Building your webpage

by Christopher Clayton

Introduction

The best way to start a home based business is to build a website. Contrary to popular belief you can build a very successful website with no technical skills. The easiest type of website to build is an informational website. An informational website is a website that provides high quality information for free. It makes money through affiliate link and advertisements. These are the best websites because they maintain themselves. There is no overhead, you dont have deal with inventory, and you still make alot of money.

Registering A Domain

The first step in building a website is registering a domain name. A domain name is simply the web address you type into the address bar. For example, www.apsense.com is a domain name. There are plenty of sites on the internet to register domain names. The most popular is www.godaddy.com. Domain names range from $5.99 to $11.99 per year. At godaddy they are $9.99 per year. You also have to protect your domain name. This will cost you $25. So all in all you have to pay around $35.00 for a domain and protect it.

Web Hosting

You need to start thinking about how you can build your website after you purchase a domain name but before you do that you need to find a web host. A web host is a company that provides storage space on a server. Each time you build a webpage it has to be added to a server. When someone visits a website that page has to be uploaded by a server. A web host provides space on a server.

Building The Website

There are two ways to build a website. You can used a website builder or html. Website builders are ideal for people who are not tech savvy. If you know HTML ( hyper text markup language ) you can use a advanced program such as dreamweaver.

Free Website Builders

Free website builders are commonly included when you purchase a domain name or sometimes they are included in web hosting packages. Free website builders are not intended for commercial purposes. When i say commerical purposes I mean to make money off of the website you are building. You normally have restrictions on how many pages you can build since it cost the host money to store pages on a server.

Business Website Builders

Business website builders are intended for commercial purposes. They are designed to help you build a website, then make money from it. When you purchase a business website builder you generally get unlimited storage space. This means you can create however many pages you want. You can have a website with 10 pages or 1000 pages. They give you tools to help you succeed. They help you with many aspects of making money on the internet. Marketing your site, creating quality content, and selling products just to name a few.

Top 3 Free Website Builders

1&1 Website builder

The 1&1 website builder is a popular website builder that is often included in a domain name purchase. It is free but you can only build a 5 page website. I would not recommend this website builder to anyone who is looking to make any money from a website. This type of site builder is only good for building small non-commercial websites. Alot of people buy simple free website builders like this one just to connect to relatives far away. They are great for posting pictures and stories. A rule of thumb with website builders is you get what you pay for.

Site2You

The Site2You is a very unique free website builder. You can get an unlimited amount of pages for a one time fee. If you dont purchase the unlimited pages plan then you are limited on how many pages your website can be. They have alot of templates to choose from. Overall its not a better choice than the 1&1 builder.

Site Studio

Site Studio is probaly the best free website builder. 1&1 is the most common, but as far as quality goes Site Studio is better. It is very simple to use. There are over 1000 website templates included. In addition to alot of templates you can customize the color scheme of each template. It is also very easy to upload images.

Just remember that free website builders are not intended build websites that make money. They are designed for very small and simple websites. There are alot of restrictions. I simply dont recommend them because there is no earning potential.

Content-Traffic-Presell-Monetize

Content

Developing good content is essential. Identify a topic that you know and love. Then you will be able to create quality content that visitors will enjoy reading and you will enjoy writing. Visitors are sure to return if they like reading what you write.

Traffic

Traffic is the lifeblood of your internet business. Without visitors your site is just sitting there. It might as well be non-existant. 85% of your visitors will find you via major search engines through keywords they type in. If you dont rank highly in google, yahoo, msn, and live, then you wont get many visitors. Ill go over how to rank highly later. For now just remember keywords=traffic

PreSell

Preselling your visitors is crucial to making money off of your website. Preselling customers means building a relationship with them, preselling them on you. Off the internet, you are presold all the time. You are presold by your barber who creates a relationship with you that keeps you coming back. You are presold by your real-estate agent. This simply means building a trusting relationship. If you provide good high quality information, then you build trust between you and your visitors.

Monetize

After you presell your visitors they will be willing to buy. Then it is time to monetize. Monetizing your website simply means integrating ways of generating income. This sounds like the hardest part, but it is by far the simplest. There are so many ways for a theme based content website to monetize. Ill also go into more detail about this later.

The C-T-P-M process is the formula for success with theme based content websites. It is not just a theory, it has actually been proven. Now that you know what the C-T-P-M process and what direction you are going in, it is time to start thinking about a domain name.

PART 2 COMING SOON!