The Ultimate Guide to
Monetize Your Website

Time to start working on the important stuff!

I may have to disappoint you to let you know you are not going to make money after today's lesson.

This is NOT a get rich quick scheme. Unlike some other scams which promise you to start making money very fast by following their proven system.​

That is NOT going to happen in my course. Because those claims are impossible and what I am teaching you is the legitimate way to make a sustainable living.

What You Need to Do for Your Website from Now Onward?

Yesterday, you've just built and setup your own website. Today, let me give you an overview on what are the things you should expect to be doing with your website.

The more detailed step-by-step guide are all inside Wealthy Affiliate. So, I'm just going to give you a brief guide before handing it over to Kyle for the actual detailed steps.

(This part is for people who are completely new to WordPress. If you have used WordPress before, you can skip this section and move on to the 6 Ways to Make Money with Your WordPress Blog. Anyway, Step 2 below has a list of WordPress Plugins that I recommend. Even if this is not the first time you use WP, you could take a look.)

Step 1 - 4 Essential Settings

(You may have completed some of the steps from yesterday's task. Just bare with me while I compile for you all the steps here.)

​#1 Delete All Default Content

After you log in to your WordPress dashboard, on the left hand side, you can see the options in the image above.

Click on each of the button (post, pages, comments) and delete the default content there.

(By the way, if you are wondering what WordPress is, it is a Content Management System (CMS) which allows you to edit your website on an interface that doesn't require you to touch the coding.)

#2 Setup Your Profile

​Go to Users > Your Profile to put in your basic info. The things that you don't have such as G+, Twitter and Facebook, just leave it blank for now. (These are social media accounts for your business. I won't recommend to put in your personal accounts. We'll go into that in the future.)

#3 General Settings

​Go to Settings > General to fill up the information and choose the settings you want. (Time zone, date format, time format, etc...)

#4 Permalink Settings

​Go to Settings > Permalink to change the default to "Post name". This setting is more user and search engine friendly.

By the way, Permalink is the unique URL for each of your page and post.​

Step 2​ - Recommended Plugins from Me

Plugins are additional tools to add more functionality to your WordPress website.

​Take a look at the list of plugins I recommend (in no order of priority):

• ​All-in-one SEO (This SEO plugin is already installed for new websites hosted at WA)
• Contact Form 7 (by Takayuki Miyoshi)
• Pretty Link (by Blair Williams)
• Q2W3 Fixed Widget (by Max Bond)
• Revision Control (by Dion Hulse)
• Thrive Visual Editor, Thrive Leads & Thrive Clever Widget (These are all paid premium plugins from Thrive Themes. You do not need them to get started but it is highly recommended in the future as you are more experienced!)

You don't have to understand how each plugin works for now. You'll be familiar with them along the way.

To download these plugins, simply navigate yourself to Plugins > Add New and enter the name of the plugins in the search bar at the top right corner.

After you find the plugin, install and activate it.​

Step 3 - ​Setup Basic Pages

​There are some pages that almost all websites should have and they are:

• Privacy Policy
• Disclaimer
• About page
• Contact page
• ​Blog page
• Home page

These are the must-have pages for most of the (affiliate) websites. Simply go to Pages > Add New and create these pages. You can leave them empty for now and write content as you go along. You'll also get more instructions on what to write about on these pages in Kyle's lessons.

For Privacy Policy and Disclaimer, you can search online for "affiliate disclaimer and privacy policy template". You can just copy those to your pages and edit the necessary details such as your website name. These default content can be copy & paste. In Kyle's Lesson, he will touch on this as well.​

Just remember to scroll down in the editing page to check all the boxes in the All-in-one SEO section so that search engines will not index these two pages: privacy policy & disclaimer. They are there just for legal purposes.

Anyway, if you want to take a look at mine, they're here: Privacy Policy, Disclaimer.

Step 4 - ​Write Your First Blog Post

​After the above settings are done, you can start writing your first post.

Your past impression about writing blog post may be just coming out with an idea and write on it. But now you are doing a business and you want your posts to rank well in search engines so that you have traffic and visitors to your site, there are more knowledge to be learnt.

I'm going to list out 4 main skills here and give you some brief introduction:

#1 ​Keyword Research

Before you start writing your post, you need to research on a keyword you want to rank in search engines. This keyword should be in your post title and your Permalink (post URL).​

#2 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Basically, this means to make your content search engine friendly and rank higher in search engines like Google. There are things to set and write to​ make your content optimized for search engines.

#3 Writing Conversion Focused Content for Your Readers

You'll also need to learn how to write the post to make it reader-friendly because the average attention span of a person online is very limited. You'll learn how to make your content digestible and engaging.

If you are a writer, you MAY have an advantage in content writing but it is NOT guaranteed.

Personally, English is my second language and I'm not a writer. There is a particular successful online marketer I know ​in WA that English is his FOURTH language but he is still creating content and earning a huge passive income online through his website. He is even running a successful Podcast now!

So, what's more important here is the skills. Don't be afraid!​ You'll learn everything in Wealthy Affiliate.

#4 Promoting Your Content

Lastly, you'll learn how to promote your content to your target audience.​ This can take in different forms like Social Media Marketing, Paid Advertising, etc.

This is just a brief overview on what you should expect to be doing for your website.

I'll let Kyle give you the detailed instructions on each of the aspects because the lessons in WA are really thorough and well-planned.

​The purpose of my lesson here is just to give you the overview to better help you understand as you go along. I admit that it'll be overwhelming especially at the start. That's why I'm here to help you.

A Little Motivation for You!

There are a lot of success stories ​in Wealthy Affiliate that can prove to you your effort now will pay off in the future.

This is just an additional information I want to offer you. Check out the following post to see:

=> 13 Wealthy Affiliate Success Stories

Next, for the 6 Ways to Monetize Your Website, please refer to the first task below and read through the training.