This is a simple, yet still very effective technique. The internet bubble may have burst, but people can still make 1000's per month simply by placing advertisements on their website.

Methods: Online Videos, Google Adsense, other advertisers.

Bonus: This is an automated income stream. Once the site is set up it will only need a few hours tweaking and advertising a month to keep the money coming in.

Step 1 - Choosing the theme of your site
On the internet there is one rule you should learn before all others. Contents Is Key. Making money through advertising requires you to get a lot of people visiting your site every day. By having a large amount of content, preferably which is added to or changed regularly, you will get repeat visitors. In addition, each visitor will stay for longer on your site and hopefully recommend it to other people. Finally the search engines (Google, MSN etc) will give a higher ranking to sites which feature a large amount of changing content. Use this to your advantage - it can save you hundreds in advertising fees.

Now we have established that you need a lot of content, you have to decide what you want that content to be. An area of personal expertise would be a good start. If you, or a friend of yours, is an expert at decorating cakes then you can build a content rich site about cake decorating techniques. If you love dogs, spend time talking about dogs. Don't get overwhelmed by the fact that there are so many websites - you can still compete with them.

But what if you genuinely don't have an area of expertise? You have two options.

  1. Study a new topic. This is your oppertunity to lean something entirely new and make money by doing it! If you've always wanted to learn how to build a violin and become an expert luthier now is a great time to do it.
  2. Speak about your opinions. You don't need to have anything useful to say, if you are prepared to talk about your opinions on anything from politics to computer games then you're going to get people visiting to read your opinions. Don't underestimate the potential of Blogs.
  3. Get somebody else to do it for you! There are three ways of doing this:
  4. The first is to get someone else to do the hard work for you, so that you can simply take the income. A great book for this is Tim Ferriss' '4 hour Workweek'.
  5. The second is to use public domain information. You will have to check the exact terms and conditions of any articles you wish to use, but this can be an excellent way of building up a lot of information, fast. Try:
  6. Get your visitors to do it for you! Wikipedia, Facebook and many of the second generation websites are community oriented. The visitors write the content for you, and you just provide the space for them to do it. If you go down this route you will need a well designed website to automate the process for you. Search for a reputable designer: Swift Visions Webdesigns did all our difficult coding for us, and were very helpful.

Tip - As well as something which is of interest to you, it is also helpful if your website will be in an area where there are a lot of people advertising. More people pay money for computer related adverts than for ones about aardvarks. It is worth working out whether your site will be in a lucrative area

If you are really stuck for what to base your site around, simply hit the 'Random Article' link at Wikipedia until you find something that inspires you!

Step 2 - Set up the Website
You now have to decide how to host the website. You have a few choices:

A free host like Blogger

Sign up with Blogger and you have an entirely free site which can be customized and have any amount of content added to it. Google AdSense can be very easily integrated into Blogger. You may have trouble standing out from the crowd however.

A paid host

Paying for your own host and domain name can be surprisingly inexpensive. The site can be more individual and easier to market.

You now need to design the site and upload the content. Depending on the route you have taken this could be very easy or require some coding. Get help from a website designer if you need it:
Swift Visions Webdesigns.

Finally you need to place the advertisements on your page. We have chosen Google AdSense as they are the most lucrative of the paid advertisers at the moment. Feel free to do some searching to find other similar ones:
Google AdSense - click on Google AdSense
Commision Junction

Step 3 - Market your site
A site only makes money when it is well marketed. Check the Marketing section for ways to promote your site.