In our last article, we talked about belonging to the Wealthy Affiliate (WA) community and the reasons WHY you should be a member. One of the first things you learn in WA is ‘creating a free website in 4 easy steps’ around your passion (niche). After that, you will learn how to monetize it by earning revenue as an affiliate marketer. But first things first.

How many times have you mentioned how you would like to have your website but you just couldn’t afford to have someone build it for you?

I know what that is like – I paid over $3,000 for a website that didn’t promise what it was supposed to. It cost me another $900 from someone else to fix the first website! Crazy money, huh?

Since joining WA, I not only moved this website here but also built 3 others for a fraction of that cost, and you can too! Your first website won’t cost you ANYTHING!

There are many reasons why one might want a website but the one we will be focusing on is earning an income.

Here, we will cover the first two, choosing an interest and building a website (your foundation).

Getting Started on a Free Website

This is where the fun starts. First, you will want to join the WA community. Don’t worry, you won’t be asked for your credit card! This is FREE(!) but worthwhile. This is where newbies get started fast!

Let me briefly touch on what you will get here.

• You will have live help for 7 days

• 1 FREE website

• Website Builder

• 30 keyword searches

• Access to 2 training classes

• Affiliate Program

• Earn while you learn training

• Beginner training course (10 lessons)

• Phase 1 of Affiliate Bootcamp Training (10 lessons)

• 50 Training modules

• Video walk-throughs

Ok. Let’s get started. Next, we will explore how easy it is to create your first website. Ready?

Finding Your Niche for Your Free Website

Without a niche, you won’t have content. Without content, you won’t have traffic. Without traffic, you won’t have revenue. So what is a niche?

 A niche (interest or passion) is described as the following:

• a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment.

• denoting or relating to products, services, or interests that appeal to a specialized section of the population.

The ideal niche, obviously, is one that you love (your passion) AND you can earn an income (passive) from. Notice I said ideal. You can become an authority expert even if you don’t know much about the niche you’ve chosen, but more on that later.

Some Key Elements About A Niche

• Whatever niche you choose, try, and think long-term. Will you still be interested in this niche in 3 months? A year from now? What about 10 years from now?

• Passion doesn’t necessarily equal money (some niches will not monetize well). Is there a market for your niche?

• Is this a flash-in-the-pan (current trend) niche or is it long-term and sustainable?

A few examples of niches/passions/hobbies are camping, cars, real estate, pets, weight loss, electronics, skincare, fashion, music, travel, photography, health, home gyms, gardening, and website designing.

What about the skills you already possess? For example, maybe you are a whiz in financing. Could you use this skill to help others to plan their finances? As you can see, the list is endless.

If you truly have no idea what you want as a niche, this handy tool will help! It has a Brainstorming feature to give you ideas, can help you discover Affiliate programs for your niche, and help you figure out if there’s money to be made in a particular niche.

4 Easy Steps To Build Your Website

Now that you know what you want your website to be about, let’s start building it in 4 easy steps. I encourage you to read all the information first BEFORE clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.

1. What Type of free website to build

First, you need to know what kind of website you want to build. Will it be a free domain? A domain you already own? Or will you register a new domain?

2. Choose a domain name for your free website

Domain names are used to identify one or more IP addresses. For example, the domain name microsoft.com represents about a dozen IP addresses. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular worldwide web pages. (Source Webopedia)

Simply type in the name of the domain you want, without spaces. You will know if it is available. If it isn’t, try another one. This will become your brand.

If this is your very first website, you most likely will use the free Siterubix website within the WA platform and that’s okay. You can still rank but you might want to consider your own domain (your piece of real estate). Why? It is something you own, domains increase in value, and they will rank better with Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

NameMesh is an effective free tool that will help in generating great domain names that are relevant to your particular niche.

Once you find one that works and is available, copy it and head back over to Site Domains in the WA platform and paste it in to make sure it is available. If it is not available, there will be an ‘x’ beside it. In the future, if you wish to purchase your own, they are very reasonably priced at just around $14 US for a domain name (for 1 year).

Note: The three most popular domain extensions are .com, .org and .net with .com being the most difficult, valuable and sought-after extension. If at all possible, try and get a .com extension.

3. Choose a website name for your free website

The name of your website should match your domain name but it also needs to be grammatically correct. For example:

Domain name: thetravellinglife.com
Website name: The Travelling Life

Note: Domain names should be short, catchy and easy to remember; avoid hyphens; is it also available on social media (such as Twitter, FB, Instagram, etc.)

Another good idea is to purchase your own (name) domain. You never know when you might want to use it and purchasing it before someone else with the same name makes sense.

4. Choose a design

Your final step is to choose the design or look for your website. This is called the theme and you will have access to 12, hand-picked quality designs. You can always change your theme down the road if you don’t like it.

There you have it! 4 easy steps to get you started.

Congratulations on Taking Your First Steps to Build a WEBSITE!

What Comes Next?

Creating a free website in your chosen niche is exciting! Creating a beautiful FREE website in 4 easy steps has never been easier.

But what’s next? We talked about creating content so it will rank in the search engines – so you can start making money. Creating content will take time but as a Starter member at Wealthy Affiliate, you have access to 10 lessons and 50 training modules as well as all the benefits mentioned above.

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