Domain name choice and thinking of making money with a website can be tricky if you don’t really know where to start, but if you think that reading about 1 500 words of information about choosing a domain name and about making money with a website is too much to read, then we recommend that you perhaps consider giving up on the idea of making money with a website, before you even begin to spend money, and before you possibly end up wasting money.
Are you prepared to put some effort in to get the results you want? Then read on:
Domain name choice is pretty important, especially if you are not going to be using quick and expensive marketing methods to get many people to frequently visit a site you own.
When choosing a domain name to register you should try choose a domain name that consists of or includes a phrase that has search volume.
Search volume is how many times, each month, on average over the past 12 months, a particular phrase has been typed into a search engine like Google when somebody uses a search engine (like Google) to look for information on the Internet.
Exact search volume is using just those exact words and then clicking search. Broad search volume is when a longer search phrase included those words.
The best type of domain name choice
The best types of domain names to have are those that have fairly good broad search volume – and better yet are domain names that have fairly good exact search volume too.
The worst type of domain name choice
The worst types of domain names to have are those that have little or no search volume at all.
However, in both cases above (both the best type of domain name choice and the worst type of domain name choice) there is no hard and fast rule:
a)
Domains that contain words with good exact search volume do not necessarily get good search results (like getting a search result appearing on page one of Google) – good search results can depend on a lot of things besides just having a good domain name.
b)
Domains that have words in them that have small or no search volume do not necessarily only get found in search results on page 100 of Google search results – they may also be found on page one of Google search results – good search results can depend on a lot of things besides just having a good domain name.
The importance of writing content for your website
You don’t have to like or enjoy writing to have a website that makes you money, but what is very important is that you work really hard at getting tons and tons and tons of traffic to your site – using free or cheap methods of marketing. (OR spend a ton of money on marketing your site more quickly, but expensively, to get the high amounts of traffic your site needs)
Although you don’t have to write a lot of your content for your site (because you’re perhaps using many other or expensive methods of marketing your site), writing plenty of content for your site – content that contains important words in the titles and main content area – is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to
get traffic to your site – as long as the words and phrases in your titles and within your main content area are words that have search volume.
It’s no use writing about topics that nobody searches for – your site won’t be found much in natural search results for eg on Google.
So, a site that has content on it that nobody is really looking for,needs to be marketed in other ways – like leaving links on other sites – but not just any site – those sites need to be getting a lot of traffic and your links need to sound interesting to get people to click them so that your site will be visited. For better “authority” in the “eyes of Google” the links should also preferably be left on sites that have similar topics to what is on your own site.
Content on a site needs to be as original as possible if you are hoping for good natural search results. Google does not like duplicate content or even very similar content – if the content on your site already exists elsewhere online, the first site that published it usually gets the best natural search result, and the others much worse natural search results, or Google may even penalise the site by not indexing it at all.
If not writing website content yourself, you need to be sure that whoever writes your website content for you gives you original content and good quality content, with words or phrases in it that people are actually using when they search for information on the Internet.
Adding many pages of writing to a site is one way of marketing that site. However, if you are not interested in having too many pages of content on your site, and are not worried about not getting found in natural search results, that means you will be marketing your site in other ways. Traffic won’t just come to your site. You have to market your site to get people to visit it. You can use whichever website marketing methods you want, but the fact still remains: marketing has to be done in order to get traffic to your site.
If you want to place ads on your site through Adsense in order to monetize your site, your site would probably need at least 10 to 20 pages of content before Google accepts your Google Adsense account application. And about 50 unique visitors a day too.
Besides making money from Adsense on your site, or from other forms of adverts on your site, you could also offer a service on your site, or sell a product. BUT making money from your site always still comes down to marketing it like crazy to get tons of traffic to it. Many people have to visit your site in order for you to make money from your site.
Hopefully you are not reading this only after having already spent a lot of money on a website that you hoped would make you money, only to discover or realise that your expensive website is making you no money or only very little money.
You need to think about your website, and plan your website, before you get one. You also need to think about how you are going to get lots of traffic to your website, because your website needs a lot of traffic for it to make you some money.
If you want to earn extra income from a website, or even if you plan on making money with a website as a fulltime job, please understand that it won’t just happen – a lot of planning and research needs to go into it first, and you need to prepare yourself for either working hard at getting free or cheap traffic to the site, or be prepared to spend more money on faster but more expensive website marketing methods.
If you want to try and make money with a website or blog that won’t cost you too much, consider using totally free Blogger, at least for while you get used to various methods of marketing your site.
You could also pay for just a domain and for hosting, and use a free theme for your site, like a free WordPress theme (fyi, this site uses a free WordPress theme)
Take note that when it comes to making money with a website, even when your site is a free site, or your site just has its domain and hosting paid for (and you use a free WordPress theme for your site) your site would still need to look okayish, would still need a fair amount of pages with original content on it, and would still need to be marketed like crazy.
Be careful of spending too much on a website when you don’t yet know too much about how to make money from it. You may end up disappointed and give up on the idea of making money from a website even though you have already spent money on one, or you may not have any money over to spend on marketing your site.
Know exactly what you want to do:
When thinking about making money with a website, you first need to explore exactly what it is that you want to make money from (a service and what service, or selling a product and what product, or writing about something you do or know a lot about) and then only build a website around that idea.
You may also want to do all three:
think of something that interests you, and then:
- offer a service related to that interest
- sell products related to that interest
- write about that interest (a lot) and monetize your site with ads
- Gather all your ideas together first
- Plan your site next
- Get your text content and images ready
- make your domain name choice – carefully
- get hosting for your site
- get your content onto your site
- market your site
- frequently add new content to your site
- market your site all the time
For your interest we offer website packages starting at just R300, we offer domain registration and website hosting, and we offer many other website help services too.
© Copyright Teresa Schultz 2012 and 2013
