How To Build Your Own Website For Less then $100?
A few of the Internet gurus say that you can make money on the Internet without a web site. They say just use autoresponders and safelist advertising. And there may be a few doing this successfully.
However, the vast majority of people making a living on the Internet have their own web site. It is much harder to build a long-term business without having a web site hosted on your own domain
A website should be considered a home base so to speak. It is your online store location and the base of operations for everything else that you do online.
Let's think about the different online advertising methods. Some of the main ones are search engines, banner advertising, ezine advertising, newsgroup/mailing list participation, and classified advertising. I know that doesn't cover everything, but It is the major source of advertising online. Think about each of those advertising methods.
Search engines are the #1 traffic generator on the web right now and they absolutely require that you have a website. Many online experts estimate 95% of your traffic could come from search engines. You are leaving out 95% of your business by not being able to take advantage of search engines...
You may think that just getting a free server such as FreeYellow or Angelfire might take care of this problem, but it doesn't. Both of the above mentioned web hosts are being blocked out of some of the search engines such as Infoseek. You can still place them on most of the search engines, but registering web pages from them is becoming extremely difficult.
With banner advertising you have to have a website, both for free banner exchanges and for paid banner advertising.
With ezine advertising, you can use an autoresponder, but your response rate goes up when you include both an autoresponder and a website in the classified ad. The same rules go for classified advertising. You should have both an email address and website in your ads for maximum effectiveness.
When participating in online discussion, the best form of advertising is the signature file. This gives you space for a short 4 - 5 line ad for yourself. The best approach is to tell them your name, phone, email, and website address along with a basic idea of what you do. Your website address needs to be there so that they can go somewhere to find out more information immediately.
In all of these advertising forms, a website or domain is absolutely essential to your success. I personally favor a domain for many reasons...
Name Recognition - It is much easier for people to remember a name like (http://www.yourdomain.com) than (http://www.freesite.com/members2/somename/)
Stability - Having your own domain gives an image of more stability to people when they see it. It appears that you will be around for a while.
Secure Ordering - In most cases you cannot get orders online through a website because there are no secure ordering options.
Growth - It will be much easier to grow when you own your own domain. If you have just a website and you run out of space or you start having trouble with your host, you are stuck. If you leave, all of the traffic you built will be going to Freesite, not your new domain. If you own your own domain, if you move everything comes with you to your new host.
Selling Multiple Products - This hooks up with the above, but it needs to be mentioned again. A domain is perfect for adding more products to and selling more items. You spend money and/or time to get traffic to your site. You need to make sure you are taking advantage of it as much as possible by offering multiple products and/or services.
All of these benefits are extremely important to making your online marketing a success. I honestly think everyone should purchase a domain up front in their online marketing and then start driving traffic to it immediately, instead of wasting their time and money by losing their traffic that they worked so hard for when they upgrade later.
Many people are starting their Internet business with a very small budget. Many are doing it with $100 or less. I recently started a new website, getting it up and running for less then $100. Want to know how I did it?
I will use my new site to drive traffic to my three other websites, offer some affiliate and network marketing programs, and some new products that I will be adding.
Here's how I got the site up and running. First I went to (http://www.godaddy.com). I had some ideas for what I wanted my new domain name to be. Godaddy has a tool where you enter in your desired domain name and it tells you if the name is available. If it is not available it will recommend some similar names that might interest you.
I kept working the tool until I found that The-Home-Business-Center.com was available. My wife and I both liked it and feel that it matches what we plan to do with the site. It cost us just $8.95 to buy the domain name for a year.
When you pick your domain name, try to get one ending in .com instead of one ending in .biz, .net, or one of the other endings.
Since our other three sites were already hosted by Host4Profits, it was not hard to decide what hosting service to use. They will host additional domain names for just $5 each per month. A pretty good deal. You can check them out at (http://www.host4profit.com/cgi-bin/home.cgi?33851).
Next I went to a site hosted by Stone Evans. He will make a free site for you, usually within 24 hours of your sending him your details. He calls them Plug-In Profit Sites.
The site will come with five different streams of income built into it. The five income streams are from free affiliate and network marketing programs, which you need to join before you send him your information. I was already a member of four of the programs.
Host4Profit, our hosting company, is one of the five affiliate programs that Stone will put on the site for you. This one is a must join, as Stone requires that the site he makes for you be hosted by Host4Profit.
I sent him my information and also requested GoDaddy to transfer the domain at the same time. Stone waited to start work on my site until the transfer was completed. I had my new site the day after I notified him that the transfer was done.
And I like the site. It looks great and works with no problems. He actually made two versions for me, one with pop ups and one without pop ups. Some traffic exchanges don't allow pop ups.
To see my new site go to (http://www.the-home-business-center.com). If you want more information on what Stone will do for you click on the Plug-In Profit Site banner near the top of the page.
Stone has also written a free ebook called 30 Days to Online Success. At the very bottom of my site is a banner for Stones book. Click on the link to download it.
Stone actually set up the whole site and had it running when he sent me the email saying it was up. I was able to view the working site immediately. It worked beautifully.
One of the things that I especially liked is that he let me have the source code. I can easily access the code and modify it. So far I have added the banner to the bottom for the free 30 Days to Success ebook and added a link to a page where people can read the articles that I have published.
Now, a person on a low budget will be able to get a website and start producing traffic to it for under $100.
All in all, the very first thing you should do when marketing online is to setup your own domain. It's your home base. The Plug-in Profit site method discussed above is a low cost option for doing so. Everyone can take this opportunity to develop an effective online marketing campaign instead of throwing time and money down a marketing black hole because they lack a home base.
A beginner's guide to setting up a successful online store
Online selling is by no means a simple task. To sell products online not only requires making use of high end marketing strategies but also involves lots of planning. This article is meant for those of you who intent to start an online store. It is intended to give you a fair idea of what you would need to do and what you need to avoid while planning an online selling business.
The following are the various steps that you would need to take in order to open a successful online store
1.) Designing a website that sells
The first most important aspect of online selling is to have a professional looking website that is designed to sell. You can go about creating the website from code up using web designers or simply go for readymade website templates. If you are purchasing website templates, be sure to go for templates that are professionally designed and have the option of shopping carts. Buying templates from providers who offer allied services like template customization, web hosting; SEO etc would be even better. Some template providers like 'buytemplates.net' offer allied services irrespective of where you actually purchased the template from. To get a rough idea of how your site should be designed you can take hints from successful online stores like (http://www.ishopage.com), 'gap.com' and 'bestbuy.com'.
2.) Hosting your store online
There are many factors that you need to take into consideration before selecting your web host when it comes to online selling. Some of the major factors are discussed as follows.
a.) Secure servers
Firstly you got to make sure if your web host offers you with SSL encryption which is very important for secure money transactions online. Most web hosting companies would offer you with SSL secure server facilities along with a regular package whereas a few would charge you an extra amount for the service.
b.) Up time guarantees
Your business is only as good as it remains online. Make sure to go for web hosting service providers who promise you an uptime guarantee of 99 %. Also check to see as to how they back up their data and what kind of back up systems they have in place in case of emergencies.
c.) Private CGI-BIN
A CGI-BIN directory is a location on your web server where you can upload your binary scripts or interactive programs. This is very important for payment processing and shopping cart management. So be sure that the hosing company gives you a private CGI BIN directory.
d.) Web logs and web statistics
Web logs and statistics are vital for your online business. Studying the web logs can give you much needed information about your customers and your sales records. Understanding your customer behavior can help you retain customers and attract new customers.
e.) Customer support
Get as much information about the hosting company's support policies and the type of support they offer. Go for web hosting companies that offer 24/7 customer support.
f.) References
Most web hosts promise you lots of goodies but may not live up to it. Make sure to test the web host's credibility by asking them for references. The existing customers of the hosting company can give your first hand information on the service that you can expect to get.
In addition to this you should also look for services that offer you Mysql database and PHP scripting, unlimited emails and a minimum space of 10GB.
3.) Deciding on shopping carts
If you are selling more than a handful of products then having a shopping cart on your site is a good idea. You have three major options of getting yourself an online shopping cart. First one is buying a shopping cart software program; the second is using services of an ASP and the third is programming it yourself.
Your best option as a beginner would be to go for ASP services. These services are cheap and come with flexible options. As time passes and you online business develops, you can hire programmers to design yourself a customized shopping cart or buy shopping cart software programs that can be set up in your server. Some good ASP's that offer shopping cart services are 'SecureNetShop' (SecureNetShop.com) and 'GoEmerchant' (GoEmerchant.com).
Shopping cart software programs are a costly option for beginners and can cost you anything between $ 150 - $ 800. Some good shopping cart software programs are 'shopfactory 6' (shopfactory.com) and 'storefront' (strorefront.net)
One more option as already discussed above is making use of ecommerce website templates. These ecommerce templates have pre installed shopping cart systems and can help you set up a store in minutes. Some of these template providers also offer template customization services that would allow you to get your ordinary templates in selling modules.
4.) Deciding on how to accept payments
No matter what the speculation, credit cards are still the best way to accept payments. So make sure that your online business has facilities to accept credit cards. There was a time when you had to have a merchant account from a bank or financial institution to process credit card payments. But today there are enough options available that allow you to accept credit card payments even without a merchant account.
Paypal (paypal.com) is perhaps the best payment gateway and has no initial joining fees. Their service fees, per-transaction is very low and they allow you to accept payments from all over the world. In addition to Paypal some other good payment gateways are '2checkout' (2checkout.com), 'clickbank' (clickbank.com) and 'paysystems' (paysystems.com).
Payment options other than credit cards
It is by no means necessary that all your customers will have credit cards. As a matter of fact many of your customers don't have credit cards, many don't like to use credit cards, many have credit card phobias and the remaining may not wish to share their credit card information online. Under such a situation it would be best for you to provide alternate payment options.
Internet checks
Internet checks are as popular as credit cards when it comes to paying online. Internet checks are comparatively safer and are best if your customers are from international destinations. This technique would involve your customer's to make payments by an online blank check provided by an internet check service provider. This information is sent to the service provider for authorization. The merchant can also print the check on his printer immediately afterwards. Some good service providers who can offer you internet check services are paybycheck (paybycheck.com) and cross-check (cross-check.com).
In addition to internet checks there are some other options of accepting online payments like money orders and electronic checks. But these methods are suitable only if your customers are from nearby locations.
The best way to decide your payment options is analyzing your customer behaviors. You can also have online check boxes or feedback forms on your website to collect information about your customer's payment preferences and act accordingly.
5.) Promoting your online store
No promotion equals to no sales. You can promote your store using online marketing strategies like search engine optimization, email marketing, banner advertisements and affiliate marketing among others. While promoting your business you got to make sure to stay clear of any kind of illegal methods like spamming, cloaking etc. Your promotion activities should create a positive awareness about your online store that leads to trust building.
6.) Assuring your Customers
The customer is the king and just as in any other type of business here again you need to give your customer what he wants. To do this you got to be sure of your customer's preferences. Basically you need to address the following doubts that your customers are likely to have in their mind while buying online
a.) Is my credit information safe?
b.) How will the products be delivered to me and how long will it take?
c.) Are their any additional costs associated with the item?
d.) What kind of guarantees come with the product?
e.) Are there any discounts if I purchase multiple goods?
f.) What kind of customer service does the online shop have?
g.) What happens in case the goods are damaged or of low quality?
These questions in particular and many more questions in general can arise in the minds of your customers depending on the type of your products and your online store reputation. You can address these issues by providing valuable information in your FAQ section. Providing an online live chat on your website would be a great way to deal with your customer queries. There are many services that offer free online chat software programs; for instance 'boldchat' (boldchat.com).
Even after all this is over there is no word like 'remaining stagnant' in online marketing. You got to keep on moving and adapting yourself to newer technologies and better marketing techniques to stay ahead and abreast of all those pesky competitors.
Promote Your Online Business for Free
One of the myths of internet marketing is that setting up an online business has to be expensive.
And people are needlessly spending hundreds on their product marketing in the mistaken belief that throwing money at promotion campaigns is the most effective way of generating business.
In fact, many of the key resources you need to promote your business on the internet are completely free.
Press releases are a great way to promote new products and launches. Free publicity means that you also receive free advertising. You could receive a lot of traffic if the media takes an interest in your business.
The two sites listed below provide a free press release service which will target top newspapers and magazines for promoting your product:
(www.prweb.com)
(www.ideasiteforbusiness.com/direct.htm)
There are hundreds of message boards that accept advertising on the internet. You can spend hours searching out these boards or you can access a list of 700 boards to post quickly.
The link below allows you to post quickly and easily to the board of your choice:
(www.messageboardblaster.com/postfreeads.html)
Ezine ad swaps are very popular ways to generate free traffic. There are many ezine owners who are willing to trade ads with you. The site below links to over 500.
(http://freezineweb.com/ad-swaps.html)
If you are promoting an ebook product, a great way to generate business is to offer a free demo version of the product. The site below will submit your free or demo ebook to 50 software sites automatically.
(www.analogx.com)
It is possible to find a good number of new customers by promoting yourself by writing articles for other ezines. The 2 sites below allow you to post your articles for possible publication to hundreds of ezines and websites. These are also great resources to obtain free content of your own for any ezine or newsletter which you publish.
(www.marketing-seek.com)
(www.web-source.et/articles.htm)
So, with all that free publicity and promotion available to you, it is not always necessary to risk hundreds on marketing spend to create a profitable business.
The websites above were obtained from an ebook entitled 100 Outstanding Free Resources You Can Use To Grow your Online Business Today. This ebook is available at (www.internet-marketing-downloads.com)
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