names.
Important Features of Domain Name:
It is the next step that helps in choosing a right domain name that has all the needed properties of a better domain. Always take the following pieces into consideration while choosing it.
- Try to make it short so that it is easy to type and remember. More people will remember it this way.
- Always use a memorable domain name that is never forgotten.
- Use a catchy domain name that reveals your professionalism in just a few words and attracts traffic towards your website.
- Add keywords but for making it reliable and searchable on the search engines and SEO friendly.
- Check out the usable abbreviations about the specific niche you are writing about on your website.
How to Choose Web Hosting:
When it comes to the selection of right hosting, there are two options for you. You can choose shared hosting or the managed WordPress hosting. The first option is good because the second one has expensive costs for acquiring it.
The shared hosting has fewer costs for using it. The other hosting options are Managed Hosting, Dedicated, Virtual Private Server Hosting and a free hosting by WordPress.
Features of Good Hosting:
- A reliable hosting comes with speed and relevant performance. For imposing good performance, it is necessary to acquire all the essential hardware such as RAM, CPU, Hard Disk, and other. A host with good hardware always delivers quality service.
- Good hosting is known for its excellent support. This is mandatory when you need it, such as in a case of insecurity, during recovery, migration, restoration of data, and the installation of WordPress. The fastest support service is the best.
- The uptime feature shows the uptime limits of the host. A good hosting service comes with 99.5% of uptimes, which is necessary for making it more excellent than the other hosting services.
For getting different services, you have to select a plan such as a starter, plus and the business pro. The starter is the best option for beginners. It offers relevant speed, functionalities, storage, and performances for your site. You can switch to another plan after a nice growth of your website.
One of the best hosts out here is called BlueHost:
Setup WordPress with BlueHost:
After choosing a plan, a setup wizard appears asking about the confirmation of your domain name or changing it. You can re-check your domain name for avoiding the typos and hit on next.
On the next screen, you have to enter your data such as the payment method and details of your credit card and press next once again.
Now locate the install WordPress option in the below hosts control panel. The button is of green color; make a single hit on it and start the installation.
In the next wizard, you have to make the selection about using a “www.” extension before the name of your website. You can leave this section if you are not clear about your choice as it can be updated later.
Now it’s time to set the details like email id, password, and username for the installation of WordPress. Then check the all-important terms mentioned in the License Agreement of WordPress and tap on install now.
After the completion of the installation, you are prompted with a message saying, “Your Install Is Complete!” This wizard also contains the “View Credentials” button that takes you to the page where you can locate the login credentials of your installed WordPress.
You can log into your site by just making a single click on its URL or Domain Name such as website name .com.
#3 – Configuration of Your New Website
This step includes what you need to do to enhance your new site’s appearance. After configuration, it will look like a complete and professional site that is ready to use. To initiate this process, you have to locate the WordPress Admin Menu present on the Admin Screen. You can go there by using the below-given steps:
- Visit your websitename.com/wp-admin and fill the password and username that you had used while installing the WordPress.
- It will take you to WordPress Admin Screen where you can find and expand the menu by clicking on it.
- It will show you the list of submenus listed under its names such as Dashboard, Pages, Comments, Media, links and many other available menu options.
Start the Customization
For this task, you have to activate a WordPress Theme for your site. To do this just go to the Appearance option and click the Themes, then Add new button. Choose one that is for your liking. Once you did this you will add widgets, Menus, and Backgrounds which are all part of the customization Process.
We will define all these add-ons one by one for making this process understandable and easy for you. Let’s start the process:
Add and Edit Titles and Taglines
The title of your page explains the purpose of the website so as the visitor can understand the type of your website from its title. Search engines determine the ranking of any website by using its title. With the help of a unique title, you can attract the attention of readers towards your website.
The taglines are the end lines of title that come after the main title. It defines the title in brief and clarifies the meaning of the main title. From the tagline, a user can understand in which format the title should be described in the content of this website.
Adding a Theme
The theme is used for controlling the visual appearance of your site. For adding a specific theme, you have to install a professionally designed template for WordPress. Although, you get your site with a default theme, it’s not too appealing at all.
For making it better, you can get the theme from the free ones or install it form the paid section by paying a few dollars. The process of applying a theme to your site includes the following steps:
- Go to Appearance, then Themes and hit the Add New Button.
- The next screen will take you to a pool of up to 4,492 free themes present in the official directory of WordPress.org themes.
- The themes are divided into different categories like popular, latest, featured and many others.
- You can select your desired one and make a click on the selected theme’s Install Button to trigger the install.
How to Choose a Right Theme
When it comes to select a theme for the site the task may be confusing because of the wide variety of themes. Each theme has its own specifications that make it better than others. Keep some important facts in mind while choosing a theme such as:
- Simplicity: There are many complex themes present in WordPress, but they are not suitable for all types of websites. Sometimes a simple theme is better than a complex one for improving the readability of the user. So, choose a simple or complex theme according to your requirement.
- Mobile Friendly: As you know, the WordPress themes are responsive and can adjust themselves according to the device and its size automatically. Choose a highly responsive theme that is suitable for desktop as well as mobile devices.
- Supportive of all Browsers & Plugins: It’s common that a theme looking good on one browser may look broken on another one. In order to avoid this issue always check your theme on multiple browsers that are mostly used by the clients. For example: Edge, Opera, Chrome and Firefox. Check if your theme is compatible with all of the needed plugins.
- Use Themes with Good Support: The free themes have less support and the paid ones are available with the complete support. So, switch the theme with high support for getting help in critical development conditions.
- Highly SEO Friendly: If you are working on SEO contents than always apply a SEO friendly theme that supports Search Engine Optimized contents.
Adding Widgets
The widgets are modules that are in the pre-set format and are used for loading the headers, footers, and sidebars. The widgets are useful tools mostly seen in form of the search bar, re-sent comment sections, archives, and categories.
You can check your widgets by going to the appearance options and then the widgets option. Click on the option and you can see all the widgets.
They are small pieces of important code used for adding more functionality and also helpful in the navigation process such as on social media and also for adding HTML codes to normal text. When you add some codes to any normal text it will act as the code and perform the same functionalities.
Adding Menus
You can add menus on the top, bottom or at the sides of your website page. The menus are used to navigate the pages of your website. Simply we can say the menus represent what your site is offering to its client.
Unclear or meaningless menus lead towards big traffic loss. So always use menus with small but informative names that provide a clear representation about your site’s working and offers. Use submenus under the main menu for making a list more usable and concise.
Setting Background
Some websites use a plain white page as their background, others a picture (or more). The background you’re using can improve the readability, such as if you are using a dark background with light colors for the text, it will be easier to read.
The most popular background consists in a white page with black text on it that makes the content highly readable. Never use a sliding image in your background because it can confuse the reader and make the page less reliable and difficult to read.
Adding the Plugins
Basically, the plugins are small programs that expand the capabilities of WordPress and Add New functionalities and features to your website that are not built in by default. These are features that are responsible for allowing the user to operate the website easily.
They are chunks of code that are written for performing a specific action or a group of actions for the website for which they are defined. The most common example of plugins functionalities is the sharing on social sites.
It will help you to publish and share awesome content through the social media platforms. Doing this will improve the website’s popularity and makes it available to the readers that are searching for it.
You can install different types of plugins such as SEO plugins, plugins for security, plugins for creating and managing the image portfolios. They are also helpful in handling the security breaches and the comments full of spam.
You can use the plugins for getting recovery for any of the lost data. The creation of contact forms and the cashing of the site, such as optimization of WordPress performance are also done with the help of plugins.
- You can add a new plugin to your new website by clicking on the Plugins options.
- After opening the plugins click on the Add New Button for adding new plugins.
Choosing the Best Plugins
There are up to 25,000 plugins in WordPress that are free and you can select according to your requirement. Here we discuss to most popular plugins of WordPress that are free.
- Yoast SEO: It is a popular plugin that is used for developing a complete SEO friendly website. You can edit your Metadata, title tags, with the help of this plugin. This will allow you to get a better ranking in the search engines, so people are more likely to find your site online.
- Google Analytics: It is used for tracking the traffic on your website and how they behave. Just install it and link with your Google account for using it. This is very important to keep your website up to date.
Adding the Pages
Pages on a website are used to divide the site into different sections. Each page contains a specified section of the content placed on the website. You can create pages with the help of the Pages button on the left side of the Dashboard.
Just click it and you’ll be taken to a section where you can add, delete or edit the existing pages on the site. The landing is one of the most important ones when setting up the website. Here, your visitors can find information about your business.
If you find your front page is not looking unique, then you can make it static. Use the following steps to set up a front page that is static in the form:
- Move to settings, then reading
- Now select the static page option for the page you want to make static. For example, if you don’t set a page as static, then WordPress starts displaying the posts on the main homepage.
Another way to do this is by going into the customization mode. Here on almost every theme you have an option to make your front page static or to display your latest content on it. If you want your site to be more professional go for the static front page.
Comment Section
The comments are an important part that makes a website successful. Websites become popular because of their readers. The readers comment in the comment section about its experience while reading the content.
We can say that the comments will give you a great feedback from your visitors. This section is helpful in improving the website. If you listen to what your users say in the comments, you can add or remove certain parts of the site, or just simply improve them to your visitors’ liking.
The comments are useful for checking the rating of your site, its popularity and the complete percentage of traffic on your site. You can get more followers with the help of comments. The comments can be accessed from the WordPress menu.
WordPress gives you the capability to link your site while commenting on the blog of someone else. This comment will bring traffic to your site.
It isn’t a must to have a comment section on your site. If you don’t want it on your website, just disable it by going to the comments section like before mentioned.
Adding Posts
Posts are the central part of your site and act as its heart. The posts are used for increasing the ranking of your website on the internet. The posting techniques of WordPress are very reliable and easy to use which makes it a popular platform for creating a website.
There are two suggested methods for writing posts for the website. The first method is the visual editing tool and the second method is the editor offered by HTML. For beginners, the visual editor is good enough. If you’re more used to web development, then you can go for the HTML editor.
The HTML pages are mostly written only by the experts. HTML is mostly used for the formatting of the posts that are to be published on your website. The visual editing tool is used after the formatting is done.
The tool allows you to add bold fonts, add an italic font on the written text and changing its font, using bullet points, including hyperlinks, and performing the alignment of texts. You can get a full display version of the editing tool by using the distraction free mode of writing. You can add a post by clicking on posts option and then pressing the ‘Add New Button.’
There is also a nice option to preview your post. This allows you to see how your post will look on the site when you publish it to your audience.
Adding Categories
Just like the posts, we can also add categories for dividing the content into similar sections of content. Categories are useful for publishing multiple numbers of issues of your content in form of sections. You can add the category by using the post editing tools called the Post Editor.
The other method for adding categories is by clicking on the posts and then categories options. Here you can decide on a name and fill it in for creating a new category. Then add a URL to your website for indicating your posts according to that particular category.
The method is used for protecting the posts of your website and ensuring that only you are allowed to view the collection of posts under any described category. When your content is divided into small sections, it is easier to search and locate any desired information from a section.
It reduces the time needed for reading the whole content and makes the search easier for the reader.
Add Media
As you know, pictures and videos are also an important part for making a website more beautiful and enhancing its user experience. Today is the world of media and there is a large number of a websites based on media technology and social media facts.
You can include media content on your website by using the posts section or by going to the media library of WordPress. Just click on media option and then hit The Add New option.
The images with titles and captions can be used in media and the alt text is useful for making your images easy to detect for the search engines. This will also help you to acquire the desired images in just a few clicks and make your content SEO friendly.
You can use pop up images created with the help of plugins offered by WordPress and can use light box for creating more attractive images for enhancing the overall look of your website.
It’s a good idea to install a plugin that will shrink the size of your images that were uploaded. By doing this, you will make sure that your site loads way faster when a visitor accesses it in his browser.
Add the Profile
This is an easy task to do when compared to the complex website creation. Your profile can be edited with the help of Edit Your Profile option that is present on the upper right corner of your admin screen. Your description and links for the social media can be added to make it more informative for the readers.
In your profile, your photo is also an important thing to be added. It is the profile picture for your WordPress ID. You also need a WordPress .com account that helps you for logging in to the admin panel of your site. The profile picture and profile details are proofs of your identity for the WordPress account.
Get going!
Now you are all set for using your website. Install the needed plugins and go to success. You can now make a shopping website, a business site or any other personal site as per your needs. The sites are really profitable if they get good traffic on them. You can earn your living easily by running a successful website. But how do you do this?
We’ve reached the part in our article when we talk about ways to earn money from your website. Of course, we won’t mention all of them, because there are too many to cover in this article. But I’ll go through the most notable ones that are worth checking out.
Monetize Your Blog
If you ask a successful website owner, how he earns money from his site, there is one answer that is most likely you’ll hear from him: ‘’I monetize my blog’’. What does this mean exactly? You should know right off the bat that this isn’t working from the start. It takes some time to establish your site as a go-to place for your content.
This means that you have to receive a steady income of monthly visitors. Usually this number should go up by each month, but at least stay the same and not drop. When you have these monthly visitors, you can start to monetize your blog.
For example, one way to do this is by placing specific ads from different companies on your site’s pages or posts. Check this example out: Let’s say you have written a post about the top 10 best budget smartphones of 2018. You even have a good visitor count. What can you do to earn some money from this post?
Search online for companies who let you advertise their products. This is something that is called affiliate marketing. In this specific case, you could find a company, who’s selling budget smartphones that you mentioned in your article. Sign up as an affiliate marketer on their site. When your account will get approved, you will have access to lots of different banners and links that you can add onto your site’s post.
For example, when you mention a specific phone, put a link there, so the reader can go on, and check it out. In most cases, if your reader moves ahead and buys a product (only a product that was linked from your site) you will get a certain percentage of the revenue that the seller receives.
If the phone costs $100 (just an example), you could receive $10 for directing this client to their site. The amounts you can earn differ from site to site, but this how the mechanism works.
Important to keep in mind though: when you use affiliate marketing on your site, you have to clearly state that somewhere. The reader must easily see this and know about it. This is requested by the law. Most site owners display a statement at the beginning of a new post where the reader can easily see it.
eCommerce Shop
I’m sure you’ve been to Amazon or Aliexpress or some other eCommerce site. What they are doing is a great method that you can do too to earn yourself an online income.
This is one of the most popular methods that people use to earn money from a website. To create an online store/market you can use many platforms that allow you to do this. But since you created your site using WordPress (as seen in the article above) I’ll give you the best tool to create an online store using it.
The WooCommerce plugin; this is a free to use plugin that powers most of the online markets around the globe. More than 28% of all the online markets are using it. You can install it simply by going to the Plugins section and adding it as a new plugin to your site.
When the installation was completed, you should set up and configure your store. But know that WooCommerce takes some time to learn and use efficiently. It isn’t the easiest platform to know your way around. But once you get the hang of it, it will become a real asset to power you store.
What’s great about WooCommerce is the fact that it works a lot like WordPress itself. What do I mean by that? That it’s got lots of templates for the store and extensions that work exactly like the plugins for WordPress.
These extensions are great. They will give you all the functionality that your shop needs to work seamlessly. What can they do? Check out this list below:
- Process payments efficiently: this is done with the help of the payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, Square, …). After all, this why you set up such a store, right?
- Email marketing to get and keep your clients (MailChimp)
- Shipping – WooCommerce Shipping to take of the deliveries
- WooCommerce invoices
- and more…
Sell Your Own Digital Products
This might be new to you. It takes some work to be able to do this, but it’s definitely worth it. What does this method include?
First of all, you need a digital product to sell. This could be more than one thing. You can write an eBook. Or create an online class/course. But doing this isn’t very easy. You need a well-polished product, that people are willing to spend money on.
For this example, let’s stick with the eBook. On one hand, you need a good subject to write about. This should be something that many people are interested in; otherwise nobody will find or even search for your product. But think of something that you’re passionate about, and know your way around really well.
This is hugely important to be able to create a quality eBook. On the other hand, you need media files, such as pictures to put inside it. Look for quality pictures that go well with your selected theme. After all, you know the saying: ‘’a picture is worth 1000 words’’. So, be rigorous about this step.
Once your eBook is finished, you have to proofread it. You don’t want to have grammar and punctuation mistakes spread among your content.
A great way to make your visitors want to buy your eBook would be to give them a free sample. I don’t mean to give them the whole product for free. Just a small sample, like 2 or 3 pages to let them see it’s worth spending their money on it.
Now all you have to do is set up a purchasing system that your visitors can use to buy your eBook. This is not as easy as it sounds. You must take care of all the payment processing, checkouts, and order managing that comes with it. There are also taxes for doing something like this. So be aware of all this when setting it up.
It sure sounds like a lot of additional work. So choose this method only if you’re committed to succeed. Otherwise you’ll be spending your valuable time on something that won’t turn out well for you.
Freelancing
Did you hear about his method before? Quite likely you did. Freelancing means that you work as a self-employed person. You can do this by searching for jobs online on different job sites like Upwork or Freelancer.com. When you found one that you can do, you write a proposal for that job and wait to see if you’ll get accepted to complete it.
But there’s a better method to get noticed and be able to obtain jobs. You can use your new website to do this. How? To do this more efficiently, you should set up a ‘Hire-me’ page on the site. It’s easy to figure out what this is about.
On this page you can list all the things you can do for someone else. For example, there are people who tell others that they can build a website from scratch. Or that they are graphic designers; if you’re a writer that can work too.
To be even more efficient, you can create a section that you call ‘Portfolio’. Even a separate page, if you want too. In this space you should display the best works that you did previously. If you’re a graphic designer, you can upload some images with the designs you created (logos, pictures, illustrations, flyers, etc.).
This page works for any type of freelancer. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing freelance writing or web development, creating logos or illustrations, or any other type of online work. You just upload your best work that you’re proud of. This will give your visitors something they can count on when hiring you.
Conclusion
Now that you’ve got to the end of the article you know at least 2 things:
- How to build a website that is ready for use. You have to go through 3 steps: choose the right platform for your site development process (WordPress); then pick the best domain name and hosting provider to have a reliable performance; the third and possibly the most important part: configure your new site to work like you always wanted to.
- How to monetize your site. With other words: how to earn some money off of your website. Here we’ve covered some of the best techniques to go about it. Just pick one that best suits your personal case.
I hope you can now build a great site that will become the foundation to your new online income. Be confident that you can succeed. It’s possible, just put hard work into it and you’ll be on the right way. Many others have already done it. You can be the next one!
