The more time I spend on developing my Internet Marketing business the more curious some of my friends become as to what exactly I am doing. Most seem to assume that I spend most of my time watching films or TV programs on the web (or worse!). Recently instead of trying to explain in any detail I have directed them to this site or other niche sites that I operate.
As a result some have actually become interested in using the web to market their own businesses or products or have seen some of the tools I use and realised how they could be used to improve their current web presence.
In talking to some of these people I realised how little of the basics they knew when it comes to actually getting started and I remembered that in fact 18 months ago this was exactly my biggest hurdle.
I had no idea what html, ftp, keywords, autoresponders, DNS, or webhosting meant or required. I just knew that if I went on Internet Explorer or Firefox I could find almost anything I wanted by searching on Google.
With this in mind I decided to run through the basic steps and tools required in setting up your first website business.
Keyword Analysis
Before setting up any business whether it be online or offline you need to do your market research in order to see if there is demand for what you are offering and what your competition are already offering to satisfy this demand.
The best way to do this for an online business is by keyword research. Basically this involves checking what phrases or “keywords” people are searching for on Google and the other search engines and reviewing how many sites are already supplying answers to these keyword searches.
There are many keyword tools available on the internet which will help you do this for example; GoodKeywords, Wordtracker and Google itself. These are all free sites (some may have a pro version which is charged for but you don’t need that at this stage.)
If you want something more sophisticated I use Keyword Elite. This is an absolutely amazing program which does the keywords research, creates PPC Ads, spys on your competitors ads and SEO techniques and reports back to you with advice how to improve you performance against your competitors.
Domain Name Purchase
Once you have done your keyword research and believe that you have found a potential market
then go to GoDaddy (or another domain seller they are all about the same price) and check name availability .
You should be looking for something that has the markets main keyword phrase at the start or the end with max 5 letters in front or behind it.
Always get .com avoid all the other variations, (people still put more credence in a site with a dotcom domain name.)
Avoid hyphens and numbers in the name as they make the name more easy to forget or get wrong.
Once you have found something suitable go straight to checkout don’t buy any of the addons that GoDaddy continually offer you or you will be working for 12 months just to pay them!
Domain Hosting
Next you need a hosting account, I have used a few and now use kiosk and hostgator and would recommend both, kiosk provides more free training and backup but they both offer a variety of options which will suit different users.
The prices vary as they continually offer new packages check them both and see what you think.
Whatever you do get a host who provides Cpanel and Fantastico it will make your life much easier later.
Web Site Building and FTP
Now that you have found your market, decided upon your domain name and hosting company you will need to design your web site. You could outsource this ( I will be writing a separate post on outsourcing later this week) but I believe it is a good idea to have at least a basic knowledge of how to put up a web site if you are going to be involved in internet marketing for any length of time.
Both hostgator and kiosk provide web site building tools but a good free website builder with clear understandable video training is My Free WebSite Builder check it out - it is free!
Now you have designed your first web site you need to be able to put this on your web host in order that other people can access it, to do this you will need some FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software. I use Filezilla and SmartFTP which are both downloadable and free!
Autoresponders
The next thing I would do ( I didn’t and it cost me a lot of wasted time) is add an autoresponder to collect all your subscriber details and manage all your email campaigns.
I use Aweber as do a good percentage of marketers.
There are others but Aweber is the industry standard as it has been around for ever (1998).
If you are going to do any email marketing you need to do this as apart from the time saving you never want to be accused of SPAM as you could get closed down.
Aweber will help ensure that you are never accused of Spamming.
That should give you enough to think about for now, as ever if you have any questions or would like information about a specific area of Internet Marketing post a comment.
Keep the Faith
Damian