Have a website? Learn how to make money with LinkShare.
This will show you how to build a 100% free website (including free domain name, and free email addresses) with virtually no computer knowledge.
Hopefully, you can turn in a profit too!
Does your website make you money?
However, this is not a get rich quick method: building up content and traffic for a website takes time and sustained effort. If you follow these suggestions, you will make
some money; just how much depends on how hard you are prepared to work at it, and how popular your initial idea is.
I have built two websites using this method, which I will be using as examples:
The first website ( condition yellow ) generates approx. 20,000 views a month, and these have been increasing gradually since it was launched under its current format
on May 16 2007. I have just started promoting the latest one ( lock yourself to a tree ).
To date, they have brought up just under $6,000 in revenue, from advertising and pay-per-view schemes.
You can check the websites out for yourself, they offer an example of what can be done:
My first website: condition yellow
My most recent one: lock yourself to a tree
I'm not going to make any false promises: this has been hard work. But I have done it in my spare time, through trial and error, and I have also enjoyed the process.
Should you decide to give it a go, you can benefit from my findings, but also from my mistakes, which will shorten the process.
Finally, this instructable also has its own site, at 100percentfeesite , on which you will find many additional tips and updates. If you are serious about building your own
100 percent free website, bookmark it and follow the step-by-step method it suggests. Of course, this is also 100 percent free!
One last thing: if you like this instructable, please digg it, using the digg button underneath. A lot of time, effort, and thought went into it.
Image Notes
1. embeded Revver video player
step 1: Figures - advertising strategy - what you will need
FIGURES
The idea for both my sites was to generate a profit from advertising.
I chose to do that through three methods: online videos, google adsense, and smaller schemes such as amazon.com affiliates. Each of these will be discussed later on in
this instructable.
Here's a summary of my earnings from the three methods:
Online videos: metacafe.com - $5,330.11 revver.com - $317.16
Google Adsense: $17.54
Amazon affiliates: $0
ADVERTISING STRATEGY:
Your advertising startegy will essentially be dictated by the main focus of your website. But mainly, your earnings will either be generated by advertising and referrals, or
through product sales (in which case, it is your site that needs to be advertised).
Let's take lockyourselftoatree.com as an example first. Most of the revenue from this site was generated by the videos it features. The site hopes to cash in on the
success of the first video, to generate views (and clicks) for user-submitted videos (from which I will derive a profit through revver's sharers programme). Targetted ads,
and amazon referrals supplement that income.
If product sales is your main focus however, then you will probably have very different priorities for your site - generating targetted traffic being the main one. Adsense
and referals will not be particularly useful (adsense could even be detrimental, by sending customers to the competition!). Online videos could prove very effective at
raising your site's profile however.
Finally, if your site is centered around a forum, or if it is a blog which does not feature your own material, then advertising and referrals will be your main source of
revenue.
I have altogether stayed cleared of Adwords (search words you can purchase from Google - another form of advertising), as my main aim was not to spend any money
on building my sites.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
Very little actually.
- A computer and an internet connection are the main thing.
- If you plan to make online videos, a simple digital camera can be enough. Or a camcorder. Or even, a simple webcam. You can also quite easily find some free editing
software.
- Last, but far from least: a few good ideas
step 2: Setting up the site
There are a variety of free site providers out there that offer different packages. None of them, however, were satisfactory by themselves for my purposes.
Here's what I wanted:
- a free domain name (I wanted to have email addresses in my domain name)
- free site hosting
- the ability to use html code in order to set up adsense and other referral packages.
Bandwitdth on the other hand was never an issue for me, as both my sites were mostly to feature videos hosted elsewhere, which I subsquently would embed on my
pages.
I decided to build my websites around a combination of two sites, to get around the limitations of the free schemes I found.
For instance, Microsoft Office Live Basics offered a free domain name (which you can still purchase at a later date if you want), but did not offer the opportunity to use
HTML, third-party design tools, or to upload an existing site). This meant I could not use adsense.
On the other hand, blogs such as Blogger were perhaps rather limited in their customizability, but they also were particularly appealing because of their ease of use (in
particular, setting up adsense on blogger could not be easier).
The simple answer, to overcome these limitations, was to use Microsoft Office Live Basics for my front page, and to link from there to Blogger, where I could use bits of
HTML.
The one drawback of this method however, is that I cannot get any reliable traffic statistics. Users might bookmark either the front page, or the main page, and thus it is
hard to know where they are coming to the site from. It is also hard to tell in exactly what manner they navigate the site.
Also, the site is less likely to feature in the alexa rankings because -in the case of condition yellow- it is made of one front page and 6 or 7 different blogs plus a forum,
none of which are registered under the same domain name.
This was a limitation I was prepared to live with however: should either site ever become very popular, I could always re-purchase the domain name from Microsoft Office
Live Basics, and host it in a unified form.
step 3: Building up content
Building up content, in the case of lockyourselftoatree.com was very straight forward. The site relies on the success of an online video I had made some time ago, in
order to invite user submissions. It has not been widely advertised yet (I plan to do that through a couple of related videos, and a compilation video), but you can see how
simple it is: under its current format, it only consists of two pages. People submitting their Revver videos to the site will benefit from its traffic, and be able to make money
through Revver's ad-click programme. Revver also has a sharers' programme whereby, by sharing these videos on my site I will make 20% of the videos' profits (40% go
to the producer; 20% to the sharer; 40% to Revver).
Building up content for condition-yellow.com was much more time consumming. Fortunately I had a bunch of videos I had made, and some training programmes, and this
was going to be the backbone of the site. Once I had a site outline, I filled in the gaps here and there (there are still many), added some forums (which haven't proved
popular so far!), and a blog. Most of the site's profits are generated by videos that are my own, so in that sense, it is a much bigger earner than lockyourselftoatree.com .
The idea behind the blog and the forums, is that, by being updated frequently, they will keep users coming back daily to see what's new.
However, the site's focus is not very tight, which I suspect is hampering its popularity...
Quality content and regular updates are what will keep users coming back, so this should probably be your main focus in the initial stages... It also has to be fairly original:
a blog featuring the best of the net is unlikely to ever become popular, as it is facing so much competition...
step 4: Setting up advertising
The main schemes I chose to opt into were online videos, google adsense, and smaller affiliates schemes such as the one run by amazon.com
- Online videos have been by far the biggest source of revenue for me: some websites offer pay-per-view or pay-per-click opportunities, while others may just buy your
videos if they like them. Online videos can also generate a big percentage of the traffic to your site ; they will be discussed later on in this instructable, as they offer such
tremendous opportunities for revenue and traffic.
- Google adsense is another -much smaller- source of revenue. In my experience, adsense pays around $6 for 10,000 page impressions (everytime someone opens a
page featuring one of your adsense banners). There are 3 main ways in which adsense can be optimized however:
1. barring some of the ads it offers might help. Not all ads pay the same, and you should probably try to focus on the higher revenue ones.
2. Ads placement is also crucial: ads have to be prominent, but not intrusive. Placing and ad on top of your webpage might get this ad a lot of exposure, but it will also
make the page less attractive to your site visitors... Generally, try to place your ads on the side.
3. The colour palette you choose might also be important: again, ads have to stand out if people are going to click on them.
Google Adsense offers you the possibility of keeping track of how well each of your invidual ads are doing, by setting custom channels. It is well worth experimenting with
this, to come up with the optimal set up for your site.
Adsense also offers a number of extra services from which you can generate income: referrals to google products such as adsense itself, adwords, the google toolbar,
and google software.
Adsense also allows you to set a search box on your site, and pays per click on the results displayed.
You might have much more success than I did with adsense by looking into these ways more closely. Adsense not being my main focus, I only use it as a little
supplementary income. You can sign up for it by using the link at the very bottom of this page , which will let me benefit from your referral (it does not change anything for
you)
- Finally, a variety of sites (such as amazon.com) offer affiliates schemes, whereby you can earn a percentage by refering buyers to their products. This was an obvious
choice for me with lockyourselftoatree.com, as the technique the site centres around is described in a couple of books sold on amazon. I have not had much luck with this
so far, but it is hardly surprising, this being such a niche market...
Should your website review a variety of electronic goods for instance, amazon.com's affiliates scheme could turn out to be very profitable.
Image Notes
1. amazon.com associates
2. Adsense referrals
3. Adsense ads
step 5: Online videos
WEBHOSTS:
There is a variety of sites out there which will host your videos for free. I have dedicated a whole page to them in this instructable, because this method has been such a
successful little money earner for me.
First of all, well, the industry's giant is obviously youtube . Youtube will not pay for your videos, but if all you want is to generate views for your site, then it is the definite
option. Simply feature your site's address prominently in the video, and visitors will often follow. Of course, your video will have to be eye-catching in order to do well on
youtube.
break is another site which will generate many views for your videos (possibly even more than youtube , even). However, things are a little more complicated here: break
will also pay you $400 for your videos (if they select them, of course), provided they feature original, non-copyrighted content, but provided also that there are no URLs
displayed in the videos. Thus, if you have a very good video which you think could earn money on break , do not include a link to your site. However, for the purpose of
generating traffic, break also works very well, and it is an option not to be dismissed.
If you want to earn money from your vids AND generate traffic to your site, then metacafe is your best option. metacafe pays $100 once your videos passes 20,000 views.
However, if it does not make it that far, you get nothing... The good thing about metacafe though, is that their front page release system means that a lot of people will
view your videos if they are good.
Finally, there are two other main sites that will pay for your videos, based on the number of clicks on adverts displayed within your clips: these are revver , and blip.tv . In
my experience, revver works better, as the ads it feature simply seem to be more attractive to the viewers. However, the problem with both revver and blip.tv , is that they
will not generate views by themselves. You will need to get your videos embeded on blogs and other sites in order to get views.
Here are a few places to get you started however:
general videos
- http://digg.com
- http://www.boingboing.net/
- http://www.ifilm.com/
tech/howto videos
- Gizmodo
- techeblog
- engadget
- newlaunches
- hack a day
- lifehacker
- instructables
funny videos:
- stumbleupon
- crazy party
- bad videos
photography:
- diy photography
magic tricks:
- learnmagictricks.org
Finally, you can also distribut your videos via myspace, facebook, etc... and hope they will spread virally (which they will, if they are good enough.)
Of course, you should embed all your videos on your website, since they will also gain more views there.
For a step-by-step method of how to take best advantage of the possibilities these sites offer, visit my page on 100percentfreesite .
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
Again, in order to keep this instructable short, I'm going to focus on the basics here. You can find more info on 100percentfreesite .
First of all, here's what you will need:
- a digital camera/camcorder/webcam
- some free software (I'm going to focus on windows users here, as I am not familiar with Macs)
Windows Movie Maker (comes free with Windows service pack 2)
RAD video tools ; will allow to convert avi files to wmv format
http://www.rehanfx.org/products.htm :nifty plug-ins for Windows Movie Maker
autoscreenrecorder : a screen recorder that will still enable you to make desktop videos, even if you don't own a camera. Useful for software howto videos.
Also, if you intend to use music in your videos, make sure not to use copyrighted music, as pay video sites will only allow original content.
You can make your own music, using easy music composer , or you could purchase some royalty free music for as little as $7 per song. Stock20 is a good site for this.
use this link: stock20 , and you will get your first song for free.
HOW TO MAKE A SUCCESSFUL VIDEO:
For the sake of simplicity, I am going to use two of my videos as examples, detailing what makes them good, and not so good.
First of all, here is my most successful video:
Video
The main reasons for its success can easily be emulated. They are:
- the title and subject-matter are eye-catching (who hasn't wondered, at some point or other, how this trick was done?)
- the video is relatively short (generally, try to keep all your videos under 2 minutes, or you will loose the viewers attention.
- it combines narration and music to keep things interesting.
- the address to my webpage is prominently displayed.
- a logo is displayed
- it does exactly what it promises.
Now here's an example of a video that was not so successful:
Video
Here are it's main faults:
- no url is displayed (how are people going to visit my site?)
- the title is boring
- origami is not terribly sexy
- the picture quality is a bit iffy
- Though it is not terribly long, it feels like it is.
- no narration
- the songs -though I do like them- are not very modern
- the punch line is spoiled by an explanation of how to make the boat (was it necessary? who doesn't know how to make a paper boat anyway?)
It may well be worthwhile, for an apiring videomaker, to take a look at the condition-yellow , to see which videos have been successful, and which haven't...
Also -again- you will find a more in-depth study of how to make profit generating videos on 100percentfreesite .
Image Note
1. embeded Revver video player
step 6: Building up traffic to your free site.
Building up traffic to your free site can actually be pretty straight forward: if the site is appealing enough and based on an original idea, you will have very little to do: it will
most likely spread virally if people like it.
Nonetheless, it will need that initial push.
I relied on a variety of methods to build up traffic to my sites. These were:
- including my site's URL in all my videos... This has brought a fair number of visitors.
- linking to my site in various forums. Careful here: do not spam... people hate spammers! Find relevant threads, and make a relevant post, linking to your site's relevant
page. A good forum to start with, if your site is based around your original videos is rotten tomatoes.
- write to other sites, and ask them to link to yours. The more links you can build, the more traffic you will get.
- write to your friends, and ask them to share your site (or your popular videos) via email, facebook... etc.
- build a list of contacts yourself, and consider making a regular newsletter to keep people updated.
- Finally, register for a viral traffic scheme. I found that free viral was probably the best of these. This could potentially bring A LOT of traffic to your site... and it's
effortless.
If you have all these ingredients, traffic will build up, and money will follow.
step 7: Customizing your site to meet your own needs...
Here are a few thoughts on adapting this method to meet your own needs:
1. decide what your site's main focus is going to be. This should be fairly unique and original.
2. choose an eyecatching, easy to remember domain name.
3. design a site logo... use photoshop. This will establish your 'brand' image. Take a look at the condition yellow logo underneath.
4. ascertain where your site's revenue is going to come from. If it is online videos, spend your energy establishing your 'brand' with the main video sites. Become a
household name.
If you choose adsense, learn to use all its features... Use the custom channels function to establish which ads work best.
5. decide what your main source of revenue is going to be... If, for instance, you do not intend to use Adsense, then there is no need to design a site in Blogger. Your
entire site can be built in Microsoft Office Live Basics.
6. If your main aim is to sell a product -this could be ebooks, for instance- use online videos to generate interest. Here's an example how this could be done:
Suppose, for instance, your site is selling ebooks offering tips about msn or yahoo messenger. The following video could be posted on all the major video sites (youtube,
break, metacafe, yahoo videos).
Video
Simply add a prominent title at the end of the video, saying: "want to learn more messenger tricks? Visit: http://YOURSITEHERE.com "
7. consider adding a forum... This is a good way to keep viewers coming to your site if it is popular. easy free forum is just one of the many sites that will let you do this. I
chose it for it's ease of use.
8. build up your site gradually... You do not have to do everything at once. Eventually, you will establish a regular visitors base.
9. If your site features mostly videos, encourage viewers submissions via Revver. You can earn 20% from their videos revenue via Revver's sharers scheme.
10. This is stating the obvious, but make sure your site deals with a subject you trully enjoy. Your enthusiasm will shine through ; you are more likely to keep working at it
; content will be of a better quality (presumably, you will be knowledgeable about it) ; and eventually more and more people sharing a similar interest will come back to it
and contribute.
I hope some of you will have been inspired by this instructable... It has its own site, at 100percentfeesite , on which you will find many additional tips and updates. In
addition, you will also find a step-by-step method to building your site, 100 percent free!
One last thing: if you like this , please digg it, using the digg button underneath. A lot of time, effort, and thought went into it.
