driving traffic to your website

You will have to optimize your web pages for search engines using SEO (search engine optimization) to get good traffic. You can also write articles with good content and submit them to article directories. A few other options to drive traffic to your website are buying ads on other sites that are based on your niche, newsletters and pay-per-click advertisements.

site building software

Next comes the task of building your website. For this you can make use of a site builder like internetbasedfamilies.com, or software package like Microsoft FrontPage. Site builders are normally easy to use, and also include web hosting. Thus, you will end up paying a monthly fee for the software and hosting combo. You could also ask someone to design and build the site for you.

web hosting

Purchase a basic personal website package from a web hosting company. Prior to selecting your web host, ask around for some good recommendations. You need a web hosting company that has good customer service, is reliable and is not down too often.

Selecting a Domain Name

Using a site like register.com or a good web-host’s site, do some research and check for domain names. While you are doing your research, remember that it is a great idea to have an important keyword in your domain name. So if your website will be about “designer bags”, try to include that phrase in your domain name. Your domain name must be easy to remember, have a good keyword and easy to type. Try not to have dashes in the domain name and instead, look for ones that have a dot com address.

Choose a Great Topic:

This step is critical and many people go wrong here, as they don’t pick an area they are passionate about. You need to create a website around a niche that you love or know a lot about, so that you can always work on it and make it better. A lot of your time and effort will go in creating good content for your website. So choose something you really love to read and write about. Once you have selected your niche, do research to identify some good affiliate products that would go well with your site. Also, make sure that there is a good market for those affiliate products and people buy them.

WAHM

For those of you looking for more serious work at home opportunities, something more like a real job, the WAHM (Work At Home Moms) forums are the best place to start. They list legitimate companies that hire telecommuters and at- home workers with a variety of different skills. I got my first at-home transcriptionist job through WAHM, for which I will always enthusiastically recommend their site.

To conclude, by making use of a multitude of these sites, it's possible to bring in a significant amount of money each month. Since many of them also have paid referral programs, you can increase your income by inviting other users to join. As with most pursuits, you'll get out of these sites what you put into them. A little extra work in the beginning can pay off handsomely in the end. Have fun trying them out!

Daytipper

Daytipper is a site that pays $3.00 each for brief descriptions of useful tips. If you know a way to get wine out of carpet or to sleep when you've got insomnia, write up a blurb on it and send it in. The site accepts and publishes about 1/3 of its submissions, so you'll want to take the time to write well and clearly. Still, even with care to grammar, structure, and spelling, it doesn't take long to write a tip. The downside of this site is that it can take months to get the payment from them, but the upside is that they do actually send it.