Before you even start building your profitable website, you need to have a plan for profitability. What all profitable websites have in common All profitable websites have at least one thing in common; they all provide a valuable service to people that isn't sufficiently offered by anyone else. A lot of newcomers come into web entrepreneurship with the false expectancy that they can just copy what everyone else is doing and make money. The idea that you can make money by copying an existing service without offering anything original yourself just plain silly. You must offer a significantly unique service, or people are just going to keep using the original service you're copying. Think you've found an exception to this rule? Look closer at the copycat, and try to find what they're offering that's unique. If it's not there, I guarantee you they are either infinitely less profitable than the service they're copying, or they're scamming people. Plan your Profit Once you've found a niche market, you need to come up with the model through which your website will earn revenue. Additionally, you have to be sure that your revenue will exceed your costs. Not all niche markets are profitable. Insure for Failure Once you've planned your business model, you must make sure you can afford to lose all of the money you invest in the startup of the website. Leave plenty of margin for error. Live and Learn Finally, once you're fairly confident in your predictions, you've gotta go for it! Put your plan into action, and learn from your results. Maybe your first website won't be profitable, but at the very least you'll gain wisdom from the experience. The more you work at it, the better you'll get.