Tool #1 – Your Own Website
(If you missed Part 1 of this series, just go here —> PART 1 )
OK, let’s get to the “nitty-gritty”…
The first tool needed to create a successful web business is your own website.
- You need to build a credible and professional looking website.
- You need a website that you own and control.
- Your website is the anchor for all of your marketing efforts.
Why is your website so important? It identifies and brands you… it sets your marketing efforts apart from those of the masses.
Most affiliate and network marketing companies will gladly provide you with a replicated website that is identical to every other person marketing that same product or company. In other words, as you promote your company replicated site you are building the brand of your company… NOT YOURS.
On the other hand, a quality, unique, personalized website with great information and content will attract more business leads and identify you as a business leader.
Before you build your website you need two essential things… a domain name and a web hosting account.
Choosing A Quality Domain Name
A domain name is the main part of a web address. For instance, my website’s domain name is “gregraymarketing.com”. One of the pages links on this website is…
https://gregraymarketing.com/12Free
You can see how the domain name fits in the overall link.
Your domain name is a major factor in “branding” you as a marketing leader. It needs to include as many of these things as possible…
• Your domain name needs to be catchy and easy to remember… keep it as short and simple as possible.
• It needs to identify your marketing presence… develop a marketing concept that is different than others in your product niche… something that sets you apart.
• It needs to relate to your marketing niche… what products or services are you promoting.
• It needs to be keyword focused… before deciding on a domain name, “Google” it. What comes up? This is your competition.
• It needs to be .COM or .NET or .ORG… in that order.
It is also very important for SEO purposes that your domain name contain the niche terms people would be searching for. Also, if possible, it would be best for your product name and domain name to match up. That’s usually not possible as most companies will not allow you to use their company name or their product names… copyright laws, you see.
You can purchase your Domain Name from several domain registrars. The one I recommend is NameCheap… as the name implies, they are cheap. They are also very user friendly.
Here’s that link ==> https://gregraymarketing.com/NameCheap
Web Hosting
The next important part of building your website is selecting your web hosting company. A lot of marketers may be drawn to the marketing promotions of hosting companies like “Go Daddy” or “1and1”, but these may not be the best choice for YOU. Let’s look at several factors you should consider before selecting the hosting company that will work best for YOUR online business.
Choosing The Best Web Hosting
The hosting service is the company that provides your website access to the Internet. There are a lot of hosting companies out there. Consider these factors when selecting your hosting service…
• Don’t choose a FREE hosting service… it will not look professional… it will more than likely contain advertisements to other products and services, many in direct competition with you… and it won’t be very reliable.
• Be sure you hosting company features “cPanel”. At this point, you might not know what cPanel is. The most inportant feature that concerns you at this point is that it gives you the tools needed to install a multitude of website scripts with a touch of a button through … most notably, WordPress.
• Make sure you can add multiple domains… one hosting account can service multiple online business ventures.
• Make sure you have ample bandwidth and disk space. “Bandwidth” is the amount of web traffic to and from your website. “Disk Space” is the amount of data you can store on the hosting company’s file servers.
The hosting company I recommend is HostGator. They are very reliable… their support is incredible… and they’re inexpensive.
Here’s the link ==> https://gregraymarketing.com/HostGator
Click on the yellow “Get Started Now” button to get to the plan descriptions.
The minimum plan I recommend is the “Baby Plan” which features cPanel hosting with unlimited domains, unlimited disk space, and unlimited bandwidth… all for under $10.00 per month. (Check the chart below)
The Business plan offers the same features as the “Baby Plan”, but adds private SSL and a private IP address, and also adds 1-800 phone number. This phone number forwards to your home or cell phone (100 minutes).
Here’s the link again ==> https://gregraymarketing.com/HostGator
Building Your Website – Overview
OK, we’ve determined that for you to build your brand and separate yourself from the thousands of other people marketing the same or similar products or services, you must have your own website.
This website needs to have unique, well-written content with your own domain name that contains key words relating to your products or services. This will help potential customers and business partners find you in the search engines.
The next question you need to consider is “What framework should be used to build this website?” To determine the answer to that question, you need to first decide upon the purpose of your website.
Do you want to…
1. Collect contact information from your site visitors and send them to your own site which promotes your own products or services.
2. Collect contact information from your site visitors and send them to your company provided site, or an affiliate site link.
3. Build an “Authority Site” which offers tons of quality content about your product niche and establishes your expert status
If all you want to do is collect leads and forward them to your company site, then all you will really need is a mini-site template, and you are on your way.
However, if you want to build an “Authority Site”, I believe that the only way to go is with “WordPress”. In fact, WordPress may be the best choice for building ALL of your marketing site needs.
WordPress is not just for bloggers anymore. While you can still publish blog posts, you can also build “pages” and utilize all types of widgets and apps to really connect and keep your readers interest.
Once you find a WordPress template that meets your needs, the process of building individual pages with the same look and feel is simple and straightforward. Remember that if you find hosting that features “cPanel”, you can easily install WordPress without a hitch.
Marketing with Minisites
Another possibility is a “minisite” which is basically a small, often one page website… just as the name suggests. A minisite might also be a squeeze page or a sales page.
Ministies are usually developed in HTML, although you could just as easily build one with WordPress.
The good news is you don’t have to be a programmer to build an HTML based website anymore. In fact, there is specialized software out there that simplifies the process and makes it just as easy as creating a document with Microsoft Word.
This easy to use software is called an “HTML Editor.” There are a lot of commercial products out there, but I use a free product called Kompozer.
Easy Web Authoring with Kompozer
KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interface. Once again, using Kompozer is very similar in look and feel of working in Microsoft Word. KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding. And best of all, it’s FREE!
Here’s the download link: https://gregraymarketing.com/Kompozer
The FileZilla… the FREE FTP Solution
The main thing that most free HTML editors are lacking that the commercial versions, like Dream Weaver, include is the ability to publish your page directly from within the software.
So there is one more piece of free software you will need to download called an FTP client. An FTP client connects directly with file servers on your webhosting and allows you to move files back and forth between your computer and your website. You can also create folders, rename folders and files, and many of the other functions you do on your computer… they are just on your hosted website instead.
The product I recommend is FREE once again, and it is call FileZilla. Here’s the link to download FileZilla… https://gregraymarketing.com/Filezilla
Basically, Filezilla opens two windows… one on your local computer and one on your hosting FTP server. You can highlight files on either side and move them to the other… the computer side uploads to the internet… the remote site side downloads to your computer.
Building Your Minisite
When building your minisite with an HTML editor, you can either build from scratch, or you can use a pre-made template. I did a Google search for “free minisite templates” and it returned over 50,000 pages… obviously there are a ton of them out there.
The template I have been using for all of my minisites for several years is called the “Amazing Minisite Template”. The package includes 4 versions of the template in a total of 10 different colors. So, in reality, that’s 40 different templates. It also includes website graphics, and .psd files for most everything.
Training How-To Videos
I am NOT including any how-to videos on using Kompozer or FileZilla. That is not within the scope of this article.
However, if you do a search on YouTube for “Kompozer how-to” or “Filezilla how-to” you will find a multitude of helpful content.
Outsourcing with Fiverr.com
One last idea to throw at you is this… you can always pay some one to build your website for you. This is called “Outsourcing”.
You can find lots of vendors on Fiverr.com who will build you a website for $5.00
Next up… we’ll take a look at tool #2… Your Own Autoresponder
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