College Money

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So you have ideas and you want the world to know? You want to make a little money just expressing your ideas?  You’re in luck. I’ll show you how to make a free website and make money from it.  When thinking of starting your own website or blog the first thing you need to do is think about what you want to talk about.  You should pick something that you know about or are interested in.  If you pick a topic that you’re into then you’re more likely to talk about it.  It’s hard to continue to update your blog or site with things that your aren’t familiar with.  makes sense right?

Once you’ve figured out what you want to write about then its time to find a platform for your site/blog.  Owning a website and hosting is not expensive but when you are in school and low on funds, every penny counts.  The other option is to use a free service to host your site.  Some free sites are blogger.com, worpress.com, and tumblr.com.  each of these sites have their own pros and cons.

Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages to some of the popular free hosting sites;

Blogger.com -Blogger or blogspot.com is the blog hosting arm of google.  If you have a google account then you can enter your google (e.g. gmail) username and password, then click sign in.  Once you agree to the terms and services, the next step is to create a name and address (url).  There are custom templates available from blogger or you can go to sites like btemplates.com for a large range of free templates customized for blogger.  You choose the one that best fits your style.  Once you’ve picked your name, address and template it’s time to start writing.

Wordpress.com – Wordpress is not as big as some of the others such as blogger or typepad but they are still a great blogging platform.  When the time comes for you to move to your own self hosted blog you can easily transition to wordpress.org.  Wordpress offers better spam support, and they are constant updates to improve the system. The sign up process is simple and easy. You simply create a username and password and you are good to go. Be careful when creating a username because that will be the name of your blog.  The main advantage that wordpress has is in it’s mobile apps.  with so many of us on the go all the time our cell phones have become our base for everything.  They have an Iphone and blackberry app so that you can blog on the go as well as wordpress.tv for vlogging (video blogging).

Tumblr.com – Tumblr is one of the easiest ways to run a blog. If you are into photos or just short notes instead of longer articles then this is for you.  There are hundreds of themes to choose from so you blog can be totally custom to you. If you don’t see one that you like, you can create your own theme in a step by step process.  You can even call a number to that will transcibe your call and transform that into a post for you.  This site offers the cleanest look out of the free hosting sites.

When making a blog it is important to think of what you are going to do with it.  Do you plan on selling things, posting pictures, writing short stories, talking about general things in life? Pick a topic that is near and dear to you.  Once you’ve picked the theme, the next is to come up with a good title or name for your blog.  Pick something that is easy to remember so that when someone is recommending your site to a friend they can easily remember what it is.  Try to avoid things like hyphens or numbers because if someone is searching for your site without the hyphen they may get your competition instead and getting people to come to your blog is what will make you money.  If your site name has crazy spelling or a slang term ( which can become outdated) then it may be hard for people to remember you.  No matter how great your site is if people can’t remember how to spell it then they won’t come back or recommend it to others.

Now that you’ve made your site it’s time to make some money from it.  These sites are easy to monetize. Things like

Google ads

contextual advertising – Yahoo Publisher, Adsonar

Targeted advertising if you have a blog that talks about specific things then this may be for you. You just need to create a media kit, a page or section on your blog that explains that you will do advertising and how to get in touch with you if someone is interested, and use an ad server like RMX Direct.

Donations – PayPal has an ingenious way of setting up a link on your page that people can click on to send you money directly to your PayPal account.

None of these things will matter if you can’t get people to come to your site.  Traffic is very important and I can’t stress that enough!  It’s horrible to have a great site but no one knows about it.  If a website has a great design and lots of ads to make you money but no one knows about it does it really exist?