About
Making Cash On The Web is a serious attempt to compile useful information about making money on the internet. It is a combination of things that I have learned myself, as well as information culled from other sources. It is NOT about get rich quick schemes, or wierd marketing programs. I am not going to sell you anything.
If you don't yet have a website but want to get started making cash on the web, start here.
Categories
Monthly Archives
Most recent entries
- Sites With A PageRank of 10
- Blogging For Big Bucks
- Ontok Highlighter
- Building Your Forums
- Font Usability Study
- Promote Your Site With Business Cards
- Get Started With Typepad
- Incorporate Your Websites
- Help Finding A Good Domain Name
- Google Adwords Keyword Tool
- Million Pixel Ads
- Develop Backlinks By Offering Free Articles
- From Blogs To Riches
- Hide Your Email Address
- Test Your Site Speed
Syndicate
General
WordPress
Designed to facilitate “blogging,” WordPress is an outstanding piece of software. It’s relatively easy to install; easy to use; flexible; and powerful. There is an active community that offers support. And best of all: its free.
This site was created using WordPress.
WordPress is a publishing system. It’s designed to offer an easy way to regularly add new pages to a website. The pages actually are stored in a MySql database and are delivered to your readers upon request.
WordPress offers tremendous advantages over the traditional way of creating web pages. The old way requires you to create a page on your own computer and then upload it to your host’s servers. With WordPress, you go online to your site, and log in. Then, you use a word-processor-like interface to type in the content of your new page. Once you’re finished, you click the publish button, and viola! A new page is created.
Even better: the program allows others to contribute to your site by adding comments to your posts. In this way, others will help you add content to your site.
WordPress allows you to organize your site by creating “categories.” If your site is on collecting glass mushrooms, you could create a different category for each mushroom type. A list of the different categories is posted on the front page of the site, and people can click on the category link to read all of the things you have written that fit into that category.
It’s also very easy to customize the look of WordPress. Alex King has a website where you can download any of dozens of different WordPress templates. With most of them, you can use the “Templates” function of WordPress to replace the contents of the wp-layout.css file with the contents of the css file in the downloaded file.
Search engines such as Google and Yahoo have no trouble finding and indexing pages of sites created with WordPress. You will find that your site created using this software will show up in search engines as readily as sites created by any other method.
If you’re just starting out, and you don’t feel confident installing your own software, you can get a hosting account with HostRocket.Com and they will install it for you on your hosting account.
To install it yourself, you can get WordPress here.
Choosing A Web Host: Other Features
Disk Space and Bandwidth are the two most basic issues in web hosting. But there are also some other features that you’re going to need.
Here again, is where the bargain basement web hosts often fail to meet expectations. They often don’t have many of the features that you’ll need.
This is another lesson I learned the hard way. My first web host did not offer a lot of extras. And when I got adventuresome and decided to add some new features, I discovered that I couldn’t.
So here’s what I think you will need:
Linux Hosting running Apache web server: There are two basic types of hosting: Linux and Windows. Go with Linux. You’ll find that it plays much nicer with a lot of the free website add-on programs.
ftp access: This is how you upload your files. Believe it or not, some hosts don’t offer this feature.
php, java (javascript) and perl: These are three different programming languages commonly used on the net. Your host need to support all of these to ensure that your site is fully functional. You don’t need to know how to program in these languages to run a website. (I only have a rudimentary understanding of php). But you do need to have them available.
MySql databases: Your plan needs to offer one or more MySql databases for your site. Many—if not most—of the more sophisticated web programs use MySql databases. Again, you don’t have to know how to actually do anything with them, but the need to be available for your programs.
CGI-Bin support: just trust me on this one.
CPanel (best), Plesk or Ensim (not nearly as good) for web-based management of your account
And finally, make sure that they run php as a server module and not as a cgi process.
There are a couple of more issues that you need to consider before choosing. Read on about the importance of technical support
Choosing A Web Host: Space and Bandwidth
On the surface, it seems simple. You need a company to rent you space on their servers so that you can upload your website files.
But there are literally millions of web hosting services out there. And there are probably billions of different hosting plans.
To get started, you don’t need a particularly complex or expensive plan. But you probably are going to need a plan that provides some flexibility, and if you are relatively new to this, one that has good support services.
This means that the cheapest hosting isn’t always the best.
The two most obvious issues are disk (server) space and bandwidth.
Disk space is the amount of space allocated to you on the rented server. This is the limit to the number of files that you can store there.
Bandwidth is the amount of data that users can request in a given period of time, usually a month—although some very cheap hosts have daily limits. This is the equivalent of “minutes” on a cell phone or long distance deal. Once your readers have used up your bandwidth, your site either is shut down, or you end up paying a premium.
So how much space are you going to need?
I’d say that—assuming that you’re serious, and given room for growth— 500 - 1,000 megabytes is a good starting point. You don’t want to outgrow your space too soon. I found that, after creating my initial site, I found plenty of new features that I wanted to add. And each of those additional features demanded more server space. I soon ran out of space on my cheap host. Then I had to move my site. And that was a real pain.
Bandwidth is a more complicated issue, and depends upon a plethora of variables. The general formula is
size of webpage x number of visitors x days in a month
Of course, you won’t know the sizes of your pages until you have the site up and running, and the number of visitors will constantly be growing ... so this doesn’t tell you much.
For a basic website, it’s likely that 25 gigabytes will be more than enough. And this seems to be the starting point for many web hosts these days. But make sure that your host will allow you to upgrade your plan if you need more.
There also are a number of other features that you should consider. Read on about other features you should consider.
Choosing A Web Host: Support and Service
If you’re experienced at creating a web site, you probably won’t need a lot of support. Web-based control panel interfaces make managing accounts easy.
But if you’re reading this page, it’s likely that you don’t have a lot of experience.
When I first began creating websites for fun and profit, I spent a lot of time on the phone with technical support: what is this? how do I do that?
I am sure that they lost money on me.
If you’re at all unsure about this, I’d suggest that you look for a web host with live, toll-free 24/7 telephone support.
Many of the cheaper hosts offer live support during business hours; or only through email. Neither of these are ideal. Since you’re managing your site as a part time job, you’ll be doing most of your work after your working day, and on weekends. And that’s when you’ll need technical support.
You also need to worry about the level of service. Does the host guarantee 99% uptime? Is there a period of time when you can get out of your contract if you’re not satisfied? Does the host actually own the server space that you are renting, or are they a reseller who is, in turn, renting space on some else’s servers (this is bad).
Read the information on the web hosts’ sites carefully. Email them with questions and see how long they take to respond. This should tell you something, too.
Continue Reading With Final Decisions About Web Hosting
Choosing A Web Host: Final Decisions
Prices and features on web hosts change constantly, so it’s hard to name a “best” plan.
Any of the ones below are good choices. As of the current writing, they offer virtually everything you need: domain name registration, hosting, and 24/7 support. You just need to compare their current prices and features.
Netfirms Web Hosting for Small Business
However, at this time, there is one that offers an additional feature that’s tailor made for the beginner: HostRocket.Com
HostRocket offers all that the others do, PLUS they will install a large number of web-hosting programs for you, including the software that I recommend you start with: WordPress.
You may be tempted to go with a free webhost, or with a site that offers you a free “blogging” account. Don’t. These are designed to generate cash for the host, not for you. If you’re going to make money, you’ve got to have total control over your site and content.