Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
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I recommend that you choose a subject or niche that interests you, like Japanese gardening or Civil War replicas.....something that has high demand and low supply and you're really interested in.
Once you choose a niche, do some keyword research and find the types of things people are looking for that has to do with your subject matter. Using the Japanese garden niche example, maybe you find a keyword phrase for "Japanese walkway lanterns." Write a page on that. Go to the next high demand, low supply keyword(s) and do another page....and so on. Build each page around a certain set of keywords in that niche.
Make sure you put the keywords in your title tag, description, keywords and content.
After you have a decent sized site built (I'd recommend AT LEAST 20 pages), begin looking for affiliates that match your niche and each page, whether it be Commission Junction merchants, Clickbank, eBay, etc. I highly recommend you do not start to monetize your site until a good 20-25 pages are built. Go for more than that. Anything sooner and the search engines will see a small site with lots of ads and write it off as junk. You want to please your visitors and the SE's, both, in that order.
If you put the content first, the money will follow. The content is what drives the traffic, you pre-sell your visitors with your content and then the money will come. You want to come off as an expert in your field.
Take your time, research your niche and be PATIENT!
That's it, in a nutshell. There's more, but you'll learn as you go. Just make sure you are providing excellent content for your visitors. Without them (traffic), you won't make a dime. And don't buy into any Get Rich Quick garbage. It's worthless to you.
For a simple host, I'd go with HostGator. For the best, I'm extremely partial to Site Build It.