Making a living from a website

Date: March 2012: Having done it myself,  I can confirm that someone totally new to website building can make a living in America (USA) from a single content website, working alone. How much do you have to earn to make living in the US? It depends what your demands are. You can live cheap and have no children or have five kids and send them to expensive schools etc.. Anyway, we are told that a living wage is about $4,000 per month. I am sure you can live off less.

Update June 2014. I earn less (about half) these days from my site because it is impossible to compete after 7 years or so. Also you run out of content. You exhaust the subject matter. You have to evolve as well which is hard. It takes money. I give away all the money earned these days or pay writers with it.

You can make $4,000 per month from a single website within about 2 years of starting from scratch without any prior knowledge of how to build a website or make money from it. As I said, I know because I did it. However, there are a number of big caveats...

It is not easy. Why should it be? In fact it is tricky and hard work. There is an element of luck as well. There are no set formulae for success either. It is no easier making money on the Internet than it is making it somewhere else. The advantages of Internet work are that you can do it whenever you like and wherever you like. And you are your own boss. A lot of people would like that.

I now earn less than $4,000 due to competition, copyright infringements, Google changing its algorithm etc.. That is the nature of the beast. I am endeavouring to come back though!

There are a lot of failures. Expectations should be realistic. It is getting harder for an individual to make money on the Internet working alone as competition grows. It has even changed substantially since I started about 4.5 years ago.

You have to continually build the site because that is what the search engines demand. I think the sort person who has a good chance of being successful making a living in America from a content site is:

• suited to website building work - meaning he or she likes building websites and likes researching information.
• reasonably intelligent;
• hard working;
• a stayer - has stamina;
• at least proficient in writing good English and is...
• committed and
• able to take some risks and be willing to learn by mistakes.

Note 1 : if you have commitment, stamina and an inquiring mind you can do without the rest because you can learn as you go.  Don't be put off by the list. But to summarize, it will not be an easy journey. Why should it be?

Note 2: A suitable person for making a living from a website is someone who likes and is good at:

1. science (html coding)
2. art (illustrations)
3. design (layout)
4. writing (text)

....these are ideals. The more of the above the better. Writing skills must be decent. I think that you have to be a good allrounder if you work alone and initially you almost certainly will work alone.

Note 3: There are other ways of making money on the internet. This article deals with building the classic content website. This is the way anyone can make money using advertising on the site such as Google AdSense.

I don't have the figures, but it is probable that about one in 100 attempts to make a living from the internet are successful (1%). However, there are some inspiring stories. One person comes to mind. She is the owner/creator of http://www.2createawebsite.com/. She is certainly one of the most successful individual internet entrepreneurs - meaning working on the site as an individual rather than a team effort. She says she developed RSI (repetitive strain injury) in her hands and now dictates some of her content. That gives a clue as to the amount of work that you need to put in. She earns big though (I often dictate my articles now too).

Website Hosting

I would recommend SiteSell, Wordpress and Google Blogger. SiteSell charge but they provide you with the chance to learn as you build so you can get off the ground quickly. This motivates as you can see results more quickly. It can be very demotivating if nothing happens for months and nothing will happen for months normally.

Important update: I now reject SiteSell. They kicked forced me to move my website. Here is the story. 


You can make good money using free Google Blogger without even having a custom domain name. However, Google might not like it. You can customise the domain with Google Blogger.

Revenue

AdSense, Casale Media, Infolinks, Custom advertising. These are the simple ways I make money. There are many other ways including selling products as an affiliate. You act as an agent by advertising your partner's products on your site and get a commission. I tend to avoid these because of the management needed to control the business. That is a personal choice.