A very simple step-by-step guide to creating your first website and using it to make you money. Includes screenshots and links to help you at every step.

1. Monetizing Your First Website
Topics: Keywords, Domain,
Hosting, Wordpress Installation,
Advertisements, Backlinks

2. 1. Get a Google Adwords account. Once you log in, go to the Tools and
Analysis tab and click on Keyword Tool. Use the Keyword Tool feature to find a
keyword that gets a couple thousand searches a month with low competition.
You can try to get a few similar keywords and rank internal pages for each one.
If this is your first site, try to find a specific keyword phrase that gets about 3,000
or 4,000 searches a month with low competition.

3. You will need to be very specific to get a low
competition keyword. For example, if you want to
make a website about video games, you might need
to narrow it down to “top racing video games” or
“racing video games 2012” to get the search volume
under 5,000 along with low competition.

4. Click here to go to Namecheap and see if you can get an exact match domain
for your keyword phrase. They are about $10. Getting the exact match
domain will help you get the site ranked for that keyword.
Make sure you can get your exact keyword phrase ending in either .com, .net
or .org. These will give you the best search engine rankings.

5. Now you have your domain, but you need hosting. Click here to go to
Hostgator and select your plan. I suggest the Baby Plan. This plan is cheap,
yet it allows you to have unlimited domains. It is $95 for a year, but you can
use the code MISCCOUPON to get 25% off. So you can get your first year for
about $72.
If you would rather get the 1st month for $0.01, then use the code
ONEPENNYHOSTINGPLAN.

6. • This step gets your site setup
through Hostgator hosting. First
login to your Hostgator Control
panel and scroll to the bottom.
On the left will be two
nameservers.
• Now, Login to NameCheap and
click on the domain you want to
change the nameservers on.
Then click on "Domain Name
Server Setup" on the left menu,
click the "Specify Custom DNS
Servers ( Your own DNS Servers )"
radio button and then enter the
two nameservers in the text fields
named 1 and 2.
• Hit save changes and once the
nameservers are propagated the
site will be live. Propagation can
take a few days, but usually it will
be complete within 24 hours.

7. Installing Wordpress (if you want it)
• Login to your Hostgator
Control Panel, then go
down to the bottom
and find “Fantastico De
Luxe” (blue smiley face).
Click on that and find
Wordpress in there. This
will allow you to use
Wordpress to build your
site, which is very easy
to learn. If you have a
different program that
you want to use, don't
do this step.

8. When you have Wordpress installed you should be able to
access it by going to Your Domain page, then adding /wp-
admin to the end.
Like this: www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin
7. At your Wordpress dashboard you can add new posts or
pages. You can change your theme/template, menus or
background by going to the Appearance tab. Also under
Appearance is the Widgets option. By putting Text/HTML widgets
in your sidebar, you can have ads on the side of your page.
There are more Wordpress themes available to buy. One of the
best themes for SEO purposes is the Thesis theme.
Under the Plugins tab, click on Add New and get the All in One
SEO Pack. This will help you optimize your titles and tags for SEO
purposes.

9. Monetizing Your Site
• The way you are going to make Commission Junction Ad
money via your website is by
using advertisements. Ads are
basically broken into two
groups: PPC (pay-per-click) ads
and affiliate ads.
Some sites you can use for
affiliate ads are Clickbank,
Commission Junction, and
Amazon Affiliates. To make
money on these, someone will Amazon Ad
have to click the ad and
purchase an item or service.
The commission % for these can
vary from 6-7% for Amazon all
the way up to 75% or more for
Commission Junction and
Clickbank.

10. Google Adsense
•
You can also try using Google Adsense ads on your
site. These will pay a certain amount per click.
There is no purchase necessary for you to get paid
for this. You will get a few cents up to about $1.00
per click, but you can get quite a few clicks a day
with enough web traffic.

11. Backlinks
• Moving on to backlinks. Backlinks are
links to your site from other sites. These
can be in the form of comments on
blogs. So before you spend money on
backlinks, just find blogs in your niche and
make thoughtful comments on them. In
the name spot, put your keyword. Put
your URL in the website spot and you
have just created a backlink. Backlinks
are of much higher value to the search
engines when they are on blogs with
authority, but this is a good start.

12. Automatic Backlink Sites
• One site you can use to
get free backlinks every
day is Social Monkee.
With their free option,
you can get your url,
keyword and
description submitted to
25 social websites a day.
This site includes a
spinner that will make
each of your submissions
slightly different from the
others.

13. Bookmarking Sites
• Another very similar site
is SocialAdr. With this
site, you integrate your
social bookmarking
sites, and get credits
when you submit the
websites of other users.
These credits will then
be used to submit your
website to these social
bookmarking sites.

14. Advanced Bookmarking
• When you are getting
more serious, you might
want to try a program like
BuildMyRank. Their service
starts at $60 a month for
up to 5 domains. You
write a short article (150
words minimum) and the
program will automatically
submit it to a large
number of high ranking
article sites. These high
ranking sites will have a
much larger influence on
your search engine results
than a bunch of blog
comments.

15. Build My Rank
• BuildMyRank now offers a free 15-day trial
that includes 10 backlinks.

16. Resources
• For more info on Namecheap
how to write
articles to get your Hostgator
site ranked on
Google, check out
these resources:
The Backlinking
Strategy That Works
• The Challenge