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#1 Website
Marketing Before you do anything else, get yourself
some good books on Web Site
Marketing. There are a lot of good ones available on the
internet. Most are not very expensive, and many are free.
Click on the
eBooks tab to find a list of free and
inexpensive eBooks you can download. You can find more if you like, by searching on one of
the search engines like Google, or MSN. It's important
that you do this first, because you will save
yourself a lot of time and aggravation if you learn from the experts
what you should be doing, before you build your website.
#2
Build Your Website
In
the past, it has always been better to build your own website, but
with the development of web building software, times have changed.
You can buy pre-built websites today that are content rich and are
almost ready to publish. You still need to add your affiliate
links, select your keywords, optimize your pages and promote the site,
but they save you a lot of time.
Be careful here, you don't want to
buy into a pre-made website program. These type of sites are all the
same and do not offer you the opportunity to select your keywords or
optimize your own site. The problem with most of the pre-made
website programs is that, what is on them, is what your stuck with.
A good website should always be improving, and you need to have control of
the content. You can have the greatest site on earth but if know
ever finds you its useless.
We only have pre-built sites you can
trust listed on our pre-built website page, and we recommend the know-it-all.com
pre-built sites. They build very good sites and are priced under
$25.00. We use them often, and highly recommend them.
If you would like to build your own site
you have a few options available. Most hosting sites have a
built in website builder that you can use
free. Read step #3 (Web Hosting Companies), to
learn more about these options. If you prefer to purchase your
own website building program , Dreamweaver and
Front Page are probably the most popular programs available. They both
offer free 30 day trials, and can be downloaded at
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004
and
Microsoft Front Page 2003.
Our
Site Building Tools
page, will help you find a variety of tools and software to help you
build and customize your website. Building your own website will
take up a lot more of your time, but can be interesting, exciting, and challenging.
It really is not all that difficult, and if you apply yourself, before
long you can become an accomplished webmaster.
#3
Web Hosting
Companies
Find a good web hosting company. There are an awful lot of
web hosting companies competing for your business, and you should
spend a little time researching some of them. Print a list of each
sites features, and compare them. Web site statistics are a must. It
enables you to see where your traffic is coming from, and which ads
are drawing in customers. Technical support that is open 24/7 is
also very important. If you plan on using your hosting
companies website builder, you will want to check it out to see if you
feel comfortable with it.
We use
ixwebhosting.com,
and have always been satisfied with them. Site Build 1.6 software,
which is easy to use, and produces a very professional looking site,
is included in their package. Click on Web Hosting for our
list of recommended Web Hosting Companies.
#4 Get Your Own
Domain Name You will need your own domain name.
There a hundreds of companies that will help you select a domain name,
and register it, for a nominal fee.
Check with your web host first. Most offer to register your
domain name for you with their package. You
should always own your own domain name. Do not use a free
domain name. Many sites such as Geocities, or Yahoo will offer you a
free domain name, but it does not belong to you. It just doesn't
make any sense to spend months or even years building name
recognition for your site, only to lose the domain name if the
company who owns it changes policy, or goes out of business. You can
register a domain name for as little as $8.88 per year. Domain names
need to be reregistered every year.
#5
Content for your Website Content is King.
Remember this when building your site. People browse the net for
information, and you must have good content to attract and keep the
attention of people visiting your site. Fill your pages with
interesting content about your websites subject. If your website is
about shopping, than write about things that pertain to shopping.
You can get free articles to paste on your site from a variety of
places. Click on
Content Sources, for a list of free
articles that you can use on your site. You can also get much of the
content you need from your merchants, or you can write your own . Use link text and articles to link to your merchants, as
much as possible. Banner ads are alright, but you should try to
limit the number on each page. A page full of mostly banners can be
annoying, and will chase potential customers away.
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Home Based Business |
Internet Business |
#6
Sign Up For Affiliate Programs
Once you have your website built, its easy to get merchants that will pay you a commission on sales
referred to them through your website. Affiliate programs are
available from individual merchants, and from Affiliate Program Companies, that
offer a variety of merchant affiliate programs on one site. They
supply you with, banners,
text, and advertising information that you can use on your site.
Many of them offer tutorials, website building tips, and marketing advise
to help make your home based business successful. Just click on our
Affiliate
Programs , and select the merchants you would like to sign up with.
They will guide you through the signup process.
#7
Site Promotions
Promoting your site is the one of
the most important parts of owning a website.
A website without any visitors is useless. Once you've built and
published your site, you need to promote it properly to
attract a steady flow of traffic. There are a lot of Enzines
(internet Magazines) and inexpensive or free classified internet ads
that work very well. Most
Affiliate programs will offer advise on promoting your site, and they
can be a great source for information and advise. Take all
the advise you can get for your home based business. The best we found, and the one we use the
most is
Adland
Pro, and I would check them out when your looking.
#8
Optimize and Submit Your Site
Next, but by far the most important, you need to
optimize your website and submit it to the search engines. There are
a lot of services available that you can purchase, that will optimize your
site, and offer to get you rated on the search engines. Be careful when
looking at one of these services, and remember, if it sounds to good to be
true, it probably is. There are also software
programs you can buy for a lot less money, and do it yourself. We definitely
recommend buying your own software. It will cost you a lot
less money in the long run, especially if you start building more
websites, which most of us do. Click on
Website Optimizers for
our latest list of the best and easiest to use software available.
#9 Link to
Other Sites
There are a
lot of ways to get good ratings on search engines, and you should
read everything you can find to get advise, but the most
important thing to remember is you need to link to other websites.
I can't stress this point enough. The search engine robots place
a lot of importance on how many links you have coming into your
website. You can make your own link directory, but it is
a little time consuming, and your a lot better off with a professionally made one.
One of the best on the market is
Zeus.
Its the one we use, so you can look at our link directory to
check it out. You can get the basic one free, and it may be all
you will need. I recommend you get the free one first. You
can always upgrade later if you think you will need the extra features
of the pro model.
ARELIS.COM
ARELIS
is a top rated software program that helps you to build a powerful
business network quickly and easily. Reciprocal links add value to your
web site, and you'll get
targeted traffic from clicks on your links at other web sites.
ZEUS.COM
Zeus creates traffic to your web site in numbers beyond your wildest dreams and will give you TOP positions in all the Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and AltaVista.
"Trading Links with other web sites brings you qualified traffic, period! The more links you have, the more successful your web site. The more you use Zeus, the more successful your web site."
#10 Shopping
Carts and Accepting Credit Cards
All of your merchants will have their own shopping carts, accept most
major credit cards, and all sales are handled by them. They keep
track of your sales activity, and send your commission checks to you.
If however you want to sell your own merchandise or e-books, on your web
site, you will need to set up a shopping cart program, and accept credit cards. There
are a lot of shopping cart programs you can purchase, and if you have a
very large store you are setting up, they may be worth looking
into. If your just planning on selling a few items of your
own on your affiliate site however, it probably wouldn't be worth the money.
PAYPAL Use
PayPal to receive payments
easily and safely. Start accepting credit card payments in minutes.
PayPal
offer an outstanding shopping cart program, that is
free, and hard
to beat. You can place items on your own shopping cart, and if your
customers belong to
PayPal, it doesn't cost you anything. If they
buy through a credit card, there is a small percentage fee they
charge you, to handle the transaction. All of the transactions for eBay are handled by
PayPal, and most people
know the name and are comfortable with them.
Usually your web host will offer a shopping cart program you can use,
but most of them charge extra for this service. You can also
find dozens of shopping
cart companies competing for your business on the internet.
We highly recommend
PayPal.
Free is always
good.
Good Luck with your
home based business.
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