How to Make Money Online With a Website

Yes, of course you can make money online… thousands of people do every day. The only question is finding one of the ways to make money online that actually work.

So forget filling out surveys, stuffing envelopes, or any of the other popular so-called ways to make money online. The best way to earn an income online is through making your own website.

A website business only has to be built once, managed minimally, and will continue to pay forever. As far as a source of income, it doesn’t get much better than making money online.

How Do Websites Make Money?

After receiving several questions in person and email about my websites, I decided to provide a free resource to explain how my websites make money. It’s all actually rather simple — much simpler than what a lot of “experts” seem to imply. The entire process looks like this:

• Planning. Pick a topic that you love talking about. It can be anything… literally anything. Baseball, decorating, weight lifting, cooking… anything. I picked “financial planning” because I’m obsessed with the topic. This topic is what you’re going to base your website on.

• Building. Now build the actual website. This is much, much easier these days. A long time ago you would need to pick a domain name, then pick a web host. Now you can just get everything you need with SiteBuildIt, a program for people who want to make money with their websites. It only costs $300 to get a fully functional online business. Using this program is like using email. If you can do one you can do the other, no problem.

• Writing. Now start writing. Write, write, write. Think of the 20 “pillars” of the topic that everyone needs to know. Open up a document and write on each one of those pillars so that everything that falls under the pillar is discussed. Exhaust the topic.

• Marketing. Now let people know you’ve written the article. Find people who blog about the topic, find forums about the topic, just tell people. This “word of mouth” marketing is incredibly strong.

• Monetizing. This is the part where you actually make the money. There are literally dozens of ways to go about it. You can sell your services, place advertisements, sell products, sell books — or even a mixture of several monetization methods.

With time, you’ll get plenty of traffic. I’ve had literally millions of people go to my websites… it’s a great feeling. I don’t have any special hacker skill. I’m just a normal person who is passionate about what he writes about. That’s it.

So, Can I Get Rich?

Short answer: probably not. Long answer: That depends on the topic… but for now, “rich” isn’t something you should be thinking about. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and wealth can’t be earned quickly.

If you want to make money with a website, you’ll have to put all “get rich quick” ideas to rest. Money has to be made through creative, rational and hard work.

This doesn’t mean you won’t be able to make a great income online at some point. You can get there eventually… you’ll just have to be willing to plan well, think creatively and work hard.

Do I have to spend money?

Thousands of people try making money with a free website, like a blog at Blogspot.com or Wordpress.com. Of course you can make money using these free websites… but that’s a horrible mistake. The reason is simple: if you use a free host, you don’t actually own your website or it’s content. Sure, you have copyright over it, but you don’t own the actual website.

So why is this important? As I talk a lot about over at my financial planning website, financial security is paramount.

The idea of placing your entire business in the hands of someone else is almost always a horrible choice. If your goal is to make money, then make sure you own your own website.

The idea that spending money can be beneficial is often seen as flying in the face of conventional personal finance sense. That’s silly, of course… being “frugal” is a great way to save money, not make money. As the old adage goes, you have to spend money to make money.