You’ve probably heard people talking about how easy it is to make money with a website.  But if you have never even set up a website before it can be really confusing to know where to start.  You will find all sorts of different websites telling you about the “perfect” way to make money and how easy it is. 

Fist of all, you should know that making money with a website can take in various forms.  Some people set up what is known as an e-commerce site where real products are sold.  Basically you need to find products that you can sell for a profit, is in demand and can easily be shipped out to the customer.  This is much easier said that done.  Here are the problems with setting up an e-commerce site:-

1)  A lot of companies require you to spend a minimum amount of money with them yet if you don’t have much money to spend you might not be able to afford the minimum order.

2)  Many companies don’t provide photographs of the products which means if you are selling something like fashion accessories you will need to take the photographs yourself .  This isn’t very easy if you are not familiar with product photography. 

3)  You’ll have to compete with the larger stores that have really professional photographs and website design which make the products look amazing.  If you are on budget and have to do all the website work yourself you might not be able to create the professional image you are looking for.

4)  What if you don’t get enough people to visit your store and you are left with loads of stock you can’t sell?  You could therefore end up losing a lot of money.

5)  What happens if you want to take time off for vacation or illness?  If you are working on your own you might not have anyone to run your business which means shutting up shop for that time.  Resulting in loss of revenue and customer trust.

So is there a way of making money with a website that  will offer you the following benefits?

Requires no start-up money

Requires no technical knowledge

Will earn you passive income 24/7

Actually, the answer is yes.  Here at Word Wolf you can easily make money by writing articles on any subject you wish and in return you will receive the majority of the advertising revenue.  Here’s what you need to do:-

Get Yourself a Google Adsense Publisher ID

For those of you who are not familiar with Adsense, Google displays targeted ads on your webpages and you then receive a percentage of what the advertiser spends.  Thousands upon thousands of advertisers from all around the world advertise their products and services with Google which means you don’t have to worry about finding these advertisers yourself.  All you have to do is write the articles and Google will then display the most appropriate ads.

How to Create An Adsense Account

If you don’t yet have an account with Adsense you need to create an account with Word Wolf by clicking here.  Then you need to add at least 6 articles which are about 400 - 500 words in length.  Make sure that these articles are helpful to visitors and will help them find what they are looking for.

You can then sign up for Adsense here.  When signing up for Adsense they will ask you for your website address.  What you need to give them is your author profile page which will look something like: http://wordwolf.com/author/myusername.html.

What Should Your Articles Be About?

They can be pretty much about anything, however it’s a good idea to write about a topic that you are familiar with.  If you have a dog you could write about dog training or the costs involved in owning a dog.  If you’ve just been on vacation you could write about that.

When giving a title to your article make sure you think about what someone might actually type into the search engines.  There’s no point in giving your article a title of “Why I Love Barbados” because it’s unlikely anyone will search for that.  Instead something like “Where To Stay in Barbados” would be more appropriate.

Hopefully this article will give you some ideas about how you can genuinely make money with a website, no matter what level of experience you have.  How much you earn will entirely depend on how much work you put into it.  You might only have an hour a day which means you’ll possibly earn enough to buy a few treats for yourself.  Whereas if you have several hours a day you can easily make a full time income.  You can also work wherever and whenever you like as all you need is a computer with an internet connection.

If you have a flair for writing then you could make money writing articles online. You can start off without having to invest any money yourself although, once you get started, you might move into creating a website on your own server. That's for another article however. In this article I'll talk about writing articles for Word Wolf and other sites and how you can make money doing it.

How to sign up for adsense

The first thing you'll need to do is to sign up for an adsense account. Many of the sites online that share revenue have adsense ads on the site. You will tell them your adsense ID and you then receive a share of the revenue that they make when people click on the ads on your articles. You can sign up for an adsense account without having a website yourself. Go to Google adsense to sign up.

Sign up for adsense using Word Wolf

Once you have registered with Word Wolf you will need to publish at least six articles, preferably more. We know people who have been approved with six articles but ten would be better. Make your articles at least 400-500 words. Once you have done that then apply to adsense and give them the address of your page on Word Wolf. This is the page with an address similar to http://wordwolf.com/author/yourname.html. Adsense approval can vary from a few hours to more than a week so be patient. Once you have your ID then come back to your Word Wolf account page and enter the whole of the ID (in the form pub-123456789).

Sign up for adsense using a Blogger Blog

Another way that seems to be quite successful is to make a free Blogger blog. You can do this at Blogger. Blogger blogs are very easy to set up with a good range of themes to choose from. Pick a subject that you know well and that you can write at least ten posts about.

What should I write about?

Well you should, of course, write about a subject you know about but there's more to writing articles online to make money than just writing about anything that takes your fancy! You'll need to pick subjects that people will be searching for online so that they come to your page on Word Wolf. For example, you probably arrived at this page by typing 'how to make money writing articles online' into Google! You were looking for the answer to a problem and 'hopefully' this article has answered it.  This is a huge subject but the first thing to do is to think about what people need answers to. You could look at Yahoo Answers to find out what are good topics to choose.

How to use Google's keyword tool to find ideas

'How to' articles are great. Another way to find a subject that people are searching for is to use Google own Keyword Tool. I typed 'How to' into the search box and found a list including 'How to roast' and 'How to budget' . Now 'How to Roast' wouldn't be a great idea as there are a ton of websites that teach you 'how to roast' but then I put How to Roast' into the search box and came up with 'how to roast beef tenderloin', 'how to cook a pot roast' and 'how to roast a leg of lamb'. Putting 'How to budget' into the search box I came up with 'how to budget my money' and 'how to budget properly'. Just a few ideas, you'll want to find some of your own that are being searched for and that you can write an interesting article about!

Using channels in Adsense

Once you've written some articles you'll want to see which sites you're making money from! This is easy in adsense as you can use channels to track which site or which articles receives clicks. To track a site got to 'adsense setup' then 'channels' and then click on URL channels and add the site. For example to track clicks on Word Wolf enter wordwolf.com into the box. If you'd prefer to track individual articles click on 'custom channels' instead and enter the complete address of your article.

There are many other ways to make money writing articles online but I hope this short introduction has given you some things to think about to get started.

Loads of people really hate working for other people and want to set up some sort of business on their own.  Alternatively, they might have been made redundant and urgently need to start making some money to pay the bills.  The internet can be a really great place to start earning money but there are so many different techniques that can be used it’s difficult to know what you should and shouldn’t try.

Unfortunately there are many scams on the internet making all sorts of false claims about how to make $1,467 in an hour whilst sitting on the beach.  They make false claims, they use PhotoShop to doctor the their earnings and they even make up the testimonials.  Do yourself a favour and ignore these bogus claims.

The truth is that it takes a lot of time and effort to make money online.  It’s like anything else, you need to learn the ropes and figure out a lot of things yourself.  There are also a lot of blogs created by people who are offering up tips on making money online but the truth is they aren’t making money very successfully at all.

What happens is they read a blog by some “blogging guru” who tells everyone to create a blog and talk about what they are passionate about.  So the person reading this decides that they are passionate about making money online so that’s what they write about.  My advice is not to do this because there’s so much competition in this area and you really need to know what you are doing to make money from it.

Don’t get into the trap of reading every website and blog and forum out there.  If you only have limited time everyday then you don’t want to waste it by reading junk.  Instead you need to focus on your business.

Although writing about something you are familiar with is a good idea you don’t have to be particularly passionate about it.  For instance I know quite a bit about home improvement because I’ve done different DIY tasks around the home and I’ve watched my dad who is a joiner to trade.  I don’t particularly enjoy DIY but I can write about it very easily because I have first-hand experience in the subject.

When writing articles for your websites make sure you think about problems that people experience and would gladly pay money for a product or service to deal with the problem.  For instance, if you found mouse droppings in your kitchen would you pay money for mouse traps or an exterminator to get rid of them?  I‘ve had mice in my kitchen and I bought some mouse traps because of it!  So think about what people might type into the search engines to get help on this subject.  For instance, for those who want to get rid of mice they might type in “how to get rid of mice from my kitchen.”

There are people who will tell you that if you write fantastic information people will feel compelled to link to you.  Sure, I’ve had people link to me but usually it’s because I’m already ranking highly in the search engines in the first place.  And the reason that I’m ranking high is because I have learnt about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

So how do you go about creating a blog anyway?  Well there are some free options such as Blogger, BlinkWeb, Weebly, HubPages, InfoBarrel and also Word Wolf.  You just create an account and then start posting “how to” articles helping people with their problems and talking about products and services that can help them. 

Alternatively you can buy your own domain at godaddy.com and then get a hosting account at hostgator.com.  You can create your blog using WordPress which can be installed via Fantastico or you could try the self-hosted version of Blogger which is a lot simpler to use.  However if you really don’t have much technical skill or money then one of the free options is better to start with to allow you to get your “feet wet” so to speak.

The best way to monetize these articles is with either Google Adsense or Chitika so make sure you sign up with these companies too.  With Adsense you need to have a domain with at least 10 articles on it to show the quality of the site you produce.  If you are going to go with a revenue sharing site such as Word Wolf or HubPages you should have 10 articles published and then list your author page as the domain.

So basically if you are looking for a legit way of making money online you need to avoid the “get rich quick” schemes that will just take your money and leave you with nothing to show for it.  There’s loads of great information out there but there’s also a lot of junk so be very careful about what road you go down when it comes to making money online.

Let’s face it.  We all would like to make an extra buck or so.  There seems to be so many bills to pay off and once you’ve paid them there doesn’t seem to be very much left for extra treats and such like.  So if you want to find some creative ways to make extra money then hopefully you’ll be able to find them here:-

Rent Out Your Driveway/Garage

If you have a car garage that’s just sitting there not being used or you have a large driveway for some extra cars then you can actually make pretty good money by renting this space out.  There are different ways to go about it but one way is to sign up at parkatmyhouse.com.

A big reason why people might want to rent your garage or driveway is because they are wanting to go to a stadium, airport, train station, ferry terminus or some other place like this.  In built-up areas parking can be very difficult and if you simply leave it in a random street or public car park you might worry about your car being stolen or vandalised.

However if they pay you to keep their car in your driveway or garage they will feel a lot more comfortable.  I mean, if you were going somewhere by ferry for a couple of weeks and you had to leave your car in a public car park, would you feel comfortable?  Personally this is what I do most years when I visit the island of Canna and I always worry about leaving the car.  I would be happier if I was leaving it at someone’s house.

When you sign up with Park At My House it doesn’t cost any money at all.  They just take a 15% commission which isn’t all that much.  The amount of money you can charge for renting out car space can vary greatly depend on where you are.  If you live in the middle of nowhere then you might struggle (although it’s still worth signing up anyway).  If you live in a major city near to a stadium or transport link then you could make quite a lot of money.

Alternatively you could look to advertise space in your local paper because there might be someone in the area who doesn’t have a garage and wants to keep their car safe at night.  Or perhaps they are a commuter and you live near to where they work.

Rent Out Garden Space

I was reading in my local paper some time ago about a lady who had a large garden that she really wasn’t interested in maintaining.  She knew that there was a long waiting list for people looking for allotment space to grow fruit and veg so she decided that she would allow people to grow produce in her garden.

She didn’t mention anything about charging any money for it but you could try and see how you get on.  A lot of people these days are wanting to grow their own produce because they want to eat food that is healthy and organically grown.

To advertise your space you could simply put up a notice board saying that you are looking to rent out plots of your garden for x amount of money.  You could also place an ad in your local paper.  Even if you don’t charge any money for the plots, you could always do a barter system by asking for some produce in return.

Become a Secret Shopper

There are companies out there who really want to make sure their business is being run properly so they hire the services of a secret shopper.  Basically, you’re given an assignment to go into a particular shop and carry out specific tasks such as ask questions, buy products and look at how clean the shop is.

A lot of people will say that by doing secret shopping you will get paid to shop.  But I haven’t found this to be 100% true.  I have had a couple of hair cuts, a pizza and also a couple of cheap bars of soap.  But the other things I bought such as Cds and shoes had to be returned.  (What’s the fun in that?!).  The pay wasn’t all that great either.  Every job is that bit different and you need to make sure you read your instructions carefully.  You also need to fill in the forms with detailed information about your experiences.

Over all I didn’t really think secret shopping was worth it but if you don’t have anything better to do it’s still worth signing up with some companies to see what sort of assignments you get.  You might be lucky and be given some cool jobs.

So yes, there are some very creative ways to make extra money besides the usual ones you read about such as pet sitting, car washing, gardening and selling stuff on eBay.  You might as well give them a go to see how you get on.  Just make sure you remember to declare your earnings to the tax man otherwise you might get into a spot of bother!