How to Make Money With an Information Website

The Internet has been life-changing for me over the past few years. I now earn enough to stay at home full-time and never dreamed I'd have this kind of success online.

How can you earn a living from a website like me?

Simply pick a topic you love and write a website about it. All you need is information. You don't even have to have your own product or service to sell.

The more passionate you are about the topic, the easier it will be to keep adding information, develop your unique spin and expanding the site. The larger the site, the more it will benefit you in terms of free search engine traffic and revenue. You'll see why in a bit.

I've earned over SIX FIGURES on the
Internet every year since 2005.

I didn't put that message up to brag. I want to show you that it is possible to make an honest living online without spamming or scamming people. All you need is time, patience and the desire to learn.

Yes, I did invest some money (I paid for my websites, of course) but time was the biggest investment of all by far. And I will tell you now, if you don't plan to invest in either, then this is not for you.

You also can't be a stranger to hard work. I've put in some serious time over the years. In fact, I still do even though the money is rolling in now. I sacrificed many evenings, weekends, holidays, etc. to devote to this venture.

I'm constantly reading, adding new information to my sites, researching and observing what others are doing to stay ahead of the curve. However, the best part about it is, it doesn't feel like real work because I thoroughly enjoy it.

That is important and unfortunately most people don't get that part of it. They believe that the desire to make money will be enough motivation to become successful.

It's not.

If that were the case, everyone would have a successful money-making website. I mean, who doesn't want to make a lot of money, right?

The money comes as a result
of doing what you enjoy!

It's not the other way around. If you don't enjoy it, you won't be successful because you'll eventually get burned out.

So many of my friends and family want to try this because they are fascinated by the money. That's great...but you still have to enjoy yourself. Money cannot be your only motivation.

You'll never meet a successful Internet entrepreneur that says, "I hate spending time updating my website and learning how to market on the Internet, but I'm still making $300,000 per year with my site."

The people that are successful out here enjoy themselves and work at this continuously, and most of them chose a website topic they are passionate about.

The Truth...

Let me be honest. The online world is not for everyone. Many people don't want or even have the time to spend in front of their PC going through the learning curve, researching, writing content, etc.

However, if you have some time and don't mind learning...you could clean up out here. However, don't expect to spend one hour a month on this and make $100,000 a year.

You have to set realistic goals and understand that the earnings will start out small. Mine certainly did. My first check in 1998 was for $14.95. But it was all I needed to make me believe "I can do this!"

No Get Rich Schemes Here!

If you're looking for a get-rich-quick-scheme, this is not the place. I don't care how other websites make it seem, there is no such thing as quick money. Please don't believe the hype.

I roll my eyes at many of these websites that scream phrases like, "Make Millions Overnight!" They are usually run by people who have never made a dime.

Nevertheless, they want you to spend your hard-earned dollars on a "how-to-course" that they haven't even bought or used themselves. They just earn a commission if you buy what they have to offer.

Well, before you spend money on any of these products, be sure to ask the website owner to show you some proof of their success. Can they show you any of their checks they've received like I can?

Make sure they can also explain exactly what you have to do.

I don't know about you, but if I'm going to learn how to make money out here, I'd want to learn from someone who is actually succeeding - not from someone selling a cheesy course they haven't even used or read themselves.

How You Can Make Money

The Internet is the information highway. Everyday millions of people go to Google, MSN and Yahoo to perform searches on anything from potting plants to investing stocks.

People want information and the way you can benefit from this is to build a website that gives people what they are looking for.

Achieve a top 5 ranking in the major search engines for popular keyword phrases and you can really rack in a ton of free traffic like I've been doing.

The money comes in with affiliate programs. These are programs that are offered by companies that pay website owners to refer their products.

Generally, they pay a certain percentage for every sale that comes in as a result of your site's referral. Amazon.com has one and it's very popular among website owners.

So let's say you have an information website on baby toy safety. Your site is #3 in Google.com when someone types in "safe baby toys" and other related terms.

On your site, you've written various reviews on various toys based upon your own experiences. The more content you have, the greater the chance you'll be found in the search engines for free.

To earn money, you could join the free eToy.com affiliate program and when you recommend various toys for parents, eToys will pay you a percentage for every sale your site refers. (Companies provide a special tracking link to use on your site so they know when your site generates a sale).

You could also join Amazon.com's free affiliate program and recommend their books on baby safety. Amazon doesn't pay very high commissions (3-5% on most products), but if you refer large volumes, the commissions can add up.

Google's Free Affiliate Program

Thank goodness for programs like Google Adsense. This is a slightly different type of affiliate program because you don't have to get your visitors to buy anything.

You simply help Google advertise by displaying some text ads on your pages and they pay you for every click each ad receives. Thanks to Google's technology the ads that will be displayed match your site's content.

So if your site is about baby toys, the ads that show up will relate to that topic, thus improving the click-thru percentage. The more pages of content you have, the greater the earning potential for programs like this.

I use Adsense on three of my websites and I am quite pleased with the results.

See one of my monthly Google Adsense checks.
(This check is revenue earned from two of my websites.)

No Products to Ship or Manage

The nice thing about information websites that make money from affiliate programs (rather than selling hard goods) is that you can leave your website for days, weeks or months and still continue to make money without having to handle inventory or talk to customers.

Remember, your site serves as the middleman and refers products for other company websites. The actual company that pays you is the one that ships the products and deals with the customers.

Here's the best part...

Now that my sites are established and generating traffic automatically from Google, MSN and Yahoo... I can go on vacation for months if I wanted to and they would still generate revenue without doing a single thing.

That's me in the pic enjoying a summer vacation in The Dominican Republic, May 2004. My websites continue to work for me while I relax on the beach.

That's the major benefit of making money from affiliate programs instead of selling your own tangible products that you'd have to ship and manage.

However, I want to make clear that I had to work to GET my websites to that point by building a lot of content... and that does take time. Remember, there's no such thing as "get rich quick" out here and I've certainly done my time.

Even though I only have to work on my sites a couple of hours per month now, I started out spending several hours per day on my sites.

An online business is no different than an offline. Even though there are some differences in how the businesses are run, they both require time, work and patience.

But the great thing about online is once you are established you can leave your site for months and still come back to the same income. I don't know many offline companies that can say that!

The Best Way to Build Your Site

Now that you know a bit about how you can earn money with an information website, you need to select a web host so you can build your website.

If you've read any other parts of the "Making Money" section of this site, you'll see the words "Site Build It" (SBI) everywhere. I get so many emails from people asking me why I promote that product so heavily.

My answer is always very simple...

I am a customer and it works!

Think about it. When you buy any product (it could be a household cleaning product or a new car) that OVERdelivers and goes above and beyond your expectations don't you happily tell others about it? Well, that's why I heavily push Site Build It on this site.

Success excites me....just like the guy on the left. :) So that's why you see the product mentioned numerous times on this website.

It is the ONLY web host I'll ever recommend to anyone who wants to create a successful money-making website.

I can personally guarantee you won't find any other host that guides you through the process of building a profitable website without involving you in the technical gibble gabble.

When you've been building sites on the web as long as I have, it's exciting to find a web host that actually delivers what it promises AND has the successful websites and testimonials to back it up.

The key to succeeding with an information website is not about deciphering the difference between ASP and PHP or learning how to CHMOD your CGI scripts while you FTP your HTML.

Yeah... sounds confusing, huh?

It's about choosing a topic you have an interest in. Next, build content so the search engines will find your site, and then select affiliate programs in your niche to earn money from the traffic you receive.

I'll say it again. No other product on the Net walks you through this entire process from start to finish AND can display the success videos to prove it works.

What Exactly is Site Build It?

It's an all in one website building AND marketing machine that does all the technical coding in the background while you focus on two things...

1) Writing your search-engine friendly content so you can get as much free traffic and...

2) Incorporating affiliate programs throughout your site so you can make money from the traffic you receive.

After all, making money is really the goal, right?

Who wants to spend hours trying to figure out how to develop a design, code HTML, and FTP a web page?

Huh???

Why not choose a web host that does all this for you so you can focus on writing content and earning revenue. After all, that's what gets you the money....not the coding and programming.

View the SBI! video tour to see how it actually works.

My SBI Website

In June of 2005 I purchased SBI and created, www.flat-stomach-exercises.com. I'm writing this in February 2007 and the site gets about 2,000 unique visitors per day and earns about $1200 per month in affiliate revenue. This is amazing success after such a short time.

I didn't use Site Build It! to create this site in 2002 and it took me about 4 years to achieve those kinds of stats.

All the traffic comes from the free search engines and the profits are courtesy of Google's free Adsense program (described above). As I continue to add more information to the site, these totals will only increase.

It's purely a numbers game. The more content you have on your site, the more traffic the search engines are likely to give you. In the end, the more revenue your site will generate.

I Had Doubts at First

I learned about SBI way back in 2000 when it first launched. I didn't buy it at first because I wasn't sure it was for me. I had already built a couple of websites on my own and I really thought it was mainly for beginners. That's why I didn't use it for this site.

I had this know-it-all attitude and felt that it couldn't really teach me anything I didn't already know. Boy was I wrong. Even though I had some knowledge of creating websites, I never received the marketing help that SBI provides you.

It was further proof that building a successful money making website is more about the marketing and building content and less about the technical aspects.

Just because I knew how to build a website didn't necessarily mean I was good at writing content to keep my visitor's attention, attracting free traffic via the search engines, and getting my visitors to buy products I recommend.

These are all things you MUST do if you want success with an information website. I guarantee you a regular web host won't help you do all this. Only Site Build It does.

I'm Not The Only Success Story

SBI has helped so many people create successful information websites that SiteSell.com has created a page just to display the results. Go to http://website.sitesell.com/results.

What's most important to note about these sites is that they weren't built by programmers or "techy" people. Most of them are people like you and me who are just looking for supplemental income or perhaps even a way to quit their 9 to 5 jobs.

Look at the array of topics. This shows you that almost anything is fair game. The bottom line is if you have information about something, there are people out there searching in Google, MSN and Yahoo for your content!

When you view this page, take note that every site listed here is at least in the top 1% in terms of website traffic.

This is primarily because SBI helps with creating your pages so they score high in the popular search engines. You'll notice my site, www.flat-stomach-exercises.com is listed there too.

I want to repeat this again. A regular web host will NOT help you with marketing and search engine rankings. They provide you with the platform to build your site but the help stops there.

You are on your own. Only Site Build It takes it to the next level and helps you build and helps you rank high in the search engines.

I can confidently say this because I have tried at least 6 other web hosts in my years of building websites and no one has ever come close to what SBI can deliver. Whether you're a beginner or advanced webmaster, YOU NEED Site Build It if you want financial success.

"...But I'm Not Computer Savvy."

I don't know if you realize it or not, but the people that are making good money on the net aren't necessarily programmers, computer geeks or people that are computer savvy.

Thanks to user-friendly web hosts, anyone can get a website up pretty easily these days. The real key with an information site is actually getting traffic to your site and writing solid, convincing content that holds your visitor's attention so they purchase products you recommend.

Content is what sells - not Flash animations and cool web designs (unless you are in the web design field). It's the useful, bookmarkable (not sure that's a word!) content that convinces people to buy products and services you recommend.

People generally bookmark websites because they provide good content and/or they like the benefits they read about - not because they like the flashy animations going across the screen.

Don't get me wrong. You want your site to look nice, but as I said, that's the easy part these days. SBI has templates already pre-made and you simply choose one and your framework is done in seconds. The real challenge is getting the visitors. That's why you need a web host like SBI.

Now, if you want the bells and whistles you can still do that by all means, just understand that's not what is going to make your site a success. It's your content.

So what if you have a fancy site with cool animations, scrolling images, etc. if no one is actually finding you in Google, Yahoo or MSN.

The key to making money with an information website is offering valuable content to a target audience and getting them to purchase products and service you recommend. That's what Site Build It focuses on helping you do.

So don't worry if you have never built a website or you just aren't too computer savvy. Most people on the SBI results page aren't either, but they managed to succeed with their websites despite being a novice.

Why?

Because they've figured out the importance of choosing a topic they are passionate about and providing useful information to a target audience.

In other words, they've become the expert in their targeted niche (baseball, knitting, skin care or whatever the topic may be). Yes, it is that simple. It takes work, of course -- but the concept is very simple.

100% Money Back Guarantee

SBI not for you? No problem. SiteSell.com understands something like this is not everyone. However, there's no harm in trying it out right?

The folks at SiteSell realize building a website is not for everyone (see for yourself). So there's no point in wasting your money if this is not for you. Just give it a try. You literally have nothing to lose.

Check out the Visual Tour to see if SBI is for you. Then check out the SBI homepage.