Beginners guide to creating a profit generating website
Introduction to website creation
Websites are the 21st centuries shopping centres. The Internet accounts for a $12 trillion of the world's economy. While some entrepreneurs wrestle the business world from their shops on the high street, the modern 21st century entrepreneur has found a brand new battleground - the Internet. The primary weapon in an Internet entrepreneurs arsenal is their website. After all, is a website really that different from the shop tucked away somewhere on the high street? - Of course not. A website is simply on a virtual high street called the Internet.
This guide is designed to show you exactly how easy it is to set up your very own profit generating website without the need to know how to program. This guide has been written for the complete beginners, while providing experienced Internet entrepreneurs with some unique tactics for increasing their businesses success.
Almost everyone dreams of financial independence, a worry free life with the ability to do anything you like, when you like. With most people dreaming is as far as they get to achieving this dream. It is only the entrepreneur who takes the steps to turn his or her dreams into reality. This guide will take you by the hand and turn you into that entrepreneur.
Obviously this will not happen overnight as time is a key ingredient to your success. Having said that, there is no reason why you shouldn't start earning yourself a healthy second income within a matter of weeks and even earn enough to support yourself in a couple of months. The more of your time and effort you donate to your website, the faster you will see results.
Finally, before we begin, I need to stress the most important factor that will provide you with either great success or failure - determination. All the successful entrepreneurs NEVER give up. I want you to promises yourself that if you choose to follow my guide that you too will never give up. I cannot stress enough the importance of this fundamental factor for success. Think about it - If no action is taken, no result can be achieved.
The Benefits of a Website
So what are some of the benefits of owning a website on this virtual high street?
Well first of all - cost. A fully operational website will cost a maximum of £5 a month to maintain. This £5 is paid will provide you with your very own domain name as well as professional hosting for your site. Compare this to the rent, utilities, council tax, and staff for a shop on any high street and you will immediately see the potential for a huge saving. Its no wonder the best prices are found online.
Secondly, your potential market. As long as your website is on the Internet, you immediately have the potential to reach over 1 billion customers. I would like to see any shopkeeper cram 1 billion people in their store any day. Ok, I'm not promising there will be 1 billion people looking at your website at any one time but the potential for that to happen certainly is there.
Thirdly - advertising. The infrastructure of the Internet consists of search engines. Almost every customer will use a search engine to find what they are looking for and by doing so the search engines will bring potential customers through your virtual doors who are already looking for something that you sell, whether it's a product or a service.
For those of you thinking that there is no way that you could ever be able to build a website, think again. Why bother building a website when you can have it done for you? And for FREE! Ok…so you might think I've gone crazy but actually its true and I'll how you how.
Vital background information
First of all you will need some background information. A website consists of web pages. Web pages are exactly what they sound like - a page just like a page in Microsoft Word when you are typing a letter, but instead of just having text, it has some fancy pictures to try and make it look more presentable. So basically when making a web page you just stick together some text along with some pictures - simple! Now, a web site is made up of several of these web pages a bit like a book. Books are divided into chapters and each chapter has a certain amount of words on each page to make the information more presentable, and this is exactly the case with web sites.
Now that we know what makes up a site, we need a way of letting other people see our website's pages and this is obviously going to be done through the Internet. When you create some web pages, you save these pages on your computer. Now that's all very well but how are people going to see your pages if they are on your computer and especially when your computer is switched off? Well the answer is simple- they cant! And this is exactly why your pages need to be hosted. What this means is that your web pages need to be saved somewhere where they can be viewed by everyone else through the Internet. To do this you need to sign up with a web hosting company. What a web hosting company does is they take the web pages from your website and they save it to their servers which is just a fancy name for a computer which is connected to the Internet, and has access to the Internet 24/7. This lets anyone connected to the Internet to be able to visit you site and read your pages whenever they wish to do so. Finally, your website will need an address - some way of people finding it without needing to use a search engine such as Google or Yahoo. Every site has an address and it is often refereed to as a domain name, which is in the form of a URL which usually looks something like this: http://www.onlinecareer.co.uk . When you sign up to a web hosting company you will need to make up an address for your site.
A hosting company will be the only cost you will encounter when creating a website. Obviously they want to have some money in return for them to host your site. The good news is that it's cheap - well most of the time anyway. The best hosting company has to be 1 and 1. They offer the best extra features at the best price, oh and I can't forget to mention that they are the worlds largest hosting company. Have a quick look at their site to learn a little more about them:
Click here to be taken to their site ===>
Beware - Other hosting companies might try and temp you by showing off slightly lower prices but believe me, there will be a catch usually in the form of very limited extras being offered, which is something we will look at later.
Now, I said that you can have a website built for you and this is how. 1 and 1 offer a tool for Its customers where you follow a wizard which is basically a step by step program with which you select a background for your website, the number of pages you want your website to have and the names of those pages. Before you know it within a click of around 10 buttons you have a fully working website to which you simply type the text that you want it to display.
For those of you that are more advanced or feeling adventurous you can build your own websites from scratch using standard HTML coding or using a website creation program.
How can a website earn money?
Well the simple answer is by sell something on your website. You can sell anything from products like chocolate or toys to services such as consultancy, basically anything you would normally sell in a shop.
However, this is not the only way a website can earn money. Why bother selling products and having to go through the process or setting up payment through credit cards on your site (a process that we sill discuss later), enabling customers to pay and, through the hassle of having to package and send product to your customers? No, I haven't gone mad again - the answer is simple. Sell information. Even though you might not technically be selling the information, you will be providing it for free to your websites visitors, and while they visit your site they are bound to come across advertising, which you will put on your site. Yes it's that simple, place advertising on your site by which visitors will be directed to other relevant products that others are selling. When your visitors buy something from the links in your advertising or in some cases just by clicking on your ads, you will earn money. How great does that sound? Make a website about something you love, perhaps a hobby like gardening or antiques, put a few adds on your site and watch the money roll in.
The real money making secret here is to construct several of these websites and form your own little cartel of low maintenance, profit-making websites. If you put information on your site that stays relevant for a long time then you wont have to make and changes to your website making it low maintenance. As you have no products to package and post why not sleep while people roam your site clicking links and making you money! Here is a tip: Don't bite off more than you can chew - make sure your first website is successful before you start to move on to creating another.
Getting started
Now I'm sure your excited or at least intrigued so lets see how you get started. Even though creating your website might be easy, a website that has no visitors will earn no money. I will concentrate on explaining how to attract those vital visitors to your site.
1. Decide what you want your website to be about.
Think carefully so that you wont be changing your mind once you have gotten started. If you have no products to sell and just want to use advertising, then I recommend you make a website about your hobby or passion so that you wont run out of inspiration half way through making your site. If you create you website about something you love its more likely that it will contain something unique giving it a more personalised touch which is more likely to attract visitors and to keep them coming back.
2. Decide on a name for you website.
This is a vital part of your website. By name I don't only mean what your website will be called i.e. Bobs cars, but also the address or URL that people will have to type, in order to get to your site. Because of this, it is vital that you follow all or at least some of these guidelines:
1. Make the name simple and memorable - make the name easy to remember so that when a visitor wants to return to your site the can easily remember what the site was called. I.E. a site selling cars with the name www.cars.com is far more memorable then a site called: www.wesellthecheapestcarsever.com .
2. Make the name short - Short names limit potential spelling mistakes and also help to make your sites name (which is also the sites address) more memorable.
3. Make the name something unique - try to think of a name that will catch people's attention. Perhaps something that is funny or a play on words. If you can get your websites name to attract people through curiosity, you've already got a great advantage over the majority of the sites on the Internet.
4. Pick a name that reflects what your site is about.
Planning and Constructing your Site
The next stage is to plan your site. Decide how many pages you want and what you want to put on them. This will help you choose the number of pages you want when you use the website creation tool to build you site. You can always go back and add new pages in so don't feel that you need to think of every page you need straight away.
A vital part of planning your site is to break up the information you want to present in a very simplistic manner so that visitors can A. find what they are looking for quickly, B. don't get lost in your site, and C. prevent getting bored.
Now that you have your website planned out you can build your website. As already mentioned before your first step is to simply sign up to 1 and 1.
Here is the link:
Use the website creation tool to make your site. Don't forget to take advantage of the guides and other useful tools that 1 and 1 offer. If you get stuck look at their FAQ forum or even email them for help. Don't be afraid to experiment as no change is permanent and you can always revert to your previous website designs if you don't like any new changes you make.
When building your site use a font that is easy to read and avoid huge contrasts in colours, you want your visitors to be able to read what you have to say as easily as possible instead of giving them an epileptic fit. When choosing a website template or design, I recommend you choose one with large buttons to make navigation for visitors easy.
Don't worry if you don't get everything just right on your first attempt. No site is ever finished as every site is constantly updated and refined by its owner.
Most importantly have fun! If you get stuck, type your question into Google and you will have your answer in no time.
How to get people to visit your site
Once you have managed to build your site you obviously need people to actually visit it. At this point nobody even knows your site even exists, apart from yourself and possibly your pet to whom you have been bragging to about your new accomplishment.
Marketing your site is the most challenging part of creating a profitable website. In this section we will look at the main methods by which people find your site.
The main method visitors will find your site will be through a search engine such as Google or Yahoo and therefore your marketing efforts should be concentrated on them. At this point, no search engine will display your site, as none of them know that your site even exists but this is all about to change.
Step 1 - Submit your site to search engines
First of all you will need to submit your website to search engines. This is a very simple process as it only involves you going to a search engine and clicking their "add URL" button to add a new site. Once you have submitted your site you will have to play the waiting game as it can take up to a week before the search engines start displaying your site to people using that search engine.
Step 2 - Increasing your websites position on a search engines results page
Having your website listed on a search engine is great, but we want people searching to actually come across your site in the search results. The majority of people don't even look past the second page of results on a search engine and therefore if your site is buried underneath hundreds of other results, no potential visitor will see it.
So how can you increase your sites position on search engines?
Firstly think back to the beginning of this guide. I recommended that you create a site that is unique. If your site is unique the contents of your site are likely to be unique too. If your site is about purple monkeys living on the moon, anyone searching for purple moon monkeys is unlikely to get a large number of search results, thereby enabling your site to be displayed near the top of the search results. This method works well but not everyone wants to have a site about purple moon monkeys and I don't suspect too many people will be searching the net for them either.
The next thing you can do is to add as much content to your site as possible. Search engine work on relevance so if the text on your site contains a phrase that someone is searching for, your site will be displayed in the search results. The more content you have the more likely you are to have repeated certain phrases making your site more relevant, which results in your site being positioned higher in the search results. That is why it is crucial that you add content to your site! Content, content, content!!! You can go as far as making sure that you repeat certain phrases that are relevant to your site and that people might be searching for.
A more tricky but effective way to increase your sites position in search results is to get other sites to link to your site. Once again it's all to do with relevance. If someone has a link to your site and with the text "make money here", then your website is more likely to come up when someone searches for "make money"
To summarise
· Add as much content to your site as possible
· Attempt to get other sites to link to your site
· Keep in mind that other sites will be doing the same
Paid marketing
Search engines are not the only way to attract visitors. You can pay to have an add for your site to be displayed by search engines. Google and Yahoo both offer this type of advertising, which is referred to as pay-per-click. It works by you selecting several key words that you expect people to search for. When someone does search for one of the keywords you have selected, your add will be displayed in the search results. Whenever someone clicks on your add and is taken to your site, you have to pay that search engine a small mount of money. You have to pre define the largest amount you are willing to pay each time your add is clicked, but you have to bear in mind that other people will be advertising using those same keywords. Whoever is willing to pay the most will have their add displayed first. If you are willing to pay too little your add might be buried under thousands of other adds making it unlikely for anyone to see it.
Pay-per-click advertising can be very effective at generating more visitors or hits to your website. If you want to find out more:
Click here for Googles advertising program: https://adwords.google.com/select/login
These are the basic marketing techniques for your website. It might sound like a fairly long list but these methods are only scratching the surface. I strongly recommend reading:
The Website Marketing Bible:
How to implement advertising
So you have your website and have used my marketing techniques to attract visitors. Now all you need is to set up the advertising, which is going to make you some money.
Firstly think back to the marketing section where I talked about pay-per-click advertising. Not only can you create your own adds, but you can also display other peoples adds on your site which will generate you profit every time one of your visitors clicks on them. Google have made this very easy to implement with their Google Adsence program. Your first step is to sign up for free and by taking the coding that they provide you with and simply copying and pasting it into your website, enabling you to display other peoples adds. It's all automated so after pasting in the code you don't have to do anything ever again. Google will provide full instructions and support so don't worry if you get stuck.
Here is the link for the Google Adsence program:
Pay-per-click advertising is not the only way to make money. Many other companies selling their products over the Internet form their own affiliate programs. Affiliate programs are a means for websites to advertise another companies products through their site. If one of your visitors was to buy that companies product as a result of going through the advertising link on your site, as an affiliate you will receive a percentage of the profit that was made by the company that made the sale.
You can become an affiliate by going to a company's website and looking for a menu bar saying "affiliates" which will take you to a page explaining how you can become an affiliate.
Try and pick affiliates that your visitors are likely to be interested in to increase your chances of them purchasing the product.
What's Next
Congratulations, if you have successfully completed all the steps up to this point in my guide as you now have a profit generating website! You have successfully done the minimum necessary to create a profitable website but there are many things that can still be done to generate even higher sums of money and have fun doing it!
Some of these more advanced steps can require some programming skills but are definitely not difficult to learn all it takes is some time and determination. Firstly lets look at ways of actually selling products or services from your website.
The easy way
If you don't have time to learn some basic programming then this is the method for you. 1 and 1 offer a web shop package in which you use a web shop creation tool (just like the one for building your website) in which you simply list the products you sell and put a picture of them and set a price. The creation tool will worry about building a shopping basket and creating the coding to allow customers to pay via credit cards so you don't have to worry about any of the programming. You will be notified by email whenever you make a sale leaving you to simply package and post the item, In order to complete the transaction. It's as simple as that.
Further site improvements
Forums
Remember how I stated that the more content your site has the higher it will rank in search engine search results? Well forums are a great way to gain site content. By having a forum your visitors will create content for you by asking each other questions and through their general discussions. You will be adding to your sites content without having to do anything! No surprise that 1 and 1 offer a forum creation tool as part of their package, so that you can create forums without the need to know and programming.
Final words
I hope that you have enjoyed this guide and are well on your way to becoming an Internet Entrepreneur or for the advanced readers I hope I have given you some extra knowledge to improve your sites effectiveness.
For those of you who are very familiar with my site you will know my habit of giving everything away for free. All I ask in return for this guide is that you create a link to my site through your website. To do this, copy and paste the following coding into your site:
<a href="http://www.onlinecareer.co.uk" target="_top">Become an entrepreneur</a>
Thank you.
© 2006 Online Career - Creating a profit generating website
