So you want to create a website this year, but don‘t know where to start? Don‘t worry, you‘re not alone. Thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs face analysis paralysis when it comes to picking an idea and getting their first site off the ground.
The good news is, it‘s easier than ever to launch a professional website even if you have no technical skills or experience. And with the right strategy, you can start driving traffic and earning income faster than you might think.
In this comprehensive beginner‘s guide, we‘ll walk you through the process of:
- Picking the best website niche for you
- Choosing the ideal platform
- Building out your site
- Creating eye-catching content
- Driving organic traffic
- Monetizing your audience
We‘ll provide detailed examples of real-world websites finding success in each niche so you can get ideas and model what works.
Let‘s get started!
5 of the Best Website Ideas for Beginner Website Owners
1. Create a Niche Blog
Blogs remain one of the most popular types of websites because they‘re easy to set up as a beginner. You don‘t need any fancy technical skills – just choose a niche you‘re passionate about, start writing helpful content, and publish it through a blogging platform like WordPress.
Some examples of profitable niche blogs include:
- Food blogs like Pinch of Yum
- Travel blogs like Nomadic Matt
- Fitness blogs like Diary of a Fit Mommy
The key is to pick a specific niche so you can rank for focused keywords in search engines and attract a target readership over time. This allows you to provide more value through your content.
Once you start building an audience, you can make money through affiliate marketing, selling online courses or ebooks, advertising, and more. Blogs lend themselves well to diversified income streams.
2. Create an Online Course
Online courses represent a lucrative business model, allowing you to sell access to premium education around topics you specialize in. The global eLearning market is projected to be worth $370 billion by 2026.
With course builder platforms like Teachable and Thinkific, you don‘t need advanced tech skills to create and sell courses. You can easily build lessons, accept payments, engage with students and more.
Some examples include:
- Udemy instructors teaching courses on programming, design, writing, and more specialized skills
- VR Dev School offering premium training on virtual reality development
Look for rising trends and underserved niches where people are looking for education. For instance, older adults wanting to learn new digital skills could be a great target market.
Once your course is live, you can drive sales through SEO, paid ads, and leveraging social proof with reviews and testimonials.
3. Launch a Membership Site
Membership sites allow you to charge a recurring subscription fee in exchange for access to exclusive content and community features. This leads to predictable revenue.
For example, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income has a monthly membership program called SPI Pro that provides courses, live Q&As, forums and more for online business owners.
You can create members-only content and discussion areas around almost any topic from golf instruction to watercolor painting tutorials. Plugins like MemberPress for WordPress make it easy to gate access to certain pages and posts.
4. Start Print-on-Demand Ecommerce
One of the most accessible ecommerce models for beginners is starting a print-on-demand (POD) online store. This allows you to upload custom designs that get printed on products like t-shirts, mugs and phone cases as orders come in.
For example, a POD store might sell:
- T-shirts and hoodies printed with original artwork
- Motivational water bottles and travel mugs with unique graphics
- Phone cases printed with niche meme images
You only pay your supplier and fulfillment partner to produce exactly what‘s ordered by customers, meaning you don‘t have to deal with inventory, shipping, returns and other headaches with traditional ecommerce.
This makes POD an extremely scalable model with huge selection potential and limited risk as you test ideas.
5. Launch a Dropshipping Business
Dropshipping works just like POD except instead of selling custom printed products, you‘re reselling other suppliers‘ physical products on your online store.
For example, a sporting goods dropshipping website might feature fitness gear, outdoor equipment, athletic apparel and supplements without actually stocking any inventory. When an order comes through, you forward it to the wholesaler and they ship directly to the customer.
This saves you from investing a lot of money upfront buying products. However, profit margins are lower than if you held your own inventory. Still, it‘s one of the most accessible online business models for beginners.
Choosing the Best Platform for Your Beginner Website
Now that you have some website niche ideas, how do you actually get up and running from a technical standpoint?
Here are some of the most popular platforms for launching different types of beginner sites:
Blogs: WordPress or Squarespace
Online courses: Teachable, Thinkific or Podia
Ecommerce stores: Shopify, Wix, or Sellfy
Membership sites: MemberPress WordPress plugin
The benefit of options like WordPress and Shopify are they work well for multiple website types. WordPress allows you to start a blog, membership site or online course platform all on the same site.
Whereas more specialized software like Teachable is purpose-built for just hosting online courses. This can provide a smoother experience but less flexibility.
We recommend WordPress for most beginner sites because of its versatility and extensive library of themes and plugins. But explore all your options to see what aligns best with your goals.
7 Tips for Building & Launching a Successful Beginner Website
Here are some key tips to follow when starting your first website as a beginner:
1. Buy a Custom Domain Name
Don’t use the default platform subdomain (e.g. yoursite.wordpress.com). Investing $10-$15 per year in a custom .com domain like yoursitename.com makes your site look more professional.
2. Choose a Mobile-Friendly Theme
Over 60% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices. Select a responsive theme that resizes correctly cross all devices. Most platforms make this easy nowadays.
3. Write Engaging Content
Well-written, interesting content tailored to your niche gives visitors reason to stay on your site and come back. Make sure you edit carefully and format posts well.
4. Promote Your Launch
Let people know your new website exists! Share the link across your social profiles and email contacts. This helps kickstart initial traffic and awareness. Offer incentives for shares and signups.
5. Implement SEO Best Practices
About half of overall website traffic comes from search engines like Google. Using proper keywords, meta descriptions, alt text, internal links and more improves how you rank so more organic visitors find your site.
6. Make Payment Processing Seamless
If you plan to sell products or access to gated content, set up a merchant processor like Stripe or PayPal to easily accept payments online without friction.
7. Continue Testing and Learning
Keep a growth mindset around your beginner website. Experiment with tweaks and new tactics to see what moves the needle with traffic and revenue. Challenge assumptions and keep educating yourself as you build your online business.
Putting these fundamentals in place sets you up for sustainability early on.
Driving Organic Traffic to Your New Website
Once you officially launch your shiny new website, the real work begins – getting visitors!
Here are some proven strategies for driving organic traffic as a beginner:
Target SEO keywords in your content: Research what your audience already searches for in your niche and then create centered around those topics, while organically working your focus keywords into each piece of content. This could be long-form tutorials and blog posts, videos, visual guides, etc.
Produce link-worthy content: Getting backlinks from external websites signals authority to Google and can drastically improve your search rankings. Create truly unique, engaging content that sites in your industry want to reference links back to.
Connect content across silos: Interlink related content across section of your site through internal linking so visitors click deeper into your content library. This also helps pages reinforce one another with contextual relevance signals for SEO.
Publish to social media consistently: Promote all your latest website content across social media like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and anywhere your niche audience hangs out online. Make content easily shareable.
Build relationships with influencers: Reach out to relevant bloggers and social media influencers and pitch them guest posting opportunities or requests to review and share your content.
Leverage paid advertising: Platforms like Google Ads, Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to target website visitors by various demographics and interests. While paid ads don’t drive sustainable “free” traffic, they allow testing what messaging and offers convert within your niche. Use tightly focused campaigns.
Mastering organic growth takes consistency over an extended period. But the payoff in stable returned website traffic makes it worth the effort.
5 Effective Ways Beginners Can Monetize Website Traffic
Driving visitors to your new website is only step one. To turn your site into a profitable stream of online income, you need to effectively monetize that traffic once it shows up.
Here are some of the most accessible options for beginner site owners just starting out:
1. Affiliate Programs
Affiliate marketing remains hugely popular because it allows you to earn commissions simply for promoting relevant products to your audience, without all the overhead of managing your own products.
Amazon Associates is likely the largest affiliate program out there, with influencers and bloggers making a full-time living referring purchasers to the ecommerce giant.
But explore options in your specific niche – SaaS companies, digital tool vendors, and course creators often have generous affiliate programs rewarding you for successful conversions driven by your site.
2. Display Advertising
Ad platforms like Google Adsense allow publishers to place text and image advertisements on their site real estate. You get paid per impression or click.
While the CPM rates for display ads are fairly low compared to premium channels like social media, earnings can scale up decently as your site traffic grows over time.
Just be careful not to overload your site with excessive ads that obstruct normal content consumption. Do not let monetization ruin user experience.
3. Sponsored Content
A popular way for influencers, bloggers and other content-centric sites to monetize is through sponsored post partnerships with brands who pay to be featured in blog content or social media.
This keeps the experience native and non-disruptive for your audience. Make sure to disclose sponsored posts following FTC endorsement guidelines.
As you build a larger following in your niche, you can command premium sponsored post rates from relevant brands who want to tap into your audience.
4. Paid Community
If you’ve built up strong trust and loyalty with website visitors over time through consistently valuable content, offering exclusive community access is a smart choice.
For example, notable entrepreneurs like Pat Flynn offer paid monthly memberships unlocking discussion forums, special content libraries, exclusive deals, live events and more value beyond their free content.
5. Physical/Digital Products
Finally, you can create your own products, tools, online courses, templates, ebooks and beyond to sell to your audience directly if you own an ecommerce store or membership site.
Invest time upfront creating premium resources, tools, education and digital goods your niche visitors find irresistible, cost-effective and huge time-savers. Offer generous promotions to early customers help kickstart initial sales momentum.
Key Takeaways for Beginner Website Owners
Launching your first website is entirely doable even with no experience when you follow a structured game plan:
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Pick a niche and site type: Choose an area you‘re passionate in and build a site format (blog, ecommerce store, etc) that aligns with your strengths.
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Select the right platform: Whether it‘s WordPress, Shopify or Teachable, pick technology tailored to your goals that also scales.
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Create high-quality content: Well written, useful content drives organic traffic, social shares and credibility with Google.
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Market consistently: Promote your content across all relevant channels through SEO, social media, ads and relationship building.
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Monetize multiple ways: Have a smart game plan in place early to profit from your audience through ads, affiliates, products, memberships and more.
Most importantly, do not get overwhelmed looking years ahead. Take it step-by-step. Getting your first visitor should be an exciting milestone! Grow traffic, refine your strategy and earn trust with an audience over time.
Consistent quality execution is key – not working in huge chunks all at once. Building an audience and online income takes patience for beginners. Stay positive and believe in your ideas.
Now you‘ve got all the tools and guidance needed to pick the perfect idea and launch your own successful beginner website this year! We can‘t wait to see what you create.
