Can you make a profit by setting up your own website?

Yes, you can do. There are several ways of making money from a website, without actually setting up a proper business and selling goods yourself - I take it you mean something you can do from home. A couple of examples are:

1) Google Adsense - something as simple as adding google adsense to your website can earn a decent amount. These are the ad's that appear alongside search result. Google scans your web page and shows adverts relevant to your content. When someone clicks an ad, google pays you - simple as that! Its usually only a small amount though usually around 10p (although it varies a lot depending on the subject), so you need quite a few visitors to make a good income, but its easy to make a couple of pounds a day, which adds up over the month.

2) Affiliate Marketing - This can make you quite a bit if you do it right. In the real world its equivalent to something like Avon. You sell someones products for them, and get paid a percentage of the total order value.

In web terms you put a merchants banner on your website, or details of the products, and if someone clicks the link to go to the merchants website, then buys the product you get commission (from 4% - 20% depending on the merchant). You can actually earn enough to earn a living doing this, I know several affiliates who earnt enough to quit there day jobs.

To get started, all you need to do is to sign up to an affiliate network, who are the middlemen, and list the merchants and record when someone clicks from your site and buys the products. They collect the payment from the merchant and pay you. In the UK, the main ones are Affiliate Future, Affiliate Window and Webgains (you can find them on google). They are free to join (apart from Affiliate Window which costs Â£5, but this is refunded to your account so you get it back).

In simplistic terms, its just a case of signing up, choosing the merchants you want to promote, and adding their banner or products to your website. Anyone buys through your link and you get paid.

It is harder than that though, as you need to write decent content, and promote your site, to get the visitors who will hopefully click on the ad's. It costs little to setup though, just the cost of website hosting and a domain name, and is something you can do from home in the evenings. As I said you can earn a decent side income from it, or if you are good at it and put a lot of effort in, it can give you enough as a full time job would. Its like anything, the more effort you put in, the more you get back.

It does tend to be more fun though than a normal job, especially if your interested in the products your selling.

These are just a couple of ideas, which do work and are legitimate! One of the benefits is they cost nothing to start.

The scams usually involve paying money up front in the promise of riches that never come, the only people who get rich are the people you're paying! If something asks for money up front, be very cautious.