I began my first website about one year ago. I had no knowledge of html, marketing, advertising or the tools needed to begin. What I did have was an Internet connection providing me with a wealth of information. I began my journey by finding out how to actually get a domain. I learned that you must find a host first. Think of an Internet host as a company that publishes your site to the net. A few good hosts are 1and1 and hostgator. Go to the host you decide and it is pretty self explanatory. The host will walk you through the steps.

Once I had my domain registered I had to find out how to make the website so that I could start to make money online. I soon learned that the easiest and most effective way to make a website is to use a program like dream weaver or front page. I decided to use dream weaver. I went to the site and purchased the program. It took me a few days to figure out the basics but with the help of search engines I found some great articles and tutorials on how to do it.

I had my website and I began to build content. Now it was time to figure out how to make money online with my website. I went to google and registered a google ad sense account through the advertising link on their front page. I placed the google ads on my site and followed the following basic rules religiously for about 6 months.

Content - The more content the better. When the major search engines send out their robots they love to see fresh content. I updated my website very frequently. I wrote articles and provided good information then I post the content on the site. When the robots came back they noticed there was fresh new content and that boosted my sites rankings toward the top. This was a great contributor to my website making money online.

Links - When the search engine robots crawl the web they also notice links. The more links that they find pointing to your site, the better. I began contacting other Webmaster with sites similar to mine. I sent them messages requesting a link exchange. Many of these webmasters were happy to do a link exchange with me. I placed their link in my links page and they place mine in their links page. The search engines started finding all kinds of links pointing to my site combined with the fresh content and my site climbed even higher in the search rankings. Now I was really starting to make money online.

Articles - I wrote an article related to my site every three days. I took this new article and posted it on my site. I then posted the article to as many article directories as possible. The articles in the directories provided a one way link to my site but most importantly they were made available to other webmasters to post on their site. When another Webmaster posted my article on their site they had to place a link to my site along with it. Articles provide links to your site and content so it is a winning situation. Articles are, in my opinion, the number one way to make money online after you make a website.

I followed these basics principles and still do today. In the recent month I have quite my day job. I am now living very comfortable doing something I had no idea how to do one year ago. Making money online is not as hard as you think. Following these basic guidelines and you can make a website and start your very own home business today.