Owning your own website can be a very profitable way of making money online, and can be a very cheap way to make money on the Internet – providing you are willing to put in a lot of time and effort.
Currently you can have your own website set up for a year for around a price of £20. This will include the web-hosting (the space for you to upload your files and to allow people to browse your site) and the domain-name (the name that will be used as your website address). For cheap web hosting we recommend that you use JKA Hosting.
If you manage to create a successful website which gets a lot of traffic and a lot of interest, then you can expect to find it a lot easier to make money from your website. However, the hardest part of earning money from your own site is by getting people to visit – this is when you will need to invest time and effort. Never give up though – once you can attract visitors to your website then the hardest part is done, and you can now start to reap the rewards.
Below we will discuss the best ways to earn money from your website, by displaying adverts and by joining affiliate programs.
Google Adsense
Adsense has to be the number once choice when it comes to making money from your website. Millions of people are making money from the Adsense program, and as long as you have some kind of website then you can start to make money from it too. You can join the Adsense program for free, and when you log in to the website you will be able to choose the kind of adverts you want to display on your site – text adverts, banners, referral links, etc. You can blend these adverts in nicely to the content on your website, and then upload the code. You will start to make money every time a visitor clicks on your Adsense advertisements.
The amount of money you will earn from Adsense will depend on the content of your website (celebrity and picture websites wont earn you much whereas credit card and finance websites will) and it will also depend on the amount of clicks you get on your adverts.
Generate revenue from your website. Google AdSense.
Kontera
Kontera is another nice way to make money from your website, and again you are able to blend the adverts in to your site content so people don’t even notice the advertisements. Kontera specialise in something called ‘Inline Ads’ – basically adverts that appear on certain words of your website’s content. You can apply to join Kontera for free and then log on to their website and download your advert code. By inserting the code into every page of your website, the Kontera system will automatically scan your website and will underline certain words throughout the content on your page. Then when someone scrolls their mouse cursor over one of these words, and then clicks the advertisement, you will earn money.
Again, with Kontera the amount of money you will earn from their program will depend on the content of your website and the amount of clicks you manage to receive.
Apply to join Kontera for free here
Text Link Ads
If your website is particularly successful, and manages to obtain a high Google PageRank (a rating of 0-10 which your website receives from Google, which is used as a benchmark by other websites/people to show how popular your site is) you will start to be able to sell text advertisements. These will be small, 2 or 3 word text links to other websites, who pay you a certain rate to advertise on your website for a set period of time (usually a month). If you own a website which has a PageRank of 5, you could expect to earn around £30 a month from selling once text-link advert on your website. This is set up by the Text Link Ads website, who take a percentage of the final sale price of the link. You can apply to the Text Link Ads program and they will then contact you when someone wishes to purchase a text link on your site.
The amount of money you can expect to earn from the Text Link Ads program will depend on how successful your website is.
Apply to join Text Link Ads for free here
The Ad Network
The Ad Network is quite a strange choice on this page, considering the size and reputations of all the other advertising schemes listed on this website. However, I included this program because near enough anyone can make money thanks to their site. You can earn £10 for joining the Ad Network, and then can earn £5 a month for hosting 3 banners on 3 of your websites pages. Though this isn’t a great deal of money, I think it is great value considering the Ad Network doesn’t mind how many visitors your website actually receives – or how good the content of your website is. This means that any sites are accepted in to their program (except adult/illegal content) and so I think that if you can’t quite make a website that does well with any of the 3 advertising programs above, then the Ad Network is definitely for you (at least until you can improve your website reputation a little)…More information on The Ad Network
Apply to join The Ad Network for free here
The Matched Program
The Matched advertising network is another quite strange choice for this page, and it is quite similiar to the above Ad Network. The site is still very small and has only recently been launched, though it seems that there will be plenty of people wanting to join the site. You can earn £3 for every advert you display on your website, per month that the adverts are displayed, with a maximum of 5 adverts allowed per website. This means you can earn £15 per website per month. You are currently only allowed to show adverts on a maximum of 5 different websites. Therefore just from the Matched advertising program you could be earning £75 per month just from displaying a few adverts on your pages. As with the Ad Network, the Matched program doesn’t seem to be very fussy about the websites that it accepts into its advertising program. As long as your website doesn’t contain illegal content, it will probably get accepted. It doesn’t matter if your website doesn’t get any visitors, or doesn’t contain any recent or quality content, you can still make money from it…More information on the Matched program
Apply to join the Matched program for free here
Affiliate Future
Affiliate Future is one of the most well known and popular affiliate networks that you can join. If you apply to join Affiliate Future for free and get accepted, you will have the chance to join any of the thousands of affiliate programs that are listed on the Affiliate Future website. There are affiliate programs to suit every website’s needs – from car insurance affiliates to food retailer affiliates. When you find an affiliate program that you think would suit your needs, you simply apply to join – and if accepted, you can start displaying their advertisements on your website. This means that if someone was to click on your affiliate link on your website, and then go on to make a purchase or join that website etc, you would earn a certain amount of money – a commission. This amount of commission will depend on the affiliate relationship that you have, but you can easily make a lot of money from displaying affiliate links on your website.
Apply to join Affiliate Future for free here
Auction Ads
Auction Ads is a very new way to make money from your website. You will be able to display adverts that contain links to live eBay auctions, and you will gain commission from people visiting the auctions directly from your website. You only make money from Auction Ads when someone places a winning bid on an auction, when someone puchases an item in the ‘Buy It Now’ format and when someone signs up to the eBay website. You can earn around £11 when someone joins eBay from your link, and the amount of money you earn from the auctions depend on the revenue that eBay receives from that user listing the auction on their website. At the moment Auction Ads gives it’s users the full 100% commission that eBay pays out to them, which is a very generous amount of money. Auction Ads also has it’s own affiliate program – you can currently earn 5% of the revenue made from every person that you refer to Auction Ads. Currently all new sign ups with Auction Ads receive a £12.50 cash bonus, withdrawable when you have earned £25…More information on Auction Ads
Apply to join Auction Ads for free here