Get Started in Affiliate Marketing
Have you ever thought of having your own website — and monetizing it in order to make income. Monetizing a website means placing ‘ads’ — or what are called ‘affiliate links’ — on a website in order to earn money from the advertising. Placing Google adsense on a website is basically the same thing … however, the earning potential with affiliate links is much higher. PLUS … it’s better to do BOTH — adsense and affiliate links. (To learn more about Google Adsense click here.)
Designing a website around a hobby or specific area of interest can become a great source of income if you monetize your site. Having several different sites on different themes or areas can be even more financially rewarding.
Where to start?
After you have decided upon a basic plan for your website (for instance, what ‘area’ you will be concentrating in: parenting, crafts, homeschooling, cooking, dieting, Ebaying, sports, etc.) you will need to purchase a domain name and web hosting. I highly recommend Blue Host as your web hosting. They are extremely affordable — and have great customer service.
I have had great experience with Blue Host in developing several different types of websites — and I have never had a web design course in my life yet I have been able to set up several different websites easily with the software that comes with Blue Host.
For under $8 a month Blue Host allows you to have up to 6 different domains on your account (edited on 3/5/08 — Blue Host now offers UNLIMITED domains hosted on your account!) – that means you could have up to 6 UNLIMITED number of different websites all with unique names. For instance, on my hosting account with Blue Host I have a vacation information site, a self-defense school site (my husband’s business), a homeschooling information site, and another site for a volunteer organization in which my husband and I are involved — plus this blog and a forum. You can also have up to 20 subdomains — which can be websites also (more on that later).
Now the great part about Blue Host is the ease in developing a website because they provide a TON of software for designing a website. It’s almost like a website right out of the box. Here’s a link to the website I recently set up: MommieWorksAtHome — as I said, I have no programming or design experience. The programs that come with Blue Host provide everything you need. There are hundreds of FREE templates for your website — where you can change the ‘theme’ with just a click of a button.
What’s also great about Blue Host is they provide the lastest installation of ‘wordpress’ for a blog — they also have b2evolution and a few other blog software programs you may choose from. They also have forums which you can install with a click of a button — here is an example of a forum/website developed for Fairy Tale Treasure: FTT forum. What I like about having my own hosting is that everything is in my control. I can place whatever I want on my websites and can use a large variety of designs, plugins, etc.
If you are seriously considering affiliate marketing as a means of income think about checking out Blue Host. As I stated above, the cost is well under $10 a month for hosting all six domains — that gives plenty opportunity to design a variety of sites with different streams of income. Blue Host offers a 30 day money back guarantee — if you purchase the hosting and just can’t seem to get started in the first 30 days you can cancel your account and be refunded. You really have nothing to lose.
Also… if you sign up under my link I’ll be here to help answering your questions — and Blue Host has great customer service.
What is Google Adsense? And how can I earn from it?
Website owners can make money from their websites through Google Adsense. As you search through the web you are sure to have seen ‘blocks’ of ads — often the ‘ads by Google’ is somewhere along the border or under the links.
Placing these types of ads on your website earns you income for each click a visitor makes. Signing up for a Google Adsense account is very easy. You can sign up for your own adsense account for your personal website or blog below:
Most website owners and bloggers make money from their website through Google Adsense. You can use adsense link units as part of your contextual monetization strategy. Adsense link units can help you generate more income from your website — especially if you are able to integrate them within the overall site design and layout.
