As I've said before in my "unofficial" series Learning To Make Money Online 1, 2 and 3, your instincts and your common sense should guide you in whatever niche you decide on to make an online income. And compared to even just two years ago, the tools available for first-timers now have everything you need to develop your niche and feel comfortable with what you've produced.

Doing it yourself, from researching niche viability to keyword research to building your site and optimizing it for top search engine ranking is a lot easier now, the results can be faster and more rewarding.

One of the things I've learned foremost and one of the massive timesavers is to not be afraid to let Google itself assist you in making decisions about your niche, your keyword selection and really important- your competition. But don't use Google Webmaster Tools exclusively. You really won't want to because of all the other tools that are now available for free or for modest amounts of your hard-earned cash.

One side note about your hard-earned cash - if you are going to use Pay Per Click advertising don't jump right into that area without a very sound knowledge-base about PPC or you'll be broke in no time!

Been there, done that.

There are a number of good guides for no cost to teach you about PPC, I offer one of the better ones on my homepage which can be found at the end of this article.

So...you've decided on a niche and you're putting together some keywords to base your site on. One thing I've learned that the search engines favor is to base your domain name on your niche's keywords. You'll get a better search result if your your niche is teaching to make soap at home and your domain is www.makingsoapathome.com, instead of www.bobs-soap.com.

To design your own site - look at other sites you like and see how they are setup. Of course use the examples of sites that are in the top three of search results. A lot of the established domain registrars like GoDaddy and Register.com and the like have free site building tools available with your domain registration and hosting packages.

If you have the time and really want complete control over the look and feel of your site try Mozilla's Composer to build your site. It's really not as difficult as some would have you believe. You can also search for "free website builders" and check out the results and go from there. There are a multitude of free builders out there and you can also use templates that are available free or for little cost.

When you're ready to get hosting for your site, it's pretty basic also if you don't have a thousand page site. That's not what this article is geared towards anyway. I'll tell you to use GoDaddy because even their basic hosting plan allows for more storage and allowances that you'll need to get started and they offer excellent free additions to your package. Of course, as always it's entirely up to you who you host with.

If you have designed your own site, it's time to upload your website files to your host using FTP. That's pretty basic also...with all hosting plans you get access to their FTP tool and it's pretty much just a matter of highlighting your files and moving them into the host's program. It's not quite that fast but it would take up too much space here to tell you exactly how to upload your site files, besides the instructions for most hosts are easy to understand. If not there are again a multitude of free FTP tools to do the job. A couple of fast and easy FTP programs are FileZilla and SmartFTP. Search more if that's what you prefer. I just want to make it clear that it's not a difficult endeavor.

Okay - you have your site up, running and *LIVE*...what's next? Checking the optimization of your site. Or - setting up your site for top search engine ranking organically, meaning not relying on PPC traffic for visitors and ultimately customers. Again, there are great free tools available to take care of this part..just search "free website optimizer tools" and you'll find them. I really don't want to hawk the systems I use because I do want to be as neutral as possible and not let you think I'm pushing you towards something. Anyway..these tools will show you how to and where to place your meta tags (the difference between getting your site found by the search engines or languishing in internet obscurity).

Besides great, constantly added content, correct meta tags are the lifeblood of your site. Without either your site is nowhere. Find a good optimization tool that will scan your site and tell you what is wrong and right with your site, and how to fix it. With a little practice, you'll be turning out great sites in no time, and you'll learn how to optimize as you build your site's pages, saving you a lot of time in the end.

You can build a profitable website and business without having to pay a fortune and as I have said before..your good instincts and common sense will not lead you astray. Good luck and above all...have fun while doing it yourself!