How to Start an Education Website

Educational websites are a great niche online business.

If you are looking for an online niche business to get into, consider building an educational website. The best websites are quality reference sites that help students improve their studies. You can generate traffic and potentially create a revenue stream by hitting the needs of this market. Since the content has a large audience around the world, a popular educational website has the potential to become a high-traffic site if executed properly.

Things You'll Need

• Web design software or an outside web designer
• Web hosting
• Domain name

Instructions

Choose a Specialty

1. Choose a niche within education where you are able to deliver quality content. For example, mathematics and science are areas where many students have trouble and are likely to search for online help.

2. Choose a delivery format. You can deliver educational material online through several means, including text, audio lectures or video lectures. For example, in the mathematics online niche, Purplemath is a popular text-based site and Khan Academy is a popular video-based site.

3. Organize the information by category and subcategory. Write your content, or create videos that you can host on YouTube.com for free. Be careful when using referenced materials, such as tables and charts, as to not use copyrighted information--make sure to properly cite your sources.

Develop Your Site

1. Build the basics. Using do-it-yourself software such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage, you can develop a quality website on your own. Or, you can hire a freelance web designer to do it for you on websites like Freelancer.com or oDesk.com, where people will bid on your project so you can shop around for the best designers.

2. Transfer the site to your hosting provider. Make sure your domain is pointed at the right server. Your website is now live.

3. Add new content in your chosen subject on a regular basis to rank higher in the search engines. Sites that are updated frequently tend to rank higher than sites that remain static. Use Google Analytics for free to track your traffic patterns.

4. Consider adding a forum where students can help one another to generate repeat traffic. phpBB.com is a free forum platform that you can use to create one.

Market and Monetize

1. Get into the search engines. Submit your site to Google (http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/index.html).

2. Reach out to other educational websites. Relevant links back to your site are important for getting search engine rankings. Contact other educational website owners in the same subject and offer to exchange links with them using a links page on your site. This way you offer a reciprocal benefit to each other.

3. Monetize your site by placing ads on it. Try using Google AdSense.

4. Consider selling products through an affiliate program. This allows people to click through your website to another site to purchase related products, such as books related to your subject. You keep a portion of any revenue generated. Amazon.com offers an excellent option.

5. Consider creating an ebook or product of your own related to your subject, and sell that on the site as well.

Tips & Warnings

• Pick a niche within the subject to narrow down the competition and to potentially get higher search engine rankings. For example, focus on "calculus help" or "algebra help" rather than "math help."

• In the education niche, students are likely to need ongoing help, so it has good potential over time to develop repeat traffic.

• If you don't have any web design skills, it's much faster to hire an outside designer than to do it on your own.

• It can take a while to rank high in the search engines, so don't be discouraged if you're not getting much traffic during the first few months.

References

• Rocketface Workshop: How to Develop a Website
• Best Educational Sites: List of Educational Websites

Resources

• Google: Webmaster Central