Web Hosting Made Easy!

So now that you have your Web site set up, you’ll want to make money at it, but you’re out of luck because you don’t charge your users for access, right? Wrong. There are plenty of ways to make money from your site, simply by displaying ads.

Two popular choices are Google AdSense, and Commission Junction, both of which offer you the ability to display ads on your site, and to profit from it. Through both of these sites, you can be paid by cheque or direct deposit. Of course, these are only two of the many possibilities out there, but they are good examples. When choosing an advertising publisher, you want to make sure that they’re reliable. After all, what good is displaying ads if you don’t get paid, right?

Regardless of what site you sign up for, you will have to provide basic information such as your name, address, taxpayer identification number, and your site’s URL. In some cases, you will have to be manually approved, so that the publisher can verify that your site is within their terms of service. This process can take as little as a day, or as long as 3 days. Once you’re approved, though, you’ll be given instructions on how to log in, and set up your account. You will then be able to choose ads, and you’ll be given the code to insert into your HTML code or your blog template.

Make sure to choose ads that fit with the theme of your site, and its color scheme. Also, take note that sites such as AdSense and Commission Junction usually have minimums (usually $100 USD) before you’ll be paid. This could mean you won’t see a payment for two or three months, depending on your site’s traffic, and how many people click on the ads. It’s also important to note for yourself whether you display ads that pay by the display or pay by the purchase. In many cases, you’ll do better to choose CPM advertisements, which pay per 1,000 views.

As long as you make note of what the payment minimums are, and on what basis you’re paid for displaying the ads, you’ll know exactly what to expect. For most small sites, ads merely offset the hosting costs, but for larger sites, it’s quite possible to turn a profit, especially if you wisely choose ads that are most likely to appeal to your target audience.

So now you have your content, but if you use applications such as WordPress for your blog, and vBulletin for forums, then you need to set up SQL databases. With Cpanel, this is easy. You simply select the SQL database option, which is located in your administrator menu, and create a database. If you have a shared account, your database will be username_databasename. You then create a user and password, for which you grant all rights. Then, you take this information and place it into the configuration file of whatever application you’re using.

Simply consult the documentation for details, it’s very simple to do. Just make sure that you include the full database name (example: joesite_joeblog, and not just “joeblog”). If you do not enter the information into the configuration file correctly, your program will not be able to connect to the database.

By the way, if at any time you need to change the password to your database, you can do that by going to the SQL menu, and changing the password. If you do this, remember to adjust your configuration file accordingly.

Once your database is set, you’re ready for installation of the database, which is something that programs such as WordPress and vBulletin do as part of the setup routine. Once that is done, and assuming that you have encountered no errors along the way, then you are ready to start setting up your blog, forums, e-commerce site, or whatever else you’re trying to set up.

On your website, you may have more than one database: one for the blog, one for the forums, maybe one for e-commerce, and another for photos. Once you have set up all your databases, and set up your software, then you’ll want to get people to come to your site, and that is where we’ll start in our next installment.