If you decide that you want to have a website but you can’t or don’t want to build it yourself, a great option can be to outsource and have the site built for you by a web designer. That may sound like an expensive process, but if you’re only looking for a small, fairly basic site then it doesn’t have to be if you look in the right places.

There are two important things to remember when looking for a web designer:

First, go with a freelancer if you are looking for a small and simple site – not a big web design company. You can probably get one done for under $100. There are many freelancing web designers out there that will build you a simple site for a good price. A great place to go to look for someone to do this for you are sites such as Elance.com where there are people from all over the world with good skills, looking for work just like this.

Second, make sure that you ask to see a few sample sites that the web designer has done and that you check any ratings (such as those on Elance.com) that may be available for the designer. This will help to ensure that you’re getting someone reliable that is able to do the job that you’re asking and that will finish the job for you also.

My preferred option is to use WordPress – that’s what I use for my sites now. I’ll be adding information on how to set up a WordPress site/blog soon so bookmark this site and come back soon.

This is a great way to increase traffic to your site. Let others use your articles, along with your byline which will tell visitors who wrote it and how they can contact you, on their website.

This will help to promote your own website and bring you in traffic through the search engine optimization and promotional efforts of others. For you this means absolutely free marketing and free traffic (which is what we want!)  just for writing a quick article about a subject that you are already familiar with.

The more people who use your article as content as their website, the more potential traffic you will receive. These webmasters will probably be using SEO techniques, banner exchanges, and possibly even a Pay-Per-Click campaign to get visitors to their web site.

These are advertising methods that either take a lot of time or a lot of money for the other web site owner and yet, they will be absolutely free for you just because you placed your articles where others could use them.

There are many article directories such as Ezine articles that offer to post your articles so that others may view and/or use themt. My advice is to place your articles on as many of these sites as you can so that you can reach as many webmasters as possible.

Pick the articles for your niche sites very carefully to ensure that you are able to successfully get traffic and earn money from your sites.

If you are going to try and utilize free website content articles, then it may be difficult for you to find ones that have your exact keywords, so you might just have to either make revisions to the articles (which may not be allowed on some free articles) or base your keywords on the articles that you find (which could leave you with very competitive keywords that would take a lot of time or money to get a high ranking for).

Alternatively you can have someone write articles for your niche sites. Again you can go to sites such as Elance.com and advertise what you are looking for to hire people who can write to your exact requirements. If are going to buy content, make sure that you let the writer know what your niche keywords are and what your specific your preferred keyword density and placement are. Remember, the wrong articles can leave you with little traffic and very low search engine rankings if they don’t fit in properly with either your niche or with keywords that are easier to attain high rankings for.

Where you place your affiliate links on your website can really make a difference on how many clicks you end up getting and, since every click means a potential sale, this is an important aspect of internet marketing.

Research has shown that the most effective affiliate links are text links. Yes, plain text links. Not big flashy banner ads like most affiliate websites are are covered with. What happens is, you write a great article (or have one created) about the product or something related to the product and stick the link into your text. This allows interested readers to see the link as they are reading and click on it.

This is something that I’m just really realising recently, and it’s probably something that most of us internet marketers take a wee while to learn – I think it’s only natural to assume when we’re starting out that the big flashy banner is going to attract more attention.

Of course, your article and your link have to work effectively together to make this happen. A bad article and an unrelated link to an unknown product are not likely to generate a sale, however it’s amazing how often you do see this in some really crappy web sites.

So the next time you are out to choose an affiliate link, try placing a relevant link in a great article that is well optimized for search engines and see how it works out for you.

One of the first things you will need to do, or possibly last if you need some inspiration, after you pick your niche topic is to pick a catchy, memorable URL. You want it to be one that will stand out and that will be easy to remember for those people who plan on being return visitors to your web site.

To get some ideas and inspiration, take a look at the various keywords that you have singled out for your niche to see if any of those have a catchy ring. You want it to be kind of “used car salesman” sounding, rather than something that is boring or does not have an original sound to it. For example, if your niche is “blah”, you could try “MegaBlah”, “Blah4u”, “HouseofBlah”, or “BlahKingdom”. These will all be original, explain what you niche is, and, most importantly, will be easy to remember.

How easy your URL is to remember is really important so that your visitors will not have any trouble returning to your site.

HOWEVER, having said that – your new site may also benefit from a URL that is made up of your main keyword or key phrase that you are targeting for your site. If you are targeting for instance “brand new blah blahs” as a key phrase, having www.brandnewblahblahs.com can be beneficial from an SEO perspective.

It really depends on what your site is about. If you’re looking to only sell specific products then I’d go for a URL containing the keyword or keyword phrase. If a general information site or blog, then a memorable catchy name is essential for those returning visitors.

When you are trying to make money with articles, the beauty of it is that you don’t really need previous career related experience and that you can learn the ropes as you go. That being said, there are some skills that you will need to teach yourself or pick up along the way to make your sites successful. You can’t go in not knowing anything, not learning anything, and still expect to make a good income (or any income at all).

First, you will need to know how to pick out the correct articles to make your sites successful. There are many different types of content, from free content to high dollar content, and each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages (although high dollar content is more likely to give you a successful site in the end).

Second, you will need to know how to choose keywords that can help you get a good amount of traffic, without being too competitive to get on the first or second page of Google and other search engines. If you choose highly competitive keywords that are used by large corporate type websites, you are likely to never get up to those much needed first two pages.

Third, you will need to know how to optimize your websites for various search engines. Search engine optimization skills will allow you to get higher rankings for your chosen niche keywords, which will help to get more visitors and ultimately make money.

Fourth, if you opt for a large website that you will focus most of your internet marketing career on, you will also need to know how to market your website to your intended audience through paid banner ads and text links. If you prefer very small 2-5 page niche sites, then promoting all of them this way will not be cost effective and will eat up more profits than it is worth.

If you can capture some of these skills and attack them aggressively during your first few small websites or the first few months of a larger website, then you will eventually become an expert.  Since you can learn the ropes first hand on your own, the only thing that you need to do before you begin your new career is to read up on how to get started (find good free info online or maybe purchase an internet marketing e-book or two) and make sure that you have the funds available to start a small site.

When you are trying to make money off of the articles on your website, it is important to effectively promote your site so that you will attract customers and they can see just what a good, quality site you have. There are several ways so market and promote your website, one of them being though banner advertisements.

What Banner Ads Can Do For You

Banner ads can help bring visitors from others sites to your site. It really depends on how quickly you want this to happen and how much of a budget you have to get started. Although monthly fees can be expensive to advertise on high traffic sites, in the end it may be cheaper and/or a faster way to start seeing significant revenue from your website efforts, rather than waiting for SEO techniques to bring your own site to the top of search engine results. Aside from paying to advertise on someone else’s site, there are also free banner exchanges to choose from. We will look at the pros and cons of each banner advertising method below.

Free Banner Exchanges

Free banner exchanges are when you and other sites exchange each others banners. Their banner will go on your site and your banner will go one their site. Although this option is free, there are two main problems with it. First, if you want your banner on a significant number of sites, it will mean cluttering your own site up with these banners. This could even shoot you in the foot if you run an affiliate website because, instead of clicking on your affiliate links, your visitors may be clicking on your banner exchange links and leaving your site!

Secondly, you have to be really careful about the types of sites that you exchange banners with. Some sites like to gather a lot of banners so that they can be a directory or portal site and not have to have any real content. These “banner farms” or “link farms” will do nothing positive for your site and, in the meantime, you will be bringing them potential traffic.

Paid Banner Ads

As we saw above, paid banner ads cost money, but they will eventually pay off if you choose the right ones. You need to ensure that the site produces the amount of traffic that they say they are getting and that they have your ad placed in a way that invites visitors to click without being too pushy. You also want to choose a site that does not house too many other banners on the same page as yours or that there are no competitor links on the same page.

If you are paying for banner advertising on another site, keep track of how many visitors you are getting from that site and that banner so you can ascertain whether the advertisement is worth paying for.

All in all, banner ads can end up being profitable for your site if you go about it the right way. If you do decide to check out banner advertisement as a marketing avenue, be sure to keep the above tips in mind.

Learn to use search engine optimization techniques when writing your articles.

If hiring a writer to write articles for you, you can choose one who already knows about SEO or you can supply them with a list of keywords and let them know where they should be placed and how many times they should be repeated throughout the article.

Optimizing your articles for search engines will help them rank higher when someone searches for a keyword relating to your subject, which means that you will receive more visitors to your website.

It is a fact that most visitors don’t look past the first search engine result page and by the third search engine results page there is practically no audience left for you to promote to. What this means for those on the third page or higher is no traffic.

This is why Search Engine Optimization is such an important part of internet marketing – learning to do it well will ensure that your website get’s plenty of visitors!

How much money you can make from placing articles and affiliate links on your website will differ from one person to the next. How much you are able to make will depend mostly on how successful your site is. This means getting good search engine rankings through SEO efforts, making your site enjoyable and informative to read through engaging content, building your site around a great niche subject, how big your site is, and how many successful sites you have.

Some people claim to make as much as $10,000 per month ($120,000 per year) and some much more, through building and promoting niche sites, however this kind of success usually only comes with experience, dedication, commitment and  a lot of acquired skill. A reasonable income to expect from a small niche site, after you have worked for months to gain traffic and are hooked up with good affiliates depending on your product or the type of monetisation on the site, may be $500-$1,000 per month. However this is recurring income and you will make that much monthly off of the efforts you put into that one site, it is not a one shot deal. Once you have one site up and making money, you can duplicate your efforts with another site and another product and double that income – again and again.

After the first successful site, most choose to continue to build niche sites. The more sites that you build, the better an income you can generate. Some also choose to build very fast and very short sites over sites that are slightly longer in length. It should be noted that the larger each of your sites are, the more income you will likely generate off of them.

When starting out, it is important to remember that your first site will always be your hardest, since you are just learning the ropes of the business, and that not everyone is cut out to be successful at the same thing. The first or second or even the third thing may not work out for you and you may end up losing a little bit of money, but that is a risk that everyone in this business has to take.

The important thing is that you don’t give up without a good shot at it, if this is really what you want to do. Your first site may take a long time, the work may be tedious, and you may feel like throwing in the towel. However, if you give up too early, you will never know what could have been.  You could be the next great website marketer!

Keyword density and placement are important parts of optimizing your articles for search engines. Search engine spiders scan a page in a way that makes it important to place your keywords where they will be detected and recognized as a keyword, so that your article will come up when someone searches for that keyword.

What is a Keyword?

A keyword is a word that is going to be placed in your article several times, not just once as that would make every word a keyword. When a spider sees that you have a word placed several times in an article, it will determine that your page may be useful to users that search for such a keyword.

Over Optimizing Your Articles

It is important to note that there is also such a thing as over optimizing your articles for particular words, this is known as “keyword stuffing”. When you stuff keywords in an article a spider will detect that you are trying to trick it into placing your article high in the search engine results for that word, and will instead penalize your site and your page for doing such. This may even affect the rankings of your other pages or get your site blacklisted from a particular search engine if you are found keyword stuffing too many times.

What is Keyword Density?

Keyword density is how many times your keyword is placed in your article. Most use a percentage to determine how many times they will put a keyword in an article. For instance, if you have a 500 word article and want to achieve a keyword density of 5%, then you will need to have the keyword in your article exactly 25 times. You can find hundreds of resources and guides recommending one keyword density over another and the reasons behind the logic, however, in the end you will have to determine which density is more profitable for your articles. Each webmaster has their own density that they like to achieve based on past results. As long as you don’t over optimize and you are making sufficient profit from your rankings, then you can choose whatever keyword density you like.

The Right Density

No matter what exact density you choose, it is important to place keywords so that there are more at the beginning and end to produce an hour glass effect. Having the right keyword density in your article makes it more likely that you will make money off of that article because it will rise in the search engine results and be seen by more people.