Don't just do a website on 'Holidays'. Narrow it down - like 'Cruise Ships' or 'Mountain Holidays'.


 

 

 


Better still, 'Mountain Holidays in the Lake District' etc

If you have a hobby or have knowledge about a particular subject, why not build a web site telling others?
Unless your intention isn't to have this as your No.1 income, you can certainly earn a few pennies towards those ever arriving bills!

1. The subject
The more niche the better is the main rule for getting a specialised audience and if you're advertising on your site, Search Engines will pick you up a lot easier.
For example, type 'Football' into a search engine and you'll get upwards of 600,000,000 web sites to look through! Type in 'Under 12's Football' and there's only 100,000 or so.
3. Creating the Site

To do this you'll need a programme in which to format the site.

Windows has 'Front Page Express' which is easy to use and requires little knowledge of HTML and there are a few freeware programs such as  'Web Builder' which you can download, this has quite a few simple drag and drop features and allows you quite a lot of 'extras'.

Equally you can purchase a program such as 'Dreamweaver', a very professional package which will enable you to do just about anything, but this needs quite a lot of training and reading up on.

For your first site it is best to think simple, a program which enables you to type text, insert pictures and make hyperlinks to other pages and sites etc.

Some Web Hosting Companies have packages which enable you to use set templates and simply insert your material. The only thing is that you're bound by their design and not altogether your own.

4. Getting it on the Net

The next step is to find a Company which will host your web site.

There are many web hosting companies to choose from and you'll soon find out the best. Look for the one with the most amount of web space allowed, the most amount of bandwidth (the more clicks you get, the more bandwidth is used - unlimited is best but it would take a whie to get that amount).
Then there's the added extras like PHP/Mysql, email accounts etc.

Some Hosting companies offer you a free .co.uk domain name in the package.

2. The name

To attract more visitors, think of a title which, as closely as possible, reflects the subject of your web site and sub-title a short description which incorperates the major purpose of the site, this will attract search engines better.

When you have the package and a web site built using programs such as Front Page Express, you upload the website using an FTP program. Your Hosting Company will give you the necessary information on how to do this and probably tell you the best one to use

5. Earning some extra cash!

The main runners for earning some money from a web site are Affiliate and 'pay per click' advertising. Or of course you have your own service or cottage industry to sell.

Affiliate Advertsing is basically acting as an agent for internet shopping companies such as Amazon and many many more.
You apply online, the prospective advertiser looks at your site and agrees to allow adverts to appear. Obviously the chances of getting a PC company on a site about bird watching is remote,

but a company selling cameras and binoculars would be. After acceptance
you choose which adverts you would like to appear on whatever page and
they give you a code to put into your page HTML (it's not that technical -
if it was, I wouldn't be doing it!!).

Each company has their own commission rate. This can be a percentage
of sales or a lump sum if it's say a home insurance firm.

Pay per click schemes are where adverts are placed on your site in a
given place by you. The company 'reads' your text and places appropriate
advertising.

Getting Visitors
Finally, your site is only going to be popular thus earning a litle extra if you get
enough people looking at it.
1. Submit your site to the big search engines; Google, MSN, AOL, Yahoo etc.
2. Get as many other web sites to link to your site as you can. The more you have the more 'important' search engines see you as.
3. Don't put money earning first - make sure your site is interesting and has a lot of good informative content.
Avoid it looking spammy
Analyse where your visitors are coming from by using a good (free) stat counter. These will show you where your visitors are coming from plus what words they typed into a search engine to find you.

How to make a hobby into some cash 

Earning a Living