One of the quickest and easiest ways to try your hand at running a web site is to set up a blog. Once you're up and blogging, you can sign up with Google AdSense and start selling ad space. Bear in mind that starting a blog isn't going to bring you instant revenue. You'll have to put some energy into promoting the blog, getting it listed in the search engines, and of course writing quality content that people will actually want to read.
There are plenty of free blogging sites out there to get you started. My favorite is Blogger.com. Signup is extremely simple, and you can be blogging in a matter of minutes. See my blog here: Work From Home Blog. Blogger has plenty of nice templates for you to choose from, and they're all customizable should you wish to tweak them. Blogger also gives you a nice blogspot.com subdomain address for your blog, which looks better and may help search engines find you.
When setting up your blog, you want to pick a topic that you know something about. This will make it more interesting for you, and will make it easier to keep the content fresh. It's pretty much universally agreed that search engines prefer sites with lots of content. And if you want visitors to find your site, you have to get listed with the big search engines. You should also try to pick a topic that will generate some expensive advertising. Blogging about baby penguins is all well and good, but it's not a highly competitive market as far as advertising goes. Do some research on the Google AdWords site to find some hot topics. Tech topics are generally good sources of high paying ads, but there are others.
One thing to note about choosing a topic is that Google doesn't allow AdSense ads to be displayed on sites with content that they deem to be objectionable. Hate sites, sites with illegal content, and so forth will not be accepted, so just keep that in mind. Read the Terms of Service on the AdSense site if you have any doubt.
Once you have your topic, start writing like mad. Try to use lots of keywords relevant to your topic. This will help your ranking with the search engines, and will also make sure the right ads show up when you get to that stage. Don't take this to the extreme, however. You're writing for humans, not search spiders. Even if you have great keywords, if your content isn't vaguely interesting, you'll find no one spends any time at your site.
After you have several pages of content, you can sign up for a Google AdSense account. Just go to www.google.com/adsense, and click the button to sign up. You'll have to give them some information about yourself, and about your website. A human from Google will review your site within a day or two, and you'll get an e-mail telling you whether you've been accepted. If you're not accepted, they'll tell you why, and you can resubmit as soon as the problem is corrected.
When you're accepted, log in to your AdSense account and create some ads. They've got a very simple form to do this, and you just copy and past the javascript code they generate for you. At first you may see only public service or very generic ads on your site. After a day or two, if you have enough quality content on the page, you'll start seeing more relevant ads show up.
You're now a webmaster! You didn't have to buy a domain, pay for hosting, or even know much about web design. My next article will deal with how to promote your blog (or any web site), and build traffic to it. Check back soon!
About the author: Gary LaRock runs www.workfromhomespot.com, your source for information and ideas about working from home. He lives in Thornton, CO, with his wife and son, where he has worked exclusively out of his home since 2003. Work From Home.