There are many individuals across the nation that dream about creating a profitable website in order to add an additional income stream to their household or so that they can use the website to work from home on their own terms for their own business. The funny thing is that creating a profitable web business is already a reality for thousands of individuals across the nation and millions of individuals around the world.

So what is it that they know that you do not know? Creating a profitable website takes a great deal of time, effort, and innovation for the website to succeed and create an income for the individual that created it. A great deal of time if you intend to pay all your bills with it that is!

There are 5 steps that you must follow in order to create a profitable website that has the ability to provide a decent income for the creator. The first thing that you must do, like any entrepreneur, is come up with an idea for what type of website you would like to create. With the fluidity of the internet, the possibilities are virtually endless when it comes to what type of website to create and how to design the website to be appealing to the individuals you are trying to attract.

The next thing that you will need to determine is how you would like to make this website profitable. There are a number of different ways that you can use to make a website into a profitable enterprise, including selling a product, selling a service, becoming an affiliate marketer, or create some type of membership community. Websites that are unique and innovative are generally the ones that are mostly the best received and tend to generate their creators the largest incomes.

After the type of website has been determined, it is time to design the website and create the content of the website. The content of the website should be concise and well thought out as well as free of any grammatical or spelling errors. The intent of the content of a profitable web business is to keep the visitor's attention long enough for you to sell them your product, your service, or persuade them to travel on to another company's website as a referral.

The next step to take in creating a profitable website is to determine how you are going to market your website. Individuals that create websites that are intended to be used for affiliate marketing will still need to market their website in order to attract individuals that they can use as referrals to the other company's website. There are nearly a dozen different marketing techniques that can be used on the internet and, in some cases - multiple marketing methods can be used in order to expand the number of individuals who see the website, helping it to become a profitable website much more quickly.

The last step in creating a profitable web business is continuing to review, revamp, and revise your website so that the information remains current and relevant to the needs of the visitors to your website. By following these 5 steps for creating a profitable website, you should be able create a profitable web business that you can eventually make your full time job if that is what you are going after.

Functions are used to perform a well defined task that is normally repeated at various places within a web site, web application, or other software application. The function sometimes needs certain information before performing its task, and sometimes returns a value to the calling page or program.

An example of how to use a simple function in PHP:

 function showMessage() {
echo "{$_SESSION["message"]}"; }

The above example shows a very simple function that displays the contents of a session variable called 'message'. The idea being that while a user is using a web site, etc, various messages are generated and stored in the 'message' session variable. Whenever the showMessage function is called, the contents of the session variable are displayed. So, for example, when the user logs on, you could display a message saying that they have done so. Likewise, when they log off, a different message could be displayed.

Calling a function

To call the showMessage function, you would just need to include the line:

showMessage()

in the web page (wrapped in php tags to distinguish it from normall HTML).

Passing values to a function

Often, a function requires one or more input values in order to perform its task. For example, take the following example that takes two numbers as input, and adds them together. The result is then returned to the calling web page or program.

function addNumbers($number1,$number2) {
$answer = $number1 + $number2;
return $answer; }

In the calling program we would have something similar to the following:

$number1 = "5";
$number2 = "6";
$sumOfNumbers = addNumbers($number1,$number2);
echo "$sumOfNumbers";

Obviously, in a real program you would not have the numbers hardcoded like this, but they would be obtained from user input or by some other means. Notice also that although the name of the returned variable is $answer, the calling program makes no reference to that. We could, if we wanted to, change the calling program to:

$answer = addNumbers($number1,$number2);
echo "$answer";

which might make things slightly easier to understand.

A part of web development is copywriting. Excellent copy means it has to be appealing to both readers and to search engines. This combination will help websites to rank highly. A problem occurs when there are space constraints to a site, page layout requirements or other issues.

Because appealing to both readers and search engines is so important, you don't want to sacrifice one for the other. Adding a big block of copy to the middle of a page may not be the best answer, however, if a page needs content, adding a couple of sentences to the bottom of each section is a good option. Your copy will still be readable and the additional content will appeal to the search engines.

There are some things to remember when writing content for a website.

• Web users are active. One click and they have left your site. If they don't see a reason to stay, they won't. There is a 10 - 15 second window available to capture a visitor's attention.
• The longer the text is, the less likely they are to read it. With long text, they will skim it, if they bother to read it at all.
• Web users don't believe in hype. If you want a web user to believe you and to believe in you, you must back up your claims.

Four questions must be answered on each page:

• What am I doing here?
• How do I do it?
• What's in it for me?
• Where can I go, next?

If your design and navigation isn't obvious, then you need to explain it in the copy. Most visitors will not take the time to figure this information out. If a first time visitor cannot find their way around your site, they will likely never come back.

Unless your visitors are expecting to read something on your page, don't expect that they will read more than one or two lines of copy.

Understanding your copy is as important as length. Don't make the copy so complicated that it is difficult to comprehend or make it so the customer will have to think about it because they won't.

What this means is you want to convey one key idea in just one or two lines. Don't try to add a third line because if you say too much, then even the first idea won't penetrate. If your site needs more content, break it down into sections that are one or two paragraphs each. Say what you want to say in the first sentence and then expand the thought into the paragraph. Use meaningful headers. Most people will only scan the headers to the paragraphs and not even bother with the copy on the page, unless it is something that appeal to them. It is better to write only one or two lines with links to another page with the longer copy.

Even when users are expecting to find text heavy content, don't expect they will take the time to read all of it. Longer copy doesn't have to be as abrupt as shorter text, but it needs to be as easy to read.

Make your copy clear, but not boring. Lively writing with an unassuming voice is best. Boring writing will turn your reader off and nothing you say at that point will make it through.