When you start off creating websites for profit your head is filled with great ideas however most of these ideas will never get off the ground and if your anything like me then you’ve probably already purchased the domain name to match your idea but lack the time or skills to develop it. At the start of my web journey i purchased domains like it was an addiction and i have a large collection of unused but potential money making domains.
This guide will show you how to create a simple content website that will take on average 4-5 hours and although the projected income for such a website is low you will atleast break even with your domain costs. If you purchased a .info for $0.99 then you’ve not got far to go, so have a look below.
Step1 - Setting up the domain and hosting
Although pretty basic, without changing the nameservers on the domain your visitors won’t be seeing any websites! In this tutorial we are going to be using Godaddy as an example - for the simple reason that it’s where a large number of my own domains are registered.
I am going to assume that if you have any number of unused domains you are likely to have some hosting for your used domains, if not then you should check out hostgator as a viable solution. I use them for Blog Me Famous and i have had no problems to date - if you are considering ordering a hosting account then please make sure to pick the ‘baby’ package as they allow unlimited domains to be added.
- Login to godaddy and point your domain/s to your hosting accounts designated nameservers (should be contained in your welcome email from the hosting company.)
- Once the domain is pointing to your hosting accounts nameservers, you can now head over to the hosting account and add the domain via the ‘addon domain’ feature. We will be using cpanel as the example.
Afterwhich you should recieve a confirmation message and thats you domain setup ready to go. This is just the basics outlined as most of you will already know how to setup this. If not you can find more documentation in Godaddys FAQ and cpanels FAQ.
Step 2 - Installing wordpress
Wordpress features a page section inwhich you can add an unlimited number of webpages to your site, this allows you to create a content based website with great SEO capabilities without knowing how to design - a large range of free templates available - and how to code. Installation is easy through cpanel’s fantastico feature, however if you don’t have fantastico installed with cpanel you can easily install it through FTP. To do so just head over to wordpress, download the latest version and read the install guide.
- Installing through fantastico is simple just click on wordpress and follow the step by step instructions. If you created an addon domain you should be able to choose it from the drop down menu shown below.
Once completed thats your blog automatically setup with the latest version of wordpress. Upgrading to new versions is easy and simple through cpanel (click of a button) so from now on there is no need to go editing your wordpress files.
Step 3 - Setting up wordpress for a content website
Configure the blog options.
- Log into wordpress using domain/wp-admin/ and click on the options tab > reading, here you can set the frontpage to static or you can have a content website with a blog front. If you don’t plan to post on this website then i would just set it to a static page
- Now head over to the Manage tab then ‘Pages’, here you can add the various pages you would like your content site to be based on. Keep the page titles keyword specific - relating to the content of the page.
Once the pages are created you are going to need content. I would advise spending a couple of hours writing articles about your niche, make them around 500 words in length and keyword dense articles geared towards your niche. You can use the overture tool to find some long tail keywords to target. Go for words close to the bottom but with a decent amount of searches per month and then rinse and repeat. Try to get around 6-7 articles up to start off with and if you know about your niche writing these won’t take to long.
- Edit the pages adding the articles to the website and make appropriate changes if needed.
Step4 - Using an adsense theme to increase revenue
The idea of this website is to make revenue and if your good at targeting a niche you could easily make $5 a month without any costly promotional techniques. Although $5 won’t seem much if like me you have 100 odd domains unused then all those little pennies add up. Remember this is a guide showing you a way inwhich you can get that spent domain money back.
- Download Dosh Dosh’s pro-adsense template and unzip, this is the one i use for the majority of my content websites, it comes fully loaded with adsense and it looks professional. I prefer the grey template, for me it converts better. So download what template you would like keeping inmind my recommendation.
- Download a simple program called ‘search and replace‘ if your planning on changing anything that already has an adsense id in it to your own use this program. It saves you time fiddling with every single file.
- Change the adsense code to your own, quickly and without hassle. Once you’ve installed the Search and Replace tool open it up and navigate to your prosense template folder through the search and replace tool. Here you can now ask it to go through every file in this folder and change a specific text.
Copy the find what text from the image above and add your adsense id then click go. It will change every instance of the old adsense id into your own and the whole process takes less than a second.
- Upload the new template and activate it. Open your ftp program and navigate to your domain folder -> wp-content -> themes and upload the newly edited theme (should now contain your adsense id) to the web. head into the wordpress admin section and click on ‘activate theme’ in the presentation tab.
Step 5 - Promote your website
Promoting a content site is not expensive and we are looking to be targetting long tail keywords so search engines will be what we are aiming for.
- Submit your sitemap to google webmaster tools and google should now crawl your website and find your unique content. Writing your own content means that google will index your pages and allow users to find it through the search engine.
- Add your website to directories. There is a long list of free directories which can bring in traffic and create backlinks i’m not going to list them all here but you can view a nice offering over at SEOcompany
- Submit your links to StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious plus any other networking website you are a member of.
Finally, To increase your search engine rank try to create a new article every other week and add it to your website. Search Engines will crawl and index content on a regular basis so the more content the more organic traffic your website is likely to receive.
Adding an additional source of income for content sites is a great idea. AuctionAds is an adnetwork that allows you to display ebay auctions on your website by supplying a keyword.
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