Blog: Create a Website Tutorial

Finally someone puts all the steps together for you to learn how to start a home based business to make money online. But is it worth the cost?

I purchased Ewen Chia’s Working from Home Special Report.

First thought is that it was just full of fluff and hype. But as I read the information I was blown away at how this ebook actually gives you the step-by-step instructions on how to work from home to make money online.

A part in the introduction states:

“In this short book, I’m going to focus on three quick and easy ways you can combine the first two stages so you can start making money on the Internet.”

This product not only delivers, but it over delivers to help you learn how to create, build, promote and succeed with your own business online.

Making money online is a very competitive business, but with this no-nonsense guide in hand, you can’t go wrong.

What sets this ebook from all the others?

His step-by-step guide has snapshots of pages and many other free websites to help you start your own business online, which is a breath of fresh air from others that are only creating ebooks to promote their other products.

These are tried and true methods to get you started earning money online even if your budget is ZERO.

Many products being sold online have a bunch of freebies included. This one does also, but what sets it apart is that the freebies included are a goldmine of information, not just some ebooks thrown in to make the product look good.

Don’t have a product to sell online? Are you an affiliate marketer and you are not generating any (or very little) income? Don’t worry. In one section, Ewen shows you step by step how you can create for free, package, promote and sell your own product.

In a nutshell

This paragraph below is a quick snippet that sums up this special report:

“You don’t have to be a technical genius, and you don’t have to know everything there is to know. You’ll learn as you go. You have enough information to start right now.”

This is very true of this report. You do have enough information to start earning money online within a very short time, but you have to take the time to learn it and put it into action.

Is worth the price?

Yes, without a doubt. I have purchased other products many times the amount of this report and they did not deliver even close to what this package does.

This ebook is affordable for the masses and teaches beginners the step-by-step way to work from home to make money online.

Ewen Chia’s Working from Home Special Report

Deciding if you want to start blogging or create a website can be a very frustrating task. Both of these options do have pros and cons to them but how do you really know which way would be right for you.

Blogs

Blogging can take a lot of time. You need to create ongoing original content to keep traffic flow. Once you stop posting, your traffic will start to slack off as people look at blogs as being up-to-date with events and information, many do not read “older dated” blogs.

If you are wanting to start your own business at home or just looking to earn extra money online, having a blog as a “store” does not look very professional, nor does having free hosting for your blog.

The URL of your blog may be very long and difficult for someone to remember. mygreatstore.wordpress.com

Create a website

Once you create a web page for your site, you don’t have to continuously update it.

Owning a domain name looks for professional for a business. If are thinking of starting your own home business and can’t afford even basic hosting and a domain name, then you may want to look at other options for making money.

Easier to create hierarchical navigation (home page, tier one, tier two)

See more information about Blog vs Create a Website.

Many do not know there is a difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org Even though you can create a blog (also called weblog) using either one of these publishing platforms, there is a huge difference between them and this post will give you a better understanding of the differences.

Wordpress.com

Hosted by a third party and if you wanted your blog’s name to be thegreatestblog it would be thegreatestblog.wordpress.com.

If you use wordpress.com to host your blog, you will be very limited to the look of it. You are also not allowed to use any affiliate links or any advertising that you would get paid for (ie: Google Adsense, Widget Bucks, etc). If you do use affiliate links within your posts and you are reported, you could end up having your entire blog suspended.

Creating a blog using .com just for the sake of creating inbound links to your oun website (or another 3rd party site) is also against the Terms of Service (TOS).

To create your free blog using wordpress.com, you need to decide on the name and if it is available, create your account and you’ll be blogging within a few minutes.

You get many different layouts with the free blog. You can customize the look and feel by moving different sections around and even uploading your own header to the blog.

But you cannot upload any available plugins using wordpress.com. They do have a few already on your free blog to help with spam, but that is about all.

If you are looking to blog to make money online, then wordpress.com is not your answer.

Wordpress.org

This is used with a paid web hosting plan. There are many affordable web hosting plans that have a quick installation of wordpress so you don’t need to download from the wordpress.org site and upload to your hosting plan.

Many are turning to creating blogs instead of websites as they are very easy to install on your hosting account.

When you purchase web hosting and install a wordpress blog, you have complete control of it. With hundreds of plugins available, you can make it search engine optimized, add Google Adsense, create a sitemap for the search engines to spider your site better, and much more.

You also have hundreds of themes available which you can customize with your own colors and how the blog will look on your site.

If you are on a limited budget, but want to create a blog to make money online, you can get web hosting and register a domain name for about $50 a year through GoDaddy. Their basic hosting package has plenty of space to get you started.

If you are a new webmaster and are getting stuck with trying to find ways to help with you link building, here are 14 ideas to get you started.

1. Submit Articles - Ezinearticles.com, Goarticles.com or any of the other Article directories you can submit to. You may think that it is difficult to write your own articles to help with your link building campaign. It is not. Take an idea of something from your website and write a small article. Many article directories have a minimum of 200 words.

2. Forums - When you become a member of any forums, you can usually put a “signature” at the bottom of all your posts. Make sure you read the Terms of Service before you add your signature line so you don’t get booted out for spamming. Some forums will also let you use a direct affiliate link in your signature.

3. Value-Exchange Program - Sitsell has a free program you can sign-up for to help you find quality links for your website.

4. Social Marketing- There are hundreds of different types of social media/marketing sites in which you can use to create backlinks to your site. These sites are a great place to start with your link building campaigns. I found a Social Marketing Blueprint Formula , which is a free pdf download. It tells you step-by-step on how to use all the different platforms to help you create backlinks and generate free traffic to your website.

5. Reciprocal Links - You can search for other websites that would work well with yours and ask for a reciprocal link. If you are requesting this from a webmaster, make sure it is not a canned e-mail that you send out to a lot of webmasters at the same time. This one is very time consuming, but could lead you to be able to have high PR sites link to yours.

6. Pay for them - Yes, people are still paying for them. You could contact a webmaster and let them know you will pay them a certain amount monthly, yearly or just a one time fee for text links on their site.

7. Web Directories - DMOZ, Yahoo are a few that you could request to be added into their directory. Yahoo does not come cheap to be able to add a link to their directory and you may do better by using many of the free ones. Many of the directories will now ask for a reciprocal link in exchange to add you to their site. Sometimes this may not be to your advantage as you link is buried so far down in their pages, that the search engines may not find them for a long time (if ever)

8. Create or use existing blogs - Many people are creating blogs to help drive traffic. One of the best ones I have found it wordpress.com. If you do use wordpress.com, be advised that you can not use any affiliate links within the posts, but you can link to your own sites.

9. Squidoo Lens - Create a lens about one of the products you are an affiliate of. You also are able to use Amazon and such to add more money making ways. Squidoo puts up google ads on your page and if someone clicks on them you will earn a commission from it also.

10. Hubpages - Here is something else that you could create a page on to help you generate traffic. It is pretty much set up the same way as Squidoo.

11. Google pages - Google loves themselves. Just like Hubpages or squidoo, you can create a page on products or information to help with link building.

12. Craigslist - Many people overlook this type of place to build links. Sure many of the ads are for selling items, but you can find all kinds of ads. Take a look around and see if you could create an ad for your website to help generate more traffic.

13. Press Releases - A press release is just a notification that your site is online. The ones I have seen you have to pay for, so it may not work for you, but it does not hurt to look into it.

14. Video Submissions - Youtube is just one of the websites that you can create a video and upload it to generate traffic. I am sure you have noticed that when you are doing searches on the engines, there are many videos that show up in the top 20 results. Using video is becoming a huge marketing ploy for many website owners.

This, of course, is just a small list of the many different areas to help you get started on your link building campaign. Don’t think you have to tackle all these in just a short amount of time. You may have better results from one than another.

These are just tips to help you with your offsite search engine optimization. If you need tips for onsite SEO, here is my web site search engine optimization page.

I have finally put my Site Build It website on paper to have a better understanding on building this site.

Main Theme (1st tier) - Chocolate Recipes

Items for the side menu navigation (2nd tier) will be: Benefits of chocolate, White chocolate recipes, sugar free recipes, low fat recipes, dark chocolate recipes and online store.

Then all the recipes and information will be under the heading in which they fall, this will become my 3rd tier, which most of the time will not be shown on a side navigational menu but a visitor will get to it by going to a 2nd tier page.

Example - If they arrive at the home page - any of the side navigational pages will get them to the 2nd tier and from the 2nd tier there will be links within my content to get them to the 3rd tier for even more information related to the second tier.

I am not an artist, but I believe this image will give you a better understanding.

Click on image to enlarge

The online store will be on the side navigational menu, but you will also be able to get to it within any of the 2nd or 3rd tiers on the site. The store will include gift baskets and baked goods (many affiliate programs for these items)

The Site Build It program uses the tiered effect to create a website. The search engines like this as all of the information below your main theme is related to your main theme.

Many beginners try to create a website about too many different products or information that does not relate to one another. You must keep within the same theme for the site.

While doing research for this example of creating a site using SBI, not really sure why I thought about it, but I put into the search engine “chocolate diamonds”. I found out that there really are diamonds that are called chocolate diamonds, BUT I would not want to add this information to my website as my site is about Chocolate Recipes. If I started a website about Diamonds then it would be a perfect fit but not for this site.

By using the Site Build it program, you can create a website easily. By using the Site Build It action guide, all of this (and more) is explained in much greater depth.

Take a look also at your competitors and see how they have their website built. I bet you will find something close to my drawing above. Also using your competitors site map will help you see what product or information is going under what page.

No matter what type of website builder you will be using to build your own site, by using the tiers as shown above it will help the search engines really understand what your site is about and help you generate targeted traffic.

My other website, Internet Affiliate Marketing 101, is powered by Site Build It.

But for this SBI review - case study, I have decided to “create a website” about chocolate (I don’t want to show you all my keyword secrets for my newest website) to help you understand a little of what goes on behind the scenes even though what I am showing you (and much, much more!) is in the action guide.
After you buy Site Build It, you will receive an e-mail explaining were to start.

Make sure you follow the Site Build It action guide so you will be able to understand what the process is of how to create a successful website. Yes, start with the introduction and move through each of the “days”.

Even though it is labeled as Intro, Day 1, Day 2, those may actually only take you about One Day to get through, but don’t skip over any of it.

In Day 2 you will look for a theme for your website by using Niche Choose It. Think about your passion! Let Niche Choose It help you decide, don’t skip over this part! If you get stuck, don’t worry, you will find your niche!

It is better to do it right the first time, then to go back later and have to redo.

Day 3 starts off explaining about Brainstorm It!, before you jump right into using it, make sure you read and understand.

One of the (many) helpful things is that, no matter what program you are in, you can look at the Site Build It action guide in case you are not sure of what is going on or you can go into the members only forum to see if other people ran into the same problem you may be having.

Here is the start of my keyword research for Chocolate.

Click on image to enlarge.

The action guide explains how to start your keyword research. I always start with the Vertical Brainstorm and then do singular OR Plural. The (WTB ) will have a number after it and it means how many seed word credits you have left, I have blanked out my searches that I have left.

When you begin with Site Build It, you have 25 to start out. These are included with your SBI package also. Each time you do a seed word research, it will take one credit away. Once you get down to 0, you will have to purchase more credits, but don’t worry they are not expensive, so don’t skimp on using them as this is the basis of your website.

After finding that chocolate is a very difficult word to try to get into the top 10 listings, which I figured that it would be, I found that chocolate recipes would be better and there would be a lot to pick from. Here is just a sample of some of the keywords that came up when I typed in chocolate into my brainstorm it.

Click on Image to enlarge

You are able to delete the keywords you don’t want or even add into the keywords. If you add keywords they do not take away from your credit for seed words.

If you find that the seed word you put in does not give you a lot of keywords, try a broader theme. Brainstorm It! will warn you when you may have to broad of a theme, but sometimes that helps to find the niche area from you Niche Choose It.

This is just the start of the CTMP approach that Site Build It uses.

My main theme will be chocolate recipes, but what will each of my categories (navigational menu) be?

This I will take to paper and decide on.

See Site Build It Review Part Three

Many people every day key in the words: Is Site Build It a Scam or SBI scam or something to that effect looking for negative remarks about it. Most of the time when you hear about something that sounds to good to be true it usually is. This site-hosting, site-marketing, and web site building all in one program is not better than sliced bread, but many believe it is close.To let you know Site Build It is NOT a scam.But is it a one-size-fits-all website builder program for everyone? No, It does have it’s flaws and it is not for everyone. But there is not a perfect web design program on the market that is made for every single person.

Sure every company that has web design software toots their own horn and says they are the best website builders on the market, but it is not what the company says but what their customers say that is important.

And SBI (a huge majority of them) are extremely happy with using it, as they not only learn how to create a website, but one that works.

Works for what? That is one thing that Sitesell (SBI is one of their products) states on their website “Build A Web Site That Works”. It works to help you create a successful website. Your definition of successful could be having a lot of traffic or making money (or however you want to define success). But you still need to use your BAM (Brains and Motivation).

They give you the tools to help your Brains and Motivation create that website success.

The Site Build It action guide shows you the step by step process you would be using if you purchase the program, but I want people to see first hand on how it works and some of the things you can expect while building your new web site.

So even though I have already created one website with it, I am in the process of building another. I have the first page up, but I will go back at the beginning and let you see some of the process and how it works.

See Site Build It Review Part Two

It is very difficult to start out trying to get at the top of the Search Engine Results Page using very competitive keywords (“money keywords”), as many of the websites that are on the first page have been working at it for years.

But if you target many of the long tail keywords for your main keyword (or sub keywords) within your website content, they can help you get targeted traffic. This targeted traffic are the people actually looking for your product or service, which can help build your business (and put money in your pocket).

Here is an example of how using a long tail keyword in your content can help you in the search engine results page.

Most people when they are doing searches using the search engines are not just using 2 and 3 words any more. Example Make Money, Create a Website, Diamond earrings, etc.

If they are using those searches, most of the time they are not looking to purchase a product or service but are just surfing around. Those could be your visitors, but what you want (and need if selling or promoting products) is the targeted traffic.

So if you really want to get into a very competitive niche area and you are set on that theme, find a few of the long tail of your main theme keyword and use those within the body of your text.

The below is taken from The Long Tail; Why it is Important for Small Businesses, an interview with Chris Anderson.

“Understand that The Top 10 searches at Google account for only a small minority of its searches. And half of their 200,000,000 searches per day are unique. That means that more than half of your traffic is unique… ”

Here is more information on “The Long Tail” and how it can help you.

You may think Hey, I’m just an affiliate, I don’t have a business. Sure you do. It is promoting the products of merchants and that is a HUGE business on the Internet.

I came across information about SBI after I purchase Xsitepro (which I used to build my Create a Website tutorial site). Not being unhappy with using Xsite pro, I was curious to find out more information and I also wanted to see is Site Build It a scam.

I found out it wasn’t, purchased the program and now have built another site that is powered by Site Build It. Here it is

One of the biggest reasons for purchasing the program is their guarantee.

Taken from their website:

“Sitesell.com will refund you 100% within the first 30 days of purchase, and on a pro-rata basis after that, for whatever part of the year remains”

With a guarantee like that it is like a free trial for Site Build It.

How it can help you build your own website

1. Step by step action guide
2. Help find your website niche idea
3. Find profitable keywords within your niche
4. Shows you competition (other web sites) for your keywords
5. Helps locate affiliate programs for your web site
6. Step-by-Step in building your web pages
7. Analysis your web pages to see if the page is optimized for the search engine
8. Includes web hosting - unlimited bandwidth
9. Ability to use a HTML editor (Dreamweaver, Web Expressions, Nvu, etc. ) to create your web pages on your computer and then upload to your site.
10. Hundreds of web site templates and the ability to use your own if you want (this includes even changing the navigational menu)
11. Once you build your pages, it automatically notifies search engines of your new page (Google, Ask, MSN just to name a few)
12. Includes domain name (you decide the name, register it in your name)

If you have read the above list and don’t understand a few of them, don’t worry there are step by step site build it video and written tutorials to help you. These are the actual tutorials that will take you step by step through the process.

The one thing I really liked about site build it is you did not register a domain name until you were at day 5. That is one of the biggest reasons why I created my website on how to create a website. There were far to many website tutorials online that said the first step to build your own website is to register a domain name.

I learned the hard way that registering your own domain name is not the first step and Site Build It shows you that.

There are many steps before registering your name and I believe that is the reason so many beginners fail when they are creating a website as they do not do plan, do research, etc..

If you are thinking of using other web builders, you really need to take a look at using SBI. When you follow the tutorials and ask for help in the forum if you get stuck, you can create a site build it success also.

Don’t get me wrong. It takes work. But the work pays off when you get your new site online and visitors start to arrive. I know this because my Site Build It site started getting visitors from the search engines in less than a month.

There is much more to Site Build It than just the above. Sitesell keeps up-to-date with the ever changing Internet and in turn helps you stay on top of the changes, which you don’t find with other website builder software programs.

If you already have a website and it is not working for you, see this Site Build It review I did to help you see about creating a website using SBI.

Here is a free ebook from Site Build It that may help you. Make your content presell!

or

Do you have a content rich site and you are looking for quality relevant links, you can sign up for Value Exchange (free).

This is just two of the free items that you can receive from SBI.

Take a look. Find out what the “It” is in Site Build It!

If you have a wordpress.com blog you know you can not use any advertising programs on it to make money online. I guess I can’t blame them since it is a free blog.

You can use wordpress.org to make money on your blog, but you need to have a paid hosting service.

You can get a basic hosting plan at GoDaddy.com for about $4.29 a month (or cheaper for 12, 24 or 36 month plan). Unless your blog is HUGE, start out with a basic plan and upgrade when you are ready. You could even cover the cost using Google adsense and other advertising on your hosted blog.

I had a difficult time finding a tutorial on moving the blog. I knew it couldn’t be that difficult. So after piecing together the steps, I decided to create my own tutorial on how to move your free blog (wordpress.com) to a hosting plan.

Since I already owned the domain name of uponmainstreet.com (that was also my blog name), I checked into the domain mapping process that is available through wordpress.com. But after researching in forums on wordpress, I found out that wordpress.com still controlled my blog (it is a redirect to your domain name), and I still would not have the control over the blog that I wanted to.

No, it is not difficult to do, but to make it easier reading, I broke the instructions down into 3 steps.

Here is step 1 - Moving your wordpress.com blog to paid hosting

The other 2 steps are in the same location.

If your web hosting company is on the ball, you can have everything at your new “home” up and running within 24-48 hours (if not sooner).

Once you have moved everything to your paid webhosting, you will be able to use all the plugins and create the blog the way to want.