With the plethora of helpful tools, guides, and tutorials out there today, making your very own website and creating an income from it has never been easier. It’s an ideal side-income for a hardworking parent, as the amount of time you decide to invest in it is completely up to you.

Running your own website could also allow you to spend more time learning and creating your own content on a topic that interests you. While there are already hundreds of websites covering just about everything, your unique approach could make you stand out among the rest.

We’ve put together a guide outlining the basics, so that you know what to expect, as well as the potential costs.

Using a Website Builder

Before the days of website builders, people had to manually code every aspect of their site. You’d have to learn a few programming languages to do this yourself, but these days it’s far from necessary. For this guide, we’ll be using WordPress, as it’s by far the easiest and most flexible option, not to mention being free.

Using WordPress is as simple as creating an account and selecting a few options. One of the most important is choosing a theme for your site. You can always opt for a free theme in the beginning as it’s easy to change it when it comes you want to invest in something more unique. Premium themes can cost anywhere between $25 and $200.

Registering a Domain

While WordPress does offer a free domain option, having your own domain is essential if you want your website to rank high in search results and look professional. Shopify is a great option for domain name registration. The entire process is automated, making them an ideal option for beginners.

As for cost, you can expect to pay around $29 per month for the basic option, which is more than sufficient in the beginning. Fortunately, Shopify offers a two-week free trial for you to try out before putting any money down.

Plugins

While WordPress offers the basics for creating a website, you’ll need to make use of plugins in order to gain additional functionality. Many essential plugins are available for free. These will help you obtain analytics on how people use your website and where they come from. Other plugins can add extra features to your site, such as a contact form.

Monetising

Once your website is set up and ready to go, the next step depends on the path you choose to take. Do you want to make money from ads while writing a blog? Or do you want to sell a digital product such as your own eBook? You could also sell physical products through your website. You could even build great websites and then sell them for profit.

Conclusion

Creating a website makes for a great learning experience and allows you to get an in-depth look into an integral part of modern society. Who knows, your website might just turn into something big. All you need is a willingness to learn and some old school work ethic

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.