Due to the many news stories in recent years about big corporate websites going bankrupt it is a common misconception today that all or most websites are unprofitable and will not make their owners money. This assumption is based on the idea that if big corporations like Disney fail at making a website then your average guy on the street must fail horribly, of course that assumption is wrong. In the case of content driven websites the smaller independent operation often has the advantage over large corporate entities. While an individual or a small group does not have the resources of the large corporation, they also do not have the overhead. If you run a website out of your basement or your bedroom your overhead is already significantly smaller than that of a major corporation because you're not running your website out of a brand new state-of-the-art office building. Additionally if you only have one employee, yourself, you're also reducing your overhead compared to corporations who have to pay for workers who do the same things you do, but also management, building management, building security, maintenance, marketing consultants, development consultants, secretaries, and a myriad of other positions that by keeping your operation small you don't need. The only advantage a corporation has over an individual is that they can afford to pay for gross amounts of advertising both online and off, whereas the typical individual cannot.
What's great about the Internet is that everyone is on a level playing field. Due to the relatively cheap or free access to search engines you can compete with big websites with minimal investment on your part. You don't need lots of money to run a popular profitable website, all you need is time and know-how, and the time requirement isn't even that much. While some websites may require more maintenance than others a typical site can be managed in your spare time, in the evenings or on weekends.
As far as how much you can make? The sky's the limit, however keep your head firmly planted on earth. It is possible to have a monthly income of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars off a website(s) you run in your spare time, that is an attainable goal. It is also possible to make much more than that, but expecting more is a less realistic goal. Don't go into your website project with the expectation of millions of dollars, chances are it isn't going to happen. However, if you are after supplemental income that will last residually for a long time (quite possibly the rest of your life), then this guide will tell you how to do it.
There are no miracles here or magic systems, you will need to follow the correct steps and you will need to work on things. Your first site might fail, your second one too, but maybe your third site will be the one to succeed. After I launched my first commercial site it took me a year and a half before I started making enough money to live on, which was $2-3,000 per month, and then another 8 months before I started making great money, which was 5 figures a month. There wasn't anything magical about it when I finally became a successful self-employed website publisher. It was the result of work, sacrifice, and learning from my mistakes. I now make a very nice six figure sum yearly, but reaching this point first required that I live on a very strict budget back when my websites were only bringing in a few hundred a month. I have taken everything I learned in my road to success and placed it here. This guide bridges the gap between those who know how to build a website, and those who know how to build a successful website. You will not have to pay for this information, this guide is 100% free.
The articles in this guide assume you have a familiarity with web development technologies. If you do not yet know what server side programming or CSS is you should read our Web Development Primer and familiarize yourself with development lingo.
Web Development Primer
Well, not exactly.
When the World Wide Web first became popular, HTML was the only language programmers could use to create Web pages. They soon learned that HTML had some major limitations. Although HTML presented the user with a "page" of information, the Web page and the user had a limited amount of interaction; the experience was like reading the front page of a newspaper on a computer monitor. Now most computer users, whether they use Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, or a combination of the three, are accustomed to graphical applications that provide interaction. They're used to clicking buttons, entering values into text boxes, and choosing from menus. In fact, the only way to get useful work done with a computer is to interact with it. The first generation of Web pages provided information to the users, but the users could not interact with the Web the way they could with their word processors. If users wanted to interact with their Web pages, they had to send the data to the server, which contained all the "smarts." The server sent its results back to the Web page. This interaction required a great deal of extra time, effort, and overhead, and the user interface was very constrained compared to other popular applications.
Fortunately, the builders of the Internet and the World Wide Web recognized these limitations. They soon realized that if the user was denied the capability to interact with the Web page, the Web itself would become little more than a collection of information, much like a library of books. Although that collection is very useful, users demand more from their computers than a duplication of what they could find elsewhere. The capabilities of HTML began to grow and become more powerful. Soon, designers began to realize that they needed more than just HTML to make the Internet accessible and useful to the masses. Corporations that wanted to develop enterprise solutions or explore the profit potential of the Internet also began to pressure designers to give them something more.
Additionally just because you can code a site doesn't mean you can publish a site, you need a domain name, a web host, and a way of transferring files from your PC to your server.
All of these topics will be discussed in turn in this article. So when you're ready, grap a cup of coffee and carry on reading!
Client side technologies are those that are interpreted (executed) by the user's browser. So basically when you type a website's address in your web browser, the latter will make a request to the web server where your HTML files are stored, and the HTML file is send to the browser for viewing. The different technologies that are included in the HTML page like CSS, JavaScript, are all executed on the client browser. A limitation of client-side programming is that it is hard to tell what browser/platform your users are using, and it might turn out that some of the client-side technologies are not supported (or not fully supported) by the browser, thus your web page might be incorrectly displayed. Client side code, by its very nature, is also visible to anyone accessing your site, which makes it unsuitable for security functions. The section that follows will take you on a quick tour to discover the major client-side technologies.
To understand CSS, it's worth recalling back the main purpose of HTML. The latter was originally designed as a structural language, but with time and updates, HTML has been used as a tool for presentation, making use of fonts, colors and other visual elements. The purpose of CSS is now to restore HTML to its original structural language. In other words, cascading style sheets are a new way of formatting your page layout, text, fonts, images, and almost anything that controls the look and feel of your web page. It is included either in-line with the HTML file or linked as a separate file which can then be used by different HTML files. The advantage of separating the structure and look is that web pages can be tailored for different users, browsers, and platform and an obvious benefit is that updating becomes easier as all style information can be stored in one file which dictates the style on every page of your site.
Let's take a quick example at the usage of CSS. Suppose you want all your <H1> tags to have a 10-point Verdana font. Instead of defining every all your <H1> tags in your page with these preferences, you can just use the CSS:
But CSS usage goes far beyond that. CSS is capable of spacing out the content of a page down to the very last pixel...it can do the same when sizing text, thus giving you complete control over the look and feel of your page. In fact CSS will replace some older HTML tags in future browser versions.
When the World Wide Web first became popular, HTML was the only language programmers could use to create Web pages. They soon learned that HTML had some major limitations. Although HTML presented the user with a "page" of information, the Web page and the user had a limited amount of interaction; the experience was like reading the front page of a newspaper on a computer monitor. Now most computer users, whether they use Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, or a combination of the three, are accustomed to graphical applications that provide interaction. They're used to clicking buttons, entering values into text boxes, and choosing from menus. In fact, the only way to get useful work done with a computer is to interact with it. The first generation of Web pages provided information to the users, but the users could not interact with the Web the way they could with their word processors. If users wanted to interact with their Web pages, they had to send the data to the server, which contained all the "smarts." The server sent its results back to the Web page. This interaction required a great deal of extra time, effort, and overhead, and the user interface was very constrained compared to other popular applications.
Fortunately, the builders of the Internet and the World Wide Web recognized these limitations. They soon realized that if the user was denied the capability to interact with the Web page, the Web itself would become little more than a collection of information, much like a library of books. Although that collection is very useful, users demand more from their computers than a duplication of what they could find elsewhere. The capabilities of HTML began to grow and become more powerful. Soon, designers began to realize that they needed more than just HTML to make the Internet accessible and useful to the masses. Corporations that wanted to develop enterprise solutions or explore the profit potential of the Internet also began to pressure designers to give them something more.
Additionally just because you can code a site doesn't mean you can publish a site, you need a domain name, a web host, and a way of transferring files from your PC to your server.
All of these topics will be discussed in turn in this article. So when you're ready, grap a cup of coffee and carry on reading!
Client Side Technologies
Client side technologies are those that are interpreted (executed) by the user's browser. So basically when you type a website's address in your web browser, the latter will make a request to the web server where your HTML files are stored, and the HTML file is send to the browser for viewing. The different technologies that are included in the HTML page like CSS, JavaScript, are all executed on the client browser. A limitation of client-side programming is that it is hard to tell what browser/platform your users are using, and it might turn out that some of the client-side technologies are not supported (or not fully supported) by the browser, thus your web page might be incorrectly displayed. Client side code, by its very nature, is also visible to anyone accessing your site, which makes it unsuitable for security functions. The section that follows will take you on a quick tour to discover the major client-side technologies.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
To understand CSS, it's worth recalling back the main purpose of HTML. The latter was originally designed as a structural language, but with time and updates, HTML has been used as a tool for presentation, making use of fonts, colors and other visual elements. The purpose of CSS is now to restore HTML to its original structural language. In other words, cascading style sheets are a new way of formatting your page layout, text, fonts, images, and almost anything that controls the look and feel of your web page. It is included either in-line with the HTML file or linked as a separate file which can then be used by different HTML files. The advantage of separating the structure and look is that web pages can be tailored for different users, browsers, and platform and an obvious benefit is that updating becomes easier as all style information can be stored in one file which dictates the style on every page of your site.
Let's take a quick example at the usage of CSS. Suppose you want all your <H1> tags to have a 10-point Verdana font. Instead of defining every all your <H1> tags in your page with these preferences, you can just use the CSS:
H1 {font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt;}
But CSS usage goes far beyond that. CSS is capable of spacing out the content of a page down to the very last pixel...it can do the same when sizing text, thus giving you complete control over the look and feel of your page. In fact CSS will replace some older HTML tags in future browser versions.
JavaScript
JavaScript is a scripting language that was developed by Netscape and supported as Jscript in Microsoft Internet Explorer. The language was turned into ECMAScript, as a cross-platform Internet standard for scripting. But we still use the most commonly recognized JavaScript name. JavaScript should not be confused with Java. Despite similarities in their names, these 2 languages are completely different from each other. In fact the name "JavaScript" came around as nothing more than a marketing ploy.
JavaScript is a core web technology that every designer is encouraged to understand well. It was born out of desire to let HTML authors write scripts directly in their documents. JavaScript brings programming power within the reach of everyone familiar with HTML.
JavaScript borrows its syntax from C/C++ and those familiar with C will feel right at home. But those without any programming experience will find that JavaScript is not the easiest language in the world to learn but it's a far cry from having to learn a full programming language such as Java or C.
JavaScript is interpreted on the client side (on the user's browser), and is shipped in every platform-specific version of Netscape Navigator 2+ and Internet Explorer 4+. It can be used to enhance web page in many ways, for example, validating form, adding user interactivity, process data or control multiple frames. It handles events for the various HTML elements, for example, it allows buttons to have OnClick event handlers. While most people limit their use of JavaScript to client-side only, JavaScript can also be used in servers, and authoring tools.
Microsoft's Visual Basic Script (VBScript) offers the functions of a programming language and the simplicity of a technology streamlined for the Web. With VBScript, you can bring your Web pages to life with real-time interaction; there's no more waiting for a server to respond to button clicks and mouse movements. A click of a button gets an instant reaction, and the movement of the mouse over an object brings the object to life.
When you enhance your Web pages with VBScript, you insert scripts directly into your pages. Because VBScript is a subset of Microsoft's Visual Basic, your scripts resemble programs written in Visual Basic. If you aren't a programmer, don't worry. The wonderful thing about VBScript is that it's a very simple programming language to learn and to use. Many Web publishers who aren't programmers use VBScript to enhance their Web pages.
Like most basic programming languages, VBScript is an interpreted language, which is both good news and bad news. The good news is that you don't need to compile your scripts as you would with a program written in C or C++. Your scripts are directly interpreted, line-by-line, when they're executed in the user's browser. The bad news is that before anyone can run your scripts, he or she needs a VBScript interpreter, which is part of the standard Internet Explorer browser package. It's installed automatically when you install Internet Explorer. VBScript is really more or less another version of JavaScript. The only difference is that with VBScript you can use ActiveX controls which allow for more functionality than JavaScript provides. The downside of this is that this added functionality has created a plethora of security issues with Microsoft browsers.
DHTML and Java»
JavaScript is a core web technology that every designer is encouraged to understand well. It was born out of desire to let HTML authors write scripts directly in their documents. JavaScript brings programming power within the reach of everyone familiar with HTML.
JavaScript borrows its syntax from C/C++ and those familiar with C will feel right at home. But those without any programming experience will find that JavaScript is not the easiest language in the world to learn but it's a far cry from having to learn a full programming language such as Java or C.
JavaScript is interpreted on the client side (on the user's browser), and is shipped in every platform-specific version of Netscape Navigator 2+ and Internet Explorer 4+. It can be used to enhance web page in many ways, for example, validating form, adding user interactivity, process data or control multiple frames. It handles events for the various HTML elements, for example, it allows buttons to have OnClick event handlers. While most people limit their use of JavaScript to client-side only, JavaScript can also be used in servers, and authoring tools.
VBScript
Microsoft's Visual Basic Script (VBScript) offers the functions of a programming language and the simplicity of a technology streamlined for the Web. With VBScript, you can bring your Web pages to life with real-time interaction; there's no more waiting for a server to respond to button clicks and mouse movements. A click of a button gets an instant reaction, and the movement of the mouse over an object brings the object to life.
When you enhance your Web pages with VBScript, you insert scripts directly into your pages. Because VBScript is a subset of Microsoft's Visual Basic, your scripts resemble programs written in Visual Basic. If you aren't a programmer, don't worry. The wonderful thing about VBScript is that it's a very simple programming language to learn and to use. Many Web publishers who aren't programmers use VBScript to enhance their Web pages.
Like most basic programming languages, VBScript is an interpreted language, which is both good news and bad news. The good news is that you don't need to compile your scripts as you would with a program written in C or C++. Your scripts are directly interpreted, line-by-line, when they're executed in the user's browser. The bad news is that before anyone can run your scripts, he or she needs a VBScript interpreter, which is part of the standard Internet Explorer browser package. It's installed automatically when you install Internet Explorer. VBScript is really more or less another version of JavaScript. The only difference is that with VBScript you can use ActiveX controls which allow for more functionality than JavaScript provides. The downside of this is that this added functionality has created a plethora of security issues with Microsoft browsers.
DHTML and Java»
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