A question I often ask my target market is, "what's your biggest challenge with building your business online?" And one answer I get frequently is this:

How do I make my website earn money?

If you've got a business online, then it's likely you have some sort of web presence. Perhaps it's a one-page 'sign up for my list' kind of site, or a full-blown brochure site with a menu of choices, or maybe your site is in the form of a blog. Regardless of what kind of site (or sites) you have, if they're not doing what you want them to - and since we're in business, ultimately that means making some sort of a profit - then it's time to make some changes.

But how do you REALLY know whether your site is working or not? Here are four strategies to test and track your pages to know what needs fixing:

1. Let the numbers speak

I'm sure if the sky was the limit, you'd hire the most expensive web designer with the fanciest tools to create the most spectacular site imaginable for your business - and someday you just may do that.

For now, though, even an ugly site can make money. I can think of at least two sites right now that I personally think are not that pleasing to the eye, yet I know they are raking in the bucks each and every month, year after year.

So don't get caught up in having the most polished and professionally looking site. Focus more on having the pieces in place that will bring you the cash, too.

2. Give your site only one job

Think of each page of your website as a separate entity with one main purpose. It may be to sell something, or to sign up for your list, or to get people to call you for an appointment. Whatever it is, make it clear that that one thing is the action your visitor should take from being on that page.

3. Track your numbers

Most web hosts offer statistics that you can use to watch your numbers, or there are other web stat programs that you could use as well (such as Google Analytics). However you are keeping an eye on your numbers, you should be looking for two things: how many people visit your site and how many people take the action you want them to take.

From those two numbers, you can figure out your conversion rate, which tells you how many of those visitors took the action you wanted them to - like sign up for your list. If you make small changes to your page AND watch these numbers at the same time, you'll be able to tweak things to increase your conversion rate.

4. Make one change at a time

This is a very effective way to increase the conversion rates on sales pages and sign-up pages. Change just one thing - for example, the headline - and watch your numbers. Compare those statistics to your previous ones and decide whether or not to keep the change. (You can also do this via a split-test in your shopping cart, where the software does the number crunching for you.)

I see so many sites that try to be all things to all people by offering everything under the sun in too small a space - a website - and all that does is confuse people and encourage them to click away. Remember, 'a confused mind always says no', so always go back to the main questions when considering making changes to your website: What's the purpose of this page? What is the one thing I want my visitor to do here? And then design your copy around the answer. Keep it simple and you'll get better results every time.

There are many ways to monetize websites for multiple income streams. And this article is just about that. Read on to discover 3 most popular ways to monetize websites made available to you for free.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is the most popular among all webmasters since it is the easiest monetization plan available online. All you have to do is just add the AdSense code in your web pages to let Google decides what the best possible ad for that particular page is. By the end of the month, you will be paid according to how many clicks you got and how much the advertisers are willing to pay for each click.

The only downside is its earnings potential can be so low since it is at the end of the advertising value chain. But what you can do is continue building more contents (at least 150 web pages) based on your keyword research, optimize each page for specific keywords and market it to the whole wide world. By doing so, you can get maximum SEO benefits and make your visitors keep on coming (and eventually, keep on clicking to your AdSense ads)

Affiliate Program

By joining affiliate programs or through some sort of affiliate networks, you can have the opportunity to sell others' products and earn commissions for each sale. It is just like helping others to sell their products and get paid for your marketing effort. And the major benefits of selling affiliate products are:

• No product development: The owner had created the product
• No sales copywriting: The sales pages are already written
• No merchant account: You don't need to process the order
• No customer service: The merchant deal with any customer problem, not you.

So basically, you are leveraging on others' product to make money online. However, be careful and curious if the affiliate networks are charging you money since most of them appear to be kind of get-rich-quick scam. Nevertheless, you can start with established affiliate network such as Clickbank and LinkShare.

Sponsored Links

Sponsored links are sites that pay for placement in web space, which in this case can be in one (or all) of your web pages. The advertisers are willing to pay for such placement mainly to attract traffic from your website visitors. Depending on the number of visitors, you can charge them a once-off payment or recurring monthly fee. Either ways, you can monetize your website the easily.

In fact, this can be great income sources if your website enjoys high Page Rank (PR) of 3 and above. However, be very careful not to be penalized by Google. If you do, your website can be dropped from Google index since they hate webmasters who sell text links in their website for PR trade. What you can do is to keep your text link ads relevant to your website theme as much as possible so that Google do not find it too obvious.

Therefore, choose a website builder that can cater all of the monetization plans. After all, you don't want to limit your earnings potential due to software inflexibility, do you? After using SiteBuildIt for few years, I found that it has the capability to monetize website seamlessly.

Anybody who wants to start a business looks for minimum investment & maximum returns, especially small businesses where capital is low.

The cheapest mode of marketing your business & letting people know about your products/services is internet. That's the reason why lots & lots of small business enterprises are now looking for internet marketing as a new potential area of business. Of course, to promote your business online, you need to have a powerful website.

A website is a virtual portal containing information about your company, products & services. You can either setup an online store & sell products thereon, or you can simply provide your contact information on your website, so that people can contact you for your services. In either case, it is very important that you design an attractive website so that users get drawn to it.

Attractive does not mean loads of graphics & colors. But it means a site that has balance of all. A good website has a decent layout, great information & is easily accessible. Too much graphics, flash & other such factors delay the downloading of the site, which can be frustrating to user. It also means it is difficult to promote it through search engines freely.

The best solution is to approach a professional company & make your goal clearer to them. For a little investment, you can get a great website ready to market. A properly designed website goes a long way to determine your online business. If you can increase your customer base online, you can then think of creating your brand offline as well. Once people start visiting your website & you offer them services/products online, you can built a base to your business wherein you can expand it offline as well.

Lot of companies provide complete package for small business website development, design & hosting. These services also extend to online promotion of your site like search engine optimization services. So, in short, you can hire a company that can manage your entire online business.

While choosing a company, you can either be specific about how you want your website designed, developed or hosted; or you can just provide them with your business idea. Of course, you should be prepared to offer your services/products once customers start pouring in.

So, if you are planning to start a small business then developing a website is the first step you should take.