Work From Home Training

Now that you have narrowed down your niche, figured out how much competition you have, how many monthly searches there are and you have a pretty good idea of what kind of traffic you can expect, the only thing left is to actually create your business.

We’re going to have to take a few liberties with this series if we’re going to have any chance of getting it off the ground. So, these lessons will be geared towards people who have decided to put up their own site and promote either their own products and services or promote other products and services as an affiliate. Therefore, at least for the time being, anybody who has decided that they want to dropship on Ebay or simply join a “program” and promote it in order to get members and make commissions off of those members, most of what you’re about to read won’t apply to you.

Okay, let’s get started.

The first thing you’re going to need is to find a domain name for your business. This is where you’re going to have to use a little imagination. Let’s say you decided to sell CDs through Amazon and you decide to focus on the ones that are sold at a big discount, which is usually the older stuff. You might want to get a domain name like www.cheapcds.com, or something like that. You want the domain name to be as descriptive of what your business is as possible. If it’s a band review site then maybe you might choose something like www.rockbandreviews.com or something like that. I seriously doubt either of those domains are available, but you get the picture.

To get your domain, simply go to Google and type in “Domains.” You’ll find about 95 million places to get domains. Lots of people use GoDaddy and Namecheap. Domains are cheap – about $10 or so per year.

After you get your domain, the next thing you’re going to need is hosting. I always recommend HostGator. It’s cheap and their service is second to none!

CREATING A WEB SITE

Now that you’ve got your domain and your web hosting, you’re ready to start working on your site. Yeah, I know, web design. Yuck! Don’t get me wrong. I love it. I actually started designing web sites before there were any HTML editors (I used to use a Unix editor called ‘vi’). My first site was…well, by todays standards probably at about primary school grade 3 level (though I suspect there are grade 3′s around now who could pump out a pretty impressive site!)

But web design isn’t for everybody. For those of you who don’t know the first thing about HTML, there are alternatives to designing your own site from the ground floor up.

• Get somebody to do it for you. This is the easiest, and the most expensive. Web designers, good web designers, don’t work cheap. Depending on how many pages you require for your web site, you can spend thousands of dollars on one. But be darn sure, if you get a top notch designer, you will get a top notch site.
• Get a template. This will still require you to do a little bit of work but templates are, for the most part, a breeze. Most come in a zip file with all the graphics you’ll need. The HTML is already done for you. All you need to do is add your own unique text and links. The amount of HTML you’ll need to learn to do this is minimal. Yes, you will still need to do a little work yourself, but in comparison to doing your own site from scratch, it’s a relative breeze. If you want, you can get some really nice templates from themeforest.net for under $30. These are top notch designs at a really low price.

Regardless of which way you go with this, even with a template, you still have to decide what your site is going to be made of. In other words, what pages? How many? Will the site be static (never changing) or will you constantly be adding pages to it as it goes along?

All of this will greatly depend on what kind of site you have. For example, if you look at http://www.natures-healing-remedies.com/ it basically has 5 main pages.

1. Home or Index Page
2. About Us Page
3. Products Page
4. Articles Page
5. Contact Page

1. The home or index page is where people first come to the site. This is where you want to give them a basic idea of what they will find on the site. In my case, I also offer a free report. This is great for getting people to opt into your list. But that’s for later in this series.

2. The about us page is kind of like a mission statement. It tells people what we’re trying to accomplish with the site.

3. The products page is self explanatory. This is where you sell your various products, whatever they may be.

4. The articles page is a list of all the articles that a visitor can read at the site about the related topics.

5. The contact page is where people can email you from if they have any questions. Some sites put a contact form on the page instead of an email link.

Now, even though there are only 5 main pages, the articles page actually turns this site into a never ending growth site. Each article listed on the page is going to have its own article page specifically for THAT article. So if there are 100 articles listed on the articles page, the site itself now has over 100 pages. This is how a site builds popularity. Writing is a big key to making money online. Don’t forget that.

So what’s the next step? Well, the next step for YOU is to sit down and map out what you want your site to look like. Use the example above as a guide if you want. But ultimately, depending on what you are promoting, your site will have its own unique characteristics.