Can anyone really set up a website and make a profit??
Can you do this with little or no money??
Do affiliate programmes really work??
How hard is it to generate genuine traffic to your site and retain it??
What content should I use and how do I present it??

These are the questions I was asking myself earlier this year!! The questions are endless and there are endless websites/blogs to give the answers to them. I decided to start a website and see if I could answer these questions for myself.

The whole thing started when I went on maternity leave to have my second daughter in February this year. I spent alot of time on the Internet and curiosity lead me to Online surveys, PTC, PTR emails etc. Before baby came along I signed up for a membership site, which provided a whole host of ways to make money. These included online surveys, mystery shopping, get your own blog and make money using affiliate programmes etc.

This is where I started, I came to blogger, set up a blog with a really bad name and began although I had no idea what I was doing, what I was going to write about or how I was going to present it. The blog evolved and became areyouasbusyasme.blogspot.com, this then became a real website areyouasbusyasme.com

I researched affiliate programmes, I spent many hours reading how wonderful and easy it was to join up with a company, get my own site with traffic for free. These pages always had the flashy cars, Big houses and smiley happy people!! Once I began reading T&C's and looking into each programme it soon became apparent that no programme was for free. If there was a free website option, it gave you a website with a monthly fee and no guaranteed traffic as stated on the original brief. Those of you who have had some dealings with affiliate programmes will know what I'm talking about.

Affiliate programmes are similar to money pyramids, they rely are more and more people singing up. For example, if I signed up with an affiliate programme I would receive a commission for any sales through my website however I would make even more if I then recruited you into the same programme and so on. If I had little traffic/sales but you had a successful site, I would make my money from your sales. On paper sounds fantastic!!

I decided to give these programmes a miss and set up on my own. My site is very young, less than 3 months old and is still developing, it has yet to develop it's own personality. I also went about things the wrong way!!! I was so excited at the prospect of having my own website, I immediately rushed and got my domain name!!

What I didn't realise was, once I got my Domain name it was immediately live!! Please bear in mind, I am an absolute novice!! I can, with the best of you shop online all day long however I hadn't thought the whole process of becoming a webmaster (or should I say webnovice)through before jumping straight in head first!!

I've learnt alot very quickly!!! Instead of developing a niche, I decided shopping, saving money & time were my niche's!! I signed up with a shed load of retailers and shoved them onto the site without thinking about it!! I quickly realised this isn't enough.

I wanted to create a one stop site for the busy people of today as I am always busy, either dealing with my kids, being a taxi for my eldest, walking the dogs, working my full time job on shifts and not forgetting my husband!! the Internet makes my life so much easier and wanted to develop a site I would bookmark & use. In theory, a wonderful idea but putting it into practise is a complete different kettle of fish.

The site itself is idiot proof for a webnovice, easy to use modules, page layouts and comes with an idiot guide. I have had my problems and still need to drive more traffic to it.

I shall break down all my problems and how I've solved them as this blog develops, I'm sure there are plenty of you with knowledge and experience will have a giggle or two at my discovery of the simplest of things. Remember I am a novice!!