Many of you or your family, friends and acquaintances have tried at least once to create your own website and make money on it on the Internet, but not all of them succeed. Most, after the first failure, abandon this idea, considering it not real for themselves. Why is this happening? What is the website owner facing and what should he know?
First of all, let's answer the question:
What is a website?
Not long on googling, most of you will answer that "A website is a collection of web pages that are logically interconnected." This is the main reason for our failures!
After all, if this is all for the whole "set of web pages", then it will be enough to place them on the Internet and you can get income, and we, at the same time, will not have to do anything else. Such a judgment will lead you to the fact that very soon, without earning a penny, you will simply abandon your site.
So what is a website really?
Web site (web site - eng.). Web - network, web, site - site, location. It turns out that the website is our site on the Internet, in other words - our virtual real estate, our virtual home or office. If it is virtual real estate, then, like any real estate, the website requires constant maintenance and constant, not small investments. Everyone who is going to open their own website should know this and be ready for it.
What kind of site maintenance do you need?
First of all, the site needs to be constantly updated. Moreover, it is necessary to update not only the software part, but also the informational one.
Why do I need to update the software part?
Surely some of you have heard the expression “the site has fallen down”. It means that the server or one of the site components has failed. Most often, such an error occurs due to the incorrect operation of the template files - the visual part of the site. “I worked, I worked. Everything was fine, but suddenly the work was not right! Why would that? " - you ask. That is it, that it is not all of a sudden! IT technologies are developing rapidly now. Twelve years ago, when we started working in this area, we had windows xp on our computers, today, for sure, many have already forgotten that there was such an wasp. It's the same with web technologies. In 2009, the fourth version of the PHP programming language was relevant, now it is already the eighth. The PHP language has undergone many changes over the years. Many functions are outdated and replaced by new ones. The situation is the same with other languages in which the sites work. Naturally, if the site was developed, for example, in 2010, then now it will not work, or it will work with big errors.
There is another very serious reason why you need to constantly update the core and all the components of the site - this is security! A good example of this is the version of CMS Joomla 3.0. This version initially came out with big errors and was quickly cracked (in subsequent versions, these errors were eliminated). Now we often face the fact that the owners of sites developed on this version of the engine did not update them and now they are sending spam, or, even worse, information is leaking, both from their site and from other sites that are hosted on the same server as the legacy site. Both in the first and in the second case, hosting providers simply block or delete the accounts of such clients. And if the CMS itself, most often, is free, then the rating and functional extensions to it, for the most part, are paid and are not cheap. Licenses for such extensions are usually issued for a year. An SSL certificate plays an important role in site security. Such certificates are paid and also cost a lot. Previously, it was possible to use the written certificate itself, but now most browsers no longer accept such certificates.
Why do you need to constantly and as often as possible update the information on the site?
If you have an online store with a frequently updated list of goods, a constantly updated list of services or a news site, then everything is clear and understandable. You start a new product or news and that's it. Why and how to update information if you have a constant, unchangeable list of goods or services and news is not enough? We answer these questions in detail in the section on SEO. Here we will briefly reveal only one reason why this should be done.
The main reason why it is necessary to update the information on the site is the search engines, or rather the principle of their work. You have created a website, posted it on the Internet and registered it in a search engine. After that, the search engine robot crawls your site, analyzes it and, according to the topic, places it in its catalog. For the first week, the robot crawls the site twice a day. Then, if there is nothing new on it, once a day and so on. As a result, your site will be on the outskirts of search queries, no one will know about it and will not go to it. There are many ways to get updates without updating the main content. One of them is the installation of an RSS news feed on the site. The biggest and, perhaps, the only disadvantage of this method is that it is not always possible to find an RSS feed on a site's topic. But that's not all. It is not enough to add new content to the site, it still needs to be optimized for certain search engine rules.
What is a website for?
As we have already found out, the site is virtual real estate. The site is your virtual home. On it you can receive guests, communicate with friends, celebrate events that are important to you. Today, during the pandemic, such sites have become very popular. The site is your virtual office. With its help, you can receive visitors from all over the world, without limiting yourself to geographic location, pay for services to partners and accept payments from clients. The site is your school or university where you can study and teach others. The site is your store with buyers from all over the world, without customs and borders. The scope of the site is limitless! Finally, a good, ranked site can sell well.
What does it take for a website to generate income?
First, you need a meticulously thought-out structure. The site should be user-friendly and interesting. The visitor should not search for what he needs on the site for more than one minute.
Secondly, the site should only contain unique content! Do not copy information from other sites. Search engines do not like plagiarism and are severely punished for it.
In the third, frequent updating of information. You have to pull the visitor to your site. The visitor should want to go to your site, and for him he should know that whenever he comes to the site, he will always find something new for himself.
For details, see the pages "Website Development" and "Website Monetization".
How long does it take for the site to start generating income and profits?
It all depends on how seriously you approach the issues: creation, content, optimization and maintenance of the site. One thing you need to know and remember - the site will not bring you instant profit! You will receive the first income not earlier than in six months or a year, and the first profit, you will have to wait at least two years! And at the same time constantly invest labor, intellectual and financial resources.
On this page, we do not touch upon all the aspects and nuances of creating and maintaining sites, you can find all the detailed information in the relevant sections.
Now let's summarize:
A website is a complex software and information product that is not cheap and needs constant maintenance, like any real estate.
Maintenance of the site also entails not small costs.
Despite all the costs, the maintenance of the site costs about half as much as the maintenance of an office or store.
Don't expect quick income from the site. With proper maintenance, the site begins to generate income no earlier than six months later, or even after a year, and the first profit must be expected from two to five years.