Build A Business Now

Free Website Builder

2009-06-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

Long time, no post on this blog---jeeez! Anyway this will be a real quick one this time as I just got done with a long post on my roseselling blog.
I mainly want to make you aware and make available to you this free website builder I found. It's high quality not one of those junky ones that are kind of useless.
You don't have to buy hosting or anything to use this one and it is usable with any hosting you decide to get. There are a few perks if you end up using the hosting service that made the software but you really don't have to.
Well, here's the link: Blue Voda Download, it will take you to the download page and you get some nice software you can keep.
After you try it out, I'd love to hear your comments! Just post them right here.
In the future I'll do some You Tube demos on this. I have a new page on my site as well with this and some other free website builders you can get.

The Truth About Affiliate Marketing

2009-03-19T22:34:00.000-07:00

The truth about affiliate marketing is that you're helping to build someone else's business, not your own. In many cases a person will come to your site, find out about a product from your site, click on your link-you hope- and then buy the product from another business. You get your commission, or not(he may not click, he may just go etc..) and then he becomes their customer who they get to have on their mailing list and get to resell to over and over again.
Affiliate marketing is great, for the merchant. He gets his link and name brand spread all over the web and much of it is free advertising for him until the point a sale is made through an affiliate link. I think he gets a really good bang for his buck.
Think about how this boosts the building of his business.
Now, there are things to look for in an affiliate program to make sure it's really going to do something for you if you work it and there some things to be aware of that are not widely known and I'll be going over that in a later post.
But my point here is don't simply be the other guy's salesman: Build your own business!
Most savvy affiliate marketers know how important it is to have their own website that is a place to go in it's own right, for the content that exists there and to make those website visitors his customers and to offer them something valuable in exchange for their email address so he can stay in contact with them and help them further.
I have a video on this site showing how to add a lead capture form to your site using Site Builder.
I have been using this on my websites. It was a good start as I hadn't even starting writing my newsletters until I got my first form submission. But I was sending all my 7 part newsletters by hand, having to keep up with who gets which one next and this was really eating my time.
Well I found a mailing list business which has an autoresponder (it sends out your newsletters at correct intervals to everyone signs up for them), that only costs $9.95 per month for small mailing lists. The opts-in form which you can see on the left up there was super easy. I've signed up with some other autoresponder free trials but I didn't time to mess with it. This was anything but time consuming. Anyway it's IContact, they have a free trial--no credit card to try it--so check it out.
You need customers to build your business, not just give business away after one quick trip through your website. You know you work to get that traffic.
Another thing I think is that selling other people's products is fine but make sure you start including some product or products of your own. I'll give you my thoughts and ideas on that in a later post. Read 4 Hour Workweek. I mean seriously read it, or listen to the audiobook in your car. He arranged all that free time because of his own product and delegating things wisely.

Domain Names

2009-02-24T22:50:00.000-08:00

You want to pick out a good domain name for your site. It's good to pick something with good keywords that are descriptive of what you're offering.
Right now Homestead is offering a free domain name with their $4.99 per month hosting special and as you know it also has the Site Builder software that I have been demonstrating on my site.
It's always good to get your domain name with the same company you're hosting with.
I'll show you an example of why in a second. But you might want to have more than one domain name for the same site or a certain page on the site. You may also want to test market different domain names. You really should test market the products or services you plan to sell or promote by running a short click ad campaign anyway. There is a chapter on how to do this in Four Hour Workweek.
In any of these cases you might want to buy a domain at Go Daddy, before you commit to a permanent domain with your hosting service. They are very cheap there.
Go Daddy is also a hosting service, but you can also just buy domains that just point to your website or a certain page like this: http://bestroses.info. Please click on that to see what I mean.
You will see when you get there that you are on a page of Easy Gifts and Flowers and that is what you see displayed. I use this when I am promoting my comparison page.
You go to "domain forwarding" in your Go Daddy account in order to do the above, by the way and you simply put in the page you want it to forward to. After that if you want you can click on "masking" and enable masking and that will make the new domain show up rather than the real name in the bar.(Go to the help section on their site, it's explained well) See these examples http://beautifuldiscountflowers.com (this is how I promote my site locally). Also see http://easysitespro.com.
You'll see this is now what you see in the browser window. Go to the different pages of the site and you'll see the above name the same for each page. Now go to http://EasyGiftsandFlowers.com, go to the various pages and you'll see the difference, each page displays correctly and distinctly in the browser window. That is why you want to have a domain name with your hosting service, whatever other names you use for various purposes or test runs.

Making Money with Adsense

2009-02-22T17:30:00.000-08:00

This is another way you can make money by having a website. You have to be smart about it though. You can't just put some Adsense on your page and expect to get rich or even make a dime before you get any traffic.
A couple of secrets are:

Use keywords on your site that will pay you a lot per click.

Use cheap less often used keywords to advertise the site.

Use a cheaper PPC advertiser such as BidVertiser.
You can get away with paying something like 20 cents a click yourself on BidVertiser, and they have $20 in free advertising, when you first start(you don't have to place a deposit to get started with them either). You can also use Yahoo, they have $25 in free advertising.
If you use high paying keywords for example "student loan consolidation"(people pay as much as $30 per click with Adwords for that keyword) on your website, you will get high paying Adsense ads on your web page.
Then you just use a cheaper way to get traffic to your site as mentioned above.

Hope that helps,
Claire

Recommended Information for Those Creating Websites

2009-02-19T21:57:00.000-08:00

So your are going to create a website. It will be easy if you have taken my recommendations so far, seen in demos, links on page, earlier posts.
But we're going to be talking a little bit about getting site traffic. In later posts I'll be giving you ideas on free traffic to your website. In the beginning though while you are creating your website, it would be great to have some tips on optimizing your website as much as possible toward coming up in a search engine. Now I had already created some of my websites when I read this book but it was very easy to tweak a few things with my Site Builder.
The book is Building Your Business with Google For Dummies by Brad Hill.
It really helped me know how the Google spider worked (the system that detects and gets information on what is on the internet). Some people wonder why if they put their website address in the search box, why they don't find it right away. The spider does it's very thorough crawl where it can find your website once per month and there are certain things that can keep the spider from finding it as well, such as using Flash. Mine were found just fine. This is not the only way you can and the only way you want to rely on at first to get traffic but he tells you some things to know so you do the best you can.
Also information all about using Adwords PPC advertising and getting paid for your site using Adsense.
Also I can tell you, it is a good idea to concentrate on a particular niche (a specialized market). My nightclub rose seller site and blog are found in natural search engine results because of this and this is free effortless traffic.
Anyway there is a lot of information you spend a lot of time reading but I found particular ones helpful in getting started. See an earlier post on a couple others I recommend as these two will help you a lot.
There is also a lot of data right on Homestead's site, once you start the free trial on how to get traffic and how to optimize your website for traffic as well.
Just so you know, you can get a free newsletter where you get a 7 part lesson on how you can "Start Your Own Easy, Profitable Online Business" at http://EasySitesPro.com so you can get more in depth information that I haven't gone over in my blog.

How to Make a Lead Capture Form in Two Minutes

2009-02-16T21:41:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you but I don't really have the time to go through long set up processes and tutorials and such or learn a new skill when I'm really wanting to get the show on the road.
I can do those things but do I really want to take the time or do I want to have the time to do more for my business.
That is why I love, love these websites. You know I belong to a lot of affiliate programs but I never talk about or promote the ones I don't like or I don't really know about. In fact most of the time I find some I really like and then I wonder if they have an affiliate program because I really want to tell people about these guys.
Anyway you can create a lead capture form with Homestead in literally 2 minutes. I do it right here in this video in that short a time. It's just a matter of point and click and moving some little boxes around and filling in a blank of where you want it to go. You can then set up an autoresponder in your email or just respond yourself and send out the mailings. It's not until you get high volume web traffic that you need to pay a monthly fee for an autoresponder(which is something that sends out your newsletters automatically to subscribers. You definitely don't want to pay a monthly fee before You even start advertising at all or you just built the site and Google hasn't even found it. I'll be telling you all about that later and what you need to do to be successful with that.
You know what else, you should write to people personally once in awhile as well.
Well here you go, it's in the video bar also but this comes out a bit larger. I think I'll redo this video some time but at least you'll get the idea.

Back to Business

2009-02-16T17:22:00.000-08:00

Well, Valentine's Day is finally over. It was sure a hectic one. I'm a rose seller, you know the ones that embarrass you on dates and ask you if you want a rose. Of course you're only embarrassed if you're a cheapskate or you're broke. That's why I made this website though, to help you not be broke.
Well this year, not only did I have my regular selling but I had my new rose wholesale site, my retail site and affiliate site, all with flowers and calls for wholesale roses as well. Of all of them the one that was obviously the easiest to manage was the affiliate one.
Anyway to make a long story shorter, I was busy. I don't mind selling roses but I'm glad to be back to business on my business building websites. If you want to hear about my rose selling, see my other blog.
We did a lot of experimentation with free advertising on the web though which helped a lot with the holiday as far as getting traffic to my flower websites. I'll be definitely letting you in on that as that is something you'll need to be successful online: traffic.

Best,
Claire

Affiliate Site Demo

2009-02-03T22:36:00.000-08:00

I made another demo that shows you how you can create an even easier business online. You just use affiliate links from Linkshare or Commission Junction or others which are all free to join and the great templates and Site Builder they have at Homestead to quickly create some webpages. Watch the demo for now. You can see it on the front page of BuildYourOwnBusiness.homestead.com. You can also see it right on the left in my video bar.
I mainly show you how I made my florist site but I also go over a little how you might make a credit card comparison site and how you credit card companies often give you $50 to $200 commissions just for getting someone to apply for one of their credit cards and getting approved.
I'll be posting more information and have more demos on this as well.
Okay well I decided to put to put the video on my post here as well:

Later,
Claire

Create a Retail Site in Minutes Demo

2009-01-29T21:13:00.000-08:00

I really like this site builder I've been telling you about so I making a little demo so you can see how easy it is to use and how quickly you can get something up and running that you only had time to think about. I'm having fun with my new Camstasia software too.
I thought about my oldest son. I asked him to send me some snake pictures, he didn't know why.
I know he could totally make his own website using something like Dreamweaver but maybe doesn't have the time to get it done too quickly.
He is in the snake business. I don't know a thing about them but I thought I'd use that as my theme this time.
So this is a demo on how you might use Site Builder to create a website where you sell your own product, including how easily you can put paypal buttons on your site.
Next time I'll make a demo on how you can create a profitable affiliate marketing site with Site Builder.
Anyway they have a whole month free trial, this is the only web hosting I found with that and if your only going to be having one website, it's only $4.99 for three months then goes up to $9.99. I've been using it and I definitely think it's worth it, just for the fact it has that free awesome site builder. But it does all kinds of things, keeps track of the stats of your site ie you can see how many people visited, from what website or search engine they came from. You can sign up for a free trial from this link directly or go to my website buildyourownbusiness.homestead.com and there's a sign-up link there and more information about paypal and other resources you can use in conjunction with it, plus some good information on some good businesses you can get into.
Here you go:

Business Building Website

2009-01-06T22:31:00.000-08:00

I have a new website www.buildyourownbusiness.homestead.com where you can learn how to create an online business from scratch starting with easy, professional do it yourself websites and including some great cheap ideas on exactly what kind of businesses you can put on there.
I have some step by step Camtasia demos on exactly how to do this. I'll be posting a short demo on this blog soon but if you'd like to see the full set on "How to create your own online work at home business" you can send me your email address here.

Bye,
Claire

Check this out!

2009-01-04T21:27:00.000-08:00

I love the website program I'm using! I'm making my own demo so you can see how easy it is to use. But you can also see one from the link I just provided. Then I just recently discovered how good their site statistics are. You can see what part of the world the person came from that visited your site, their ISP, how long they stayed on the site, exactly what pages were view, what link they arrived there from. You can totally see how much traffic and analyze it. That's very helpful when you're running pay per click advertising such as adwords.

Best,
Claire

Great Resources

2008-12-29T21:51:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start sharing with you some of the great resources I found and have tried for creating an online business.
The favorite links on the left side of my page shows a number of the links you should check out.
The things I like are high quality, time saving and low cost and I always shop around. So I believe this will help you.
There is a sea of offers trying to lure you on the internet with get rich quick schemes, but there are things you definitely can do to start a successful web business. The book I recommend you start with is a book by Yanik Silver: Moonlighting on the Internet . It gives 5 different ways to earn income on the internet, each section written by someone who has had a lot of success and gives you a pretty thorough idea of how to do it. Them when you know which of these ideas you would like to pursue, most of these authors have written their own books, which you can read for more information. When you go to the link above you'll also see 4 Hour Work Week which I also recommend you pick up.
I'll be posting some information on website building soon, see the links on this page if you're ready to get started on that now.

Later,
Claire

Getting Started Quickly with a Website

2008-12-28T23:40:00.001-08:00

I think the thing that actually held me up the longest in actually really moving toward starting an online business was the lack of a website. One of my sons was taking a course in Web Design and I was going to sort of wait for that or try this or try that. I was always surfing around looking at my options. I looked at templates online but none of them really suited my purpose, plus I would have needed to know something about Web Design to use them.
I found Homestead a few times and I loved their templates, I think I got confused and thought if I wanted to sell anything at all I would have to sign up for the store option. Well that was not really so, it turned out.
Anyway, they have a free trial, so I don't know why I waited. (In fact this is the only web hosting that I found that had a free trial.) I realized that not having the website or the time to figure all that out was what was holding me up, so I got started. It's very easy to use and the tech support is very helpful. I did definitely need them at certain points, but I would just submit a question and the same day it would come back with the answer. But it's basically just drag and click.
As far as the store part, that was really easy too. Probably most of you already have a Paypal Account. Did you know you can upgrade it to a business account for free? You can start a business account free even if you don't already have a regular account. With certain add-ons you have to pay, but to be able to accept Paypal on your website or send email invoices to customers for payment there is no extra charge. You have to pay a small transaction percentage at the time someone actually purchases something, but that is standard with any merchant account. What I like about this is no monthly fees plus they have a simple option where you create your own Paypal "Add to Cart" and "Buy Now" buttons. After you create it, they give you the HTML to put into your site, which is super easy if you use Homestead's Site builder which comes with the hosting for free. You basically drag a box to where you want it on your site, click on the box and something opens up where you simply paste in the code and that's it. There is even something on the Site Builder to create buttons using Paypal is well and you don't have to have pay for a Store to use it. Some time maybe I will take the time to figure out how to build a website with Dreamweaver, but I wanted to get the show on the road so to speak.
I think the above two things are what really made it so I got moving and made it easy for me and it's always good to get moving or else you don't get anything done, obviously.
I have found other great easy resources I'll go into on later posts.

Until next time,
Claire