Host Your Website For Free, Make It Web3 Compliant and Earn Money From It | Stephen Ajulu · IT Professional, Writer, Founder & Consultant

Host Your Website For Free

Static Websites

Assuming the source code is in a git repository online(GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, etc)

Go to netlify.com and create an account
Click “Add new site”
Select “Import an existing project”
Select Git provider_( I’m on github )_
Authenticate and Authorize
Select the repository
Enter build command e.g this site’s build command is “hugo –gc –minify”
Enter publish directory e.g this site’s publish directory is “public”
Click “Deploy site”

That’s it. Depending on the static version you used. It will take some time.

NB: Just plain HTML, CSS, and Javascript will take less than 3 seconds and does not need a specified build command or publish directory, Hugo takes anywhere from 10 seconds to 1 minute depending on how large your site is.

Dynamic Websites

Now, this depends on what tech stack you are using. I won’t lay down the details. Rather I’ll provide you with a few hosting solutions, both free and paid.

Making Your Website Web3 Compliant

As far as I know, the only possible way is by making a static site web3 compliant. I don’t know how to make a dynamic site web3 compliant hence will only cover static sites.

There are four URL options:

1. Constant Hashes => serve as links within ipfs and have been discussed in my previous article.

2. DNSLink => Simply put, a regular Web2.0 domain name from a DNS record.

3. ENS => Dynamic Url with a ' .eth ' ending and that is more readable than IPNs links. I would argue that this is the best domain choice for establishing a website, but the first option is free :)

Unstoppable Domains => Dynamic Url with multiple endings. My recommended choice.

Static Sites

Go to fleek.co and create an account
Follow the same process as Netlify
Select either IPFS or Internet Computer. Your choice.

Earn Money From Your Content Website

Here I won’t cover affiliate marketing and other popular ways to monetize your website as there are enough resources in the web.

1. Web Monetization

To monetize your site, you must:

Set up a web monetized receiver (wallet) for receiving payments. Supported wallets.
Get your wallet’s payment pointer. E.g. $wallet.example.com/alice
Create a special <meta> tag that tells Web Monetization providers how to pay you. e.g.
```
<meta name="monetization" content="$wallet.example.com/alice">
```

Add the <meta> tag to each page of your website that you want to monetize. E.g.

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Web Monetized Site</title>
<meta name="monetization" content="$wallet.example.com/alice">
</head>
</html>

For a more detailed look at web monetizing your site, see the Web Monetization explainer .
Congratulations! Your website is now web monetized.

2. Basic Attention Tokens

Follow this and this .

3. Digital Product

Create an account on Gumroad, and start creating digital products and selling. Then use their overlay widget on your website

Photo by Le Buzz on Unsplash