Build Your First Site-Free

Homestead Website Builder is the first web host I used to build my first site and I still use it today. The large software company Intuit (makers of Quickbooks software) merged with Homestead (one of the most established & well-known Website Building Companies with over 12 million sites built on their system) to create the Intuit-Homestead Website Builder. The new Website Builder has all of the same features and programs as the original Homestead plans, and Intuit has brought some new business features and software integration to the mix (for example you can now get a free version of Quickbooks business accounting software which integrates with the Intuit-Homestead Website Builder). With a massive library of website templates (2000+) and royalty-free images (250,000) for you to start with, Intuit-Homestead offers the most extensive starting blocks of any Website Builder that we’ve reviewed. They have a very inexpensive $4.99/month Starter Package that gives you up to 5 webpages and access to all the starting blocks and both SiteBuilders. They also offer two larger and more expensive plans (Gold & Platinum) which provide more pages and more storage space. I have the Platinum plan and it is still a great deal – I suggest you begin with the free trial of the Starter Package and then decide if you need more (you can upgrade at any point).

Intuit-Homestead uses a simple online interface for basic edits to your site (their “SiteBuilder Lite”) and a much more feature-rich downloadable interface (the full “SiteBuilder”) which works on PCs. If you download the SiteBuilder software you can access all the functionality this Website Builder offers, including search, video, mailing lists, guest books, polls, chat rooms, blog, maps, photo gallery, YouTube integration and Paypal integration. If all you need is a 5-page website, or you’re willing to pay a bit more to upgrade to a premium plan, then Intuit-Homestead offers the best combination of starting blocks and website-building features I’ve found.

What is Niche Marketing?

Niche marketing is the kind of market you go for that will take at least a landing page or more. Its a matter of finding small, relatively unfound areas of a market that occupies a localized area of demand. We try to find a small corner of a sector that rest of the retailors and marketers have little or no interest in. These small segments of a market can have a huge impact on the niche marketer. You won't have to worry about the big concerns trying to squeeze you out because the market is not big enough for them. They want to attract huge amounts of visitors  to make big sales off one huge website. 


Suppose you wanted to sell Could you ever compete with Dell and Gateway? No! They have an advertising budget that is bigger than your annual income. There is no way to touch that market.


How about a website selling craft items. Do you think you could compete in that field? Probably. There aren't any big corporations fighting for your customers. Would you be able to make a lot of money selling craft items? Some money but no where near as much as if you sold computers. The difference is you would actually be able to attract customers to a craft site. and since there isn't a lot of competition in this field, you will be able to keep your customers for years to come.


How much could you expect to make from this type of site? Some where around $50 - $500 a month. Nice but not great.


The trick with niche marketing is to set up one niche site after another. Build a small but loyal customer base for each site. If you were to make $100 off one site. Think about the potential of having 10 sites.


Ten little websites each bringing in around $100 each month. Not bad. Now build another site and another one and another one...


Fifty little websites each bringing in around $100 each month. Hmm... This is looking pretty good.


Is niche marketing really needed in a world full of websites competing for income? Those who know how the system works will answer "YES INDEED", because niche marketing is the only system capable of filling up a gaping hole in the market by catering to the unsatisfied needs of a smaller group of customers. Needs that virtually go unnoticed by the big leagues. Through niche marketing, you will be able to gain a foothold in the market by being a needle in a haystack. Small and inconspicuous websites that attract small groups of people that need exactly what you have to offer.


There are an endless supply of tiny markets out there that the big companies with their big budgets are never even going to consider. This is where you want to set your goals. Little by little you could build a gigantic internet empire and just sit back an watch the money roll in.


But how are you going to find the time to research and build all these little websites? This is where you are in luck.


2009 seemed to be the year of niche websites. You can buy already made websites that you just upload to your server and start selling the products. There are many membership sites that you can join for $50 to $70 each month. For your membership price you will usually receive 3 new niche websites each month. Some of these sites have content and graphics only and you have to create the layout. Some of these offer plug and play websites that are set to use as is.


You will also see many websites that are offering individual niche websites that you can buy one at a time. Buy what you want when you are ready for another site. These pre-built websites are selling on an average for $15. Money well spent considering you are saving yourself a month or more in the time it would take for you to build one of these sites.


All of these types of ready to go sites that you can buy are sold in small quantities. You can find sites that will only sell 100 of any given niche. I have seen this limit go as high as 750. These limits are set so you will not have to worry about too much duplicate content out there. You wouldn't want to buy a website that 10,000 other people are buying in the same month. Then your little niche would suddenly be a big competition. 100 - 200 of any niche website is a good quantity. You can be pretty sure no one will run into two of the same websites when you consider the billions of websites out there.


The people who build these ready to go niche market websites do all the work for you. You don't have to find the small, unique markets. You don't have to create the content. You usually don't even have to find the products to sell. These niche site creators have done all the work for you. You just change a few codes here and there so you will be getting the credit for the affiliate sales and AdSense ads and you are in business.


The greatest thing about niche marketing is you don't need a separate domain name for each website. You can have one general domain name and add sub-domains for all your sites. You are never going to find a cheaper way to break into the internet income market.


Start your Niche Empire today.

reprinted with permission.

Mailing Lists

Is having a mailing list really all that important?

You bet it is. Without a mailing list you are at the mercy of the search engines and their ever changing regulations. Don't get me wrong, doing your SEO is vital to your business but it's not the end of the story.

If you don't have a mailing list, your online business, once it gets off the ground, will eventually die. You can not sustain business without a customer base. Online or offline, repeat customers are the backbone of any business. It's even more important online because the competition is greater and they probably have a list.

Your list is your best form of advertisement. The people who are on your list have been to your site and have an interest in your topic. You will have to remind them on a regular basis that your site is a place they like to visit.

Don't bookmarks and favorites lists work the same way?

Not even close.

What happens when you get information about the most exciting piece of software ever created? You join the affiliate program to promote the software and add a link to your website Now you have to hope someone will find it and click on it. Of course, there is a lot of other information on your website so the likelyhood of every one who comes to your site seeing that fantastic offer is pretty slim.

Let's go even one step further. Lets say the super software is very cheap right now but the price is going up in a week. Now you add this information to your website and have to remember to go back and change it in a week to reflect the new price. If you forget to do this, you are going to get a lot of angry emails when your visitors buy the software and pay a lot more than you were advertising.

OK, do you can see where you are going to have problems actually getting any sales from the super software?

Now, let's go back to the first moment you heard about the super software and the fantastic price. You join the affiliate program and immediately send a notice about this great offer out to your list.

The people on your list get an email. They open the email and see one offer. A super special offer with an unbeatable price. They don't see any other interesting information that may distract them. They see your offer and nothing else. They are totally focused on what you have presented to them. You tell them that this offer has a special price and they will have to act fast or pay more later.

Out of all the people who open your email, how many do you think are going to see this offer? 100% right? Of course. There isn't anything else to see. You have just raised your profit potential by a huge margin.

Can you see how you are losing money by only having your website and not having a list? It's pretty obvious isn't it? So, we're all in agreement, you do need a list.

How do you get this list?

First I want to tell you what you don't do. You don't go out and buy a safe list from some email address collector. These people don't want your email and you will be reported for spamming. You will have to build your list from people who are interested in your business.

Ask yourself this... who is interested in what you have to offer? The people who come to your website right? Yes! These people found your website by either doing a search in the search engines or were told about you from another site or a friend. In any case, they came to your site because you have the type of information that they are interested in.

While they are there, offer them the opportunity to join your mailing list. Have a sign up form on every page in a very prominent place. Tell your visitors that you will send them valuable information when it is available in exchange for their name and email address.

Some people think you should offer a free incentive to get people to join your list. There is a lot of controversy on this subject. You will have to decide what is right for you.

The only thing I offer people for joining my lists is future information and offers. The people who join most of my lists know I am going to try to sell them something so when they see an email from me, they aren't surprised when I ask them to get their credit card.

Be honest right from the start. Don't make your list joiners think they are on a list of freebies if you are planning on selling them products. They will quit the list as soon as you send your first offer. Trying to trick people to join your list will leave you with a bunch of angry subscribers and no sales.

If your website looks professional and you have valid information on your site, people will want to hear from you again. They will gladly join your list so they won't miss the great information you have to offer.

Treat your business like a business, not a scam, and you will prosper.

Now go build your list before you lose any more money.

Reprinted with permission 

Want To Get An Ex Back?

I have a new web site that is dedicated to men and women that are looking for a way to get an ex back in their lives after a breakup.

I reviewed several books and videos devoted to the subject and have entered into affiliate agreements to promote the programs I think are the best.

Check out the new site at http://www.GetAnExBack.com

Breaking up can be very hard and these publications help folks work through the breakup and beyond. If you are serious about getting back with your ex you should check it out.

Here is a sample of one of my PPC Ads:

Get Your Ex Back In 24 Hrs
Shocking Easy Instant 24-Hour Guaranteed
Proven Method To Get Your Ex Back Fast.
www.GetAnExBack.com

How to Optimize Internal Web Pages for Ranking and Ads

Page Optimazation

Internal Optimization means on-page optimization that you should take into consideration while writing your internal web pages. This is one thing you have complete control over. Besides, it has a major effect on the ads relevancy and CTR.

Meta Tags

Meta Keywords: They have low impact, BUT - they DO have impact over the ads relevancy. You are advised not to leave this part of your page as blank. Always try to make it as easy as possible for the crawlers to understand your website. Create your web page with Meta keywords. If there is NO CONTENT on your webpage, the Adsense Media bot will pick-up the Meta Tags, and show ads according to that. Search on Google for pages that top the SERPs for the keyword you have in mind. These websites will give you a good idea about what to include in Meta Tags.

Meta Description: Whatever you put in the description meta tag, it will appear as description right after the Title Text that links to your page in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). This property of the description meta tag makes it quite important, as it has direct impact over the CTR of your link in the SERPs that leads to your website. It eventually decides how much traffic you will get from a search engine. Write description that attracts right kind of traffic from search engine pages.

Title Text

Search Engines give importance to the keywords that appear in the title tag of HTML Source code. Title has
a good impact over relevancy of ads too. For higher payouts, choose the highest paying keyword of that category for the title text.

However, this entirely depends upon your optimization strategy. If you are more concerned about competition and getting more traffic than payouts, choose a keyword with low competition keyword (competition you can handle) with relatively higher traffic. Though, I will advise you to get more traffic first, and become authority page of that keyword. Payouts will increase with the traffic.

Tip: Title text generally appears in the SERPs as TITLE link to your page. In other words, you can say, this very line controls the CTR of your website link listed in SERPs. How you design your title is entirely your own decision.

If you are optimizing it for more traffic, you will not want your title to read as it was written for Search Engine crawlers. The title has to be concise so much so that even 10 words are considered as too many. If you are optimizing it for more payouts - Go ahead!However, you can try to mix the high paying keywords with traffic attractor keywords too.

Give Headings

Its quite important to mark the main headline of your webpage with H1 tags and subheadings with H2 and H3 tags, and so on. This is because headings highlight and indicate the most important element of your web page - the actual content. It is important to use relevant keywords in headings and sub headings as these have good impact on rankings - especially when sorted by relevancy. This has an equally good impact on the ads appearing on your web page. Headings give prominence to the content on your web pages.

Again, you can use these headings either to optimize for traffic, fighting competition, or getting more payouts.

Embedding Keywords in the Content

Besides hosting useful and genuine content on your web pages, it’s important to include keywords at the beginning and end of an article. This helps search engines and Ad bots determine the theme of the web page. Good use of keywords help the Google Mediabot achieve higher Ad-relevancy for your website.Some people follow a strategy of hosting less content on a web page. This helps focus ads on specific keywords and avoids dilution of ads by other keywords that you may have mentioned even once in the web content. This works when you are optimizing for Adsense, but has some traffic drawbacks too. Furthermore, Google may consider it as SPAM. Therefore, it's never advised to host 2 or 3 lines and expect good earnings. Chances are that you will be hit by smart pricing.

On the other hand, don’t make lengthy web pages as it might mislead Ad-bots to get some wrong ads, resulting in dilution of relevant ads. Sometimes, Ad bots can be very sticky to a certain keyword you used just for a reference. If you are getting irrelevant ads, changing meta tags and Title text is the first thing to start with, then move on to your content.

Internal Linking

Internal linking of web pages has traffic as well as Adsense importance. As all your link partners may not link all the pages of your website, it's the responsibility of your web pages to hyperlink your other pages, and define the crawlers what your pages are about. In the context of Adsense, suggesting related links (related articles) to the visitor will also increase the page views of your website and also the chances of the visitors clicking on the high paying ads.

A website must interlink its pages. This can be done by displaying related articles or linking to pages with proper anchor text. This helps increase the importance of most web pages. Even a simple navigation bar can achieve that purpose.

Increasing Penetration

Write articles with more headings and subheadings. This not only makes your content more readable and user friendly, but also help the Ad Bots (and Crawlers too) to properly recognize the theme of your web page. This will make them serve you the most relevant ads. This trick also gives you another chance to mention more of those keywords in your web page. Try to include as many instances where you can specify keywords to the bots. This will have impact on your CTR and EPC. It will also help you get the target traffic. Target traffic will mean more CTR of your web page and better performance.

Check Out Our New Site eSmokem

We have high hopes for this site esmokem.com  It should prove to be a pretty good revenue stream. We are in the SEO work, kinda moving out of sync on this one.

E Cigarettes are electronic smokes that look, taste and smoke like your conventional cigarette without the tar, second hand smoke, ashes etc. You do get a satisfying smoke with or without nicotine.

We are adding several brands as we gain affiliations with the distributers. They are pretty popular, people (at least around here) are just beginning to hear about them. Were looking for a good response and are adding different brands as the become available to us.

Halloween

We Have added a Halloween page to our MyShopMonster/halloweenmonster.com site.

NOW GO...BUY SOMETHING!

Now thats marketing