How To get Your Own Website For Less then $100
A few of the Internet gurus say that you can make money on the
Internet without a web site. They say just use autoresponders
and safelist advertising. And there may be a few doing this
successfully.
However, the vast majority of people making a living on the
Internet have their own web site. It is much harder to build a
long-term business without having a web site hosted on your own
domain
A website should be considered a home base so to speak. It is
your online store location and the base of operations for
everything else that you do online.
Let's think about the different online advertising methods. Some
of the main ones are search engines, banner advertising, ezine
advertising, newsgroup/mailing list participation, and
classified advertising. I know that doesn't cover everything,
but It is the major source of advertising online. Think about
each of those advertising methods.
Search engines are the #1 traffic generator on the web right now
and they absolutely require that you have a website. Many online
experts estimate 95% of your traffic could come from search
engines. You are leaving out 95% of your business by not being
able to take advantage of search engines...
You may think that just getting a free server such as FreeYellow
or Angelfire might take care of this problem, but it doesn't.
Both of the above mentioned web hosts are being blocked out of
some of the search engines such as Infoseek. You can still place
them on most of the search engines, but registering web pages
from them is becoming extremely difficult.
With banner advertising you have to have a website, both for
free banner exchanges and for paid banner advertising.
With ezine advertising, you can use an autoresponder, but your
response rate goes up when you include both an autoresponder and
a website in the classified ad. The same rules go for classified
advertising. You should have both an email address and website
in your ads for maximum effectiveness.
When participating in online discussion, the best form of
advertising is the signature file. This gives you space for a
short 4 - 5 line ad for yourself. The best approach is to tell
them your name, phone, email, and website address along with a
basic idea of what you do. Your website address needs to be
there so that they can go somewhere to find out more information
immediately.
In all of these advertising forms, a website or domain is
absolutely essential to your success. I personally favor a
domain for many reasons...
Name Recognition - It is much easier for people to remember a
name like http://www.yourdomain.com than
http://www.freesite.com/members2/somename/
Stability - Having your own domain gives an image of more
stability to people when they see it. It appears that you will
be around for a while.
Secure Ordering - In most cases you cannot get orders online
through a website because there are no secure ordering options.
Growth - It will be much easier to grow when you own your own
domain. If you have just a website and you run out of space or
you start having trouble with your host, you are stuck. If you
leave, all of the traffic you built will be going to Freesite,
not your new domain. If you own your own domain, if you move
everything comes with you to your new host.
Selling Multiple Products - This hooks up with the above, but it
needs to be mentioned again. A domain is perfect for adding more
products to and selling more items. You spend money and/or time
to get traffic to your site. You need to make sure you are
taking advantage of it as much as possible by offering multiple
products and/or services.
All of these benefits are extremely important to making your
online marketing a success. I honestly think everyone should
purchase a domain up front in their online marketing and then
start driving traffic to it immediately, instead of wasting
their time and money by losing their traffic that they worked so
hard for when they upgrade later.
Many people are starting their Internet business with a very
small budget. Many are doing it with $100 or less. I recently
started a new website, getting it up and running for less then
$100. Want to know how I did it?
I will use my new site to drive traffic to my three other
websites, offer some affiliate and network marketing programs,
and some new products that I will be adding.
Here's how I got the site up and running. First I went to
http://www.godaddy.com. I had some ideas for what I wanted my
new domain name to be. Godaddy has a tool where you enter in
your desired domain name and it tells you if the name is
available. If it is not available it will recommend some similar
names that might interest you.
I kept working the tool until I found that
The-Home-Business-Center.com was available. My wife and I both
liked it and feel that it matches what we plan to do with the
site. It cost us just $8.95 to buy the domain name for a year.
When you pick your domain name, try to get one ending in .com
instead of one ending in .biz, .net, or one of the other endings.
Since our other three sites were already hosted by Host4Profits,
it was not hard to decide what hosting service to use. They will
host additional domain names for just $5 each per month. A
pretty good deal. You can check them out at
http://www.host4profit.com/cgi-bin/home.cgi?33851.
Next I went to a site hosted by Stone Evans. He will make a free
site for you, usually within 24 hours of your sending him your
details. He calls them Plug-In Profit Sites.
The site will come with five different streams of income built
into it. The five income streams are from free affiliate and
network marketing programs, which you need to join before you
send him your information. I was already a member of four of the
programs.
Host4Profit, our hosting company, is one of the five affiliate
programs that Stone will put on the site for you. This one is a
must join, as Stone requires that the site he makes for you be
hosted by Host4Profit.
I sent him my information and also requested GoDaddy to transfer
the domain at the same time. Stone waited to start work on my
site until the transfer was completed. I had my new site the day
after I notified him that the transfer was done.
And I like the site. It looks great and works with no problems.
He actually made two versions for me, one with pop ups and one
without pop ups. Some traffic exchanges don't allow pop ups.
To see my new site go to
http://www.the-home-business-center.com. If you want more
information on what Stone will do for you click on the Plug-In
Profit Site banner near the top of the page.
Stone has also written a free ebook called 30 Days to Online
Success. At the very bottom of my site is a banner for Stones
book. Click on the link to download it.
Stone actually set up the whole site and had it running when he
sent me the email saying it was up. I was able to view the
working site immediately. It worked beautifully.
One of the things that I especially liked is that he let me have
the source code. I can easily access the code and modify it. So
far I have added the banner to the bottom for the free 30 Days
to Success ebook and added a link to a page where people can
read the articles that I have published.
Now, a person on a low budget will be able to get a website and
start producing traffic to it for under $100.
All in all, the very first thing you should do when marketing
online is to setup your own domain. It's your home base. The
Plug-in Profit site method discussed above is a low cost option
for doing so. Everyone can take this opportunity to develop an
effective online marketing campaign instead of throwing time and
money down a marketing black hole because they lack a home base.