Internet Marketing - the Basics!

When you first start building an Internet Marketing business things can become quite overwhelming. There are so many directions that one can take. Yet, unless you have a mentor by your side – you have no clue as to which direction to take.

Today, I am going to talk to you about having a website to help build your business. All Affiliate Marketing sites give you a website to start you off.

However, if you really want to build your business you need to have your own website or blog. If finances are tight you can start off with free websites or blogs (some links given below). However, if money is not an issue it is better to get a website and hosting that may charge you a little bit. The reason for this is that free sites sometimes just close their doors and then all your effort and content goes to waste.

Basically in the creation of a website there are 5 steps involved.

1. Select a Niche for your blog/website. It helps if you are passionate about something as you can
   choose to write about this love of yours. You can choose this as the niche that you blog about.         
2. Obtain and register a domain name. There are many sites to choose from, just go into the
   Google browser and type in domain names and you will get a whole lot to choose
   from. Try doing a bit of SEO here and figure out which words will bring you maximum traffic.
3. Set up an account with with a hosting service. Do the same thing with Google when searching  
   for a Hosting site and choose the one that suits you the best.
4. Create your professional looking website. You can go to http://www.mybwbsite.com/1032472
   for a free and easy website to use. Or you can go again to Google and find other websites to work with.
   Write a few blogs and product reviews to start you off.
5. Add on some Affiliate programs to promote. These allow for building a network which ends up
   in commissions for you. There are oodles of programs for you to join on the net and new ones
   being launched each day. My advice would be that you look only for those that are free to join  
   and build, initially - or else you might find yourself completely out-of-pocket in a few months
   and nothing major to show for it.

I have found that there is so much on the net that is for free that really there is no reason to dip into your pocket, till you have really learnt to decipher the legit sites from those that are scams. Of course, free sites will take a while to build and there is work and effort involved - but they will not fold up on you some day as some programs have done even in the last few days.

Once you have set up your website, just keep updating it – don't let it stagnate without new entries. Every time you join a new Affiliate site that looks like it will be profitable, add it onto your site in the form of Text Ads or Banners/Widgets, etc.

Once people like what you say they will keep coming back and will someday click on your links – some may even join you and that is what a website is meant to do. It draws people to it and encourages them to join you in your endeavours.

However, my sincere advice is stay away from buying anything online from other sites, no matter how good the offer souds - till you are more educated in IM and know exactly what it is that you need. There is so much free stuff out there that you may not need a lot of stuff that you might actually end up paying for if you are not careful.

Also, when you join a site make a note on your computer of which email address it is in, the password, and in fact, I have now started even copying the link to log in with. As far as possible, for non-money sites I try and keep the same password, because otherwise life would be a nightmare.

Once you start, joining more sites its hard to keep up unless you have it all written down somewhere. I actually have a page where I write down the email address, password and all the sites linked to that email address with their passwords. That way when I forget, (and that is almost at least, once a day) all I need to do is to look it up and bingo!!! it is there before me.