How to create a website?

What if we told you that you could easily earn money just by building your own website?
To help you, we created this guide

Earn money online, part 1

If you’re a member of our consumer panel, you’re probably already generating some money online. It’s easy and fun, isn’t it: telling your opinion and making some revenue on the side?

But what if we told you that you could easily earn more? Just by building your own website that brings in steady income monthly?

To help you, we created this new content series “Earn Money Online”. In this first part, we’ll tackle the challenge of creating your website.

If you want to make money online, you need to set up three things:

Domain name
Web hosting
Site template

1. Domain name

The domain name is your site address, like www.surveyeah.com. You can choose your own name, your company name or a name that describes your site well. Try to keep it short, memorable and easy to spell – you don’t want to lose visitors over typos!

A good stress test for your name is to try saying it over the phone. If the other person understands your domain name without problems, it’s a good one.

Of course you also have to check if your name is available and purchase it. Usually this happens through your web hosting company.

2. Web hosting

Once you have settled on a name, you’ll need a place where to put your site up. This is called web hosting: it’s basically a company that hosts – stores – the files related to your site.

There are many good options out there. Some of the most well-known are WordPress and Squarespace. These are easy and good options because they also offer site templates so you can have all under the same roof.

The other option is to purchase web hosting and your site template separately. Very good web hosting companies are for example Bluehost, GoDaddy and Dreamhost. They all allow you to purchase your domain names as well and offer email services so that you can have a personalised email address, such as [email protected].

3. Site template

Okay, so now you’ve got your domain name and a place to host your site. It’s time to start building!

If you purchased your domain and hosting via sites like Squarespace or WordPress, you realise they already offer plenty of site templates that are really easy to use. WordPress.org on the other hand offers plenty of completely free and very affordable templates that you can use – wherever your site is hosted.

Choosing the template can feel overwhelming, because there are so many of them, and at this point you don’t necessarily even know that well what you’re going to need. Take your time and try a few ones out to see how they work and what feels right for you.

Why I can’t use a free site?

Many people build their first site on a free platform. There are two reasons against that:

First of all, you can’t have a completely customised domain name. You could use the free Blogspot hosting, for example, but then your domain name would be something like surveyeah.blogspot.com. You can’t have a customised email address this way either.

Secondly, and this is more important, if you want to generate income online: on a free platform your revenue streams are very limited. It’s better to use some time, energy and money in the beginning as an exchange for more liberty and flexibility in the future.

Coming next…

In the next part we will talk about the content you need on your site – and then we’ll be ready to dive into the different techniques to earn money with it. Stay tuned for more!

In the meantime, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to pop your question up in the comments or our Facebook page.