Building a website may sound really complicated and scary - but the truth is it's never been easier to set up a great looking website with very little hassle at all... even if you've never done it before!
There are a number of ways you can go about building a website, however these can be roughly divided into two categories: building static pages, or using a content management system or CMS.
Building a static page is the traditional way of building a website. Basically this involves writing each of the individual pages as HTML (hyper text markup language); either by coding by hand - i.e. writing the code directly into a text editor like Notepad -- or by using a software program that lets you build a webpage much like you would write a Word document - this is called a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get).
These page files are then uploaded to your webserver using a FTP program, or File Transfer Protocol. This is basically just a piece of software that you use to access your folders and files that you have stored on your webserver, which is really just a hard drive sitting in a server room somewhere.
There are a lot of really good WYSIWYG editors out there, some that are free and some that cost a bit of money. For a good rundown of which website building software might be right for you, check out this article over at Affilorama.
The downside with this method is that a good WYSIWYG editor typically costs upwards of $200. There are free versions available, but they don't tend to be quite as comprehensive. There also tends to be quite a steep learning curve involved in mastering these programs. Some have been designed with internet marketers in mind (XSitePro, for instance), but most of the others are designed for aspiring web designers, and when you're just trying to make some extra cash, it can be frustrating if you have to spend months learning how to use something!
An alternative that you might want to consider (and that we highly recommend!) is using the blogging platform WordPress to build your site.
Although it is, at it's core, a blogging tool, WordPress is a pretty powerful "content management system" as well.
A content management system is simply a way of adding and editing the content on your website, through a special administration panel on your actual website. There's no software involved, and you don't need to be uploading anything. It's just slightly more complicated than writing an email using a webmail program like Hotmail or Gmail. If you can do that... you can use Wordpress!
Wordpress has a lot of other advantages:
Wordpress plugins and themes can be found at wordpress.org. Themes control how the site looks, whereas plugins add functions or change the way the site works.