2008 Edition Best Website(tm) Newsletter Articles 6-Pack #1 (out of 4) *** Each "Newsletter Article 6-Pack" contains six ready to go, copy and paste articles. You are welcome to use one or all in any order you choose. We only ask you, please don't change the content or remove the tagline at the bottom of each article that cites BestWebsite.com as the source. *** ARTICLE 1: The BestWebsite® Essential 9tm By Nelson Bates, Author Best Website: Simple Steps to Successful Websites The BestWebsite Essential 9TM - The nine most important things you can do to make your website a profitable success: 1.) Create a Remarkable Website ... It is far less expensive to build a remarkable website than it is to advertise an average one. Come up with a remarkable aspect for your product, service, business etc., then incorporate it into your website. Give people a reason to talk about your website and they will do your promotion for you!! (20-40hrs, $500 varies widely) 2.) Proper Keyword Research ... Use WordTracker(FreeKeywords.WordTracker.com) and Google Suggest(google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en) to select the proper keywords and begin search engine optimization on your website. (10-15hrs, $59) 3.) Setup a Free Squidoo.com Page ... This is an excellent way to boost your search engine rankings by creating links from your Squidoo page back to your website. It is also an excellent way to generate valuable traffic from the Squidoo community. (2-5hrs, FREE) 4.) Create Articles that Provide Useful Information ... Start by creating three or four articles that provide useful information related to your product or service, then post them on your website and target the keywords you selected earlier. (5-10hrs, FREE) 5.) Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon your Articles ... Use these free services to let the world know about your articles. These services also provide a dramatic boost in your search rankings. (2-4hrs, FREE) 6.) Purchase a Yahoo Directory Listing ... This is a great way to get a link from the #1 website in the world to your website. A Yahoo employee reviews your website, categorizes it and then places a link to you. Both Yahoo and Google check if you have this link and boost your search engine rankings. (1hr, $299/yr) 7.) Press Release with PRWeb.com and Majon.com ... This is a fantastic way to be able to choose keywords in your press release that are posted on their top ranked websites that link back to yours. Not only do they significantly enhance your search engine rankings, they also announce your business and products to the media. (3-5hrs, $308) 8.) Laser Targeted Purchased Advertising ... Find top websites in your industry and purchase advertising from them. This may be one of the best methods of gaining substantial traffic. Not only do you get traffic from the websites you advertise on, but you can also drastically increase your search engine rankings because important websites in your industry are linking to you. (20hrs research, $100 and up) 9.) Google Analytics and Yahoo Search Submit ... The more the search engines know about you, the better. Don't make them guess. By installing Google Analytics on your web pages and submitting your website to Yahoo Search Submit, you let them gain valuable knowledge about your website and, in turn, they will rank you better! (5-10hrs, Google FREE, Yahoo $59/yr) Approximate total time and money spent low end --- 68 hours, $1,325 Approximate total time and money spent high end --- 110 hours, $3,525+ *Check BestWebsite.com/The-Essential-9.htm for updates and to follow the above hyperlinks. Please visit BestWebsite.com for step-by-step instructions to building profitable websites. ARTICLE 2: Making Money Online – Traffic and Content By Nelson Bates, Author Best Website: Simple Steps to Successful Websites The most important aspect of making money online is also the hardest thing to do. This is creating significant and consistent traffic to your website. To illustrate why traffic is the most important aspect, consider this: when I was running my website appraisal business, we received submissions from some of the most poorly designed websites that were earning $10,000 to $20,000+ per month in profit. The key was that they had a tremendous flow of traffic. I never saw a single example of a great looking website, with no or low traffic, making lots of money. I did, however, see plenty of bad and mediocre websites making incredible money, simply because they had excellent traffic. The second main point to making money online is designing a great website. This is split into two parts. The first is the modifications you do to your website to optimize it for the Search Engines. The second is everything else that makes up your website, like graphics, layout, navigation structure, and the sales process. In the design of your website, you want to create immediate credibility in the eyes of the potential customers and effectively lead them through your website to make a purchase (i.e., the sales process), thus, maximizing the number of buyers you get in relation to the number of visitors you receive. Also, the people who make the most money online, at the very least, know how either to manage their own website (e.g., being able to update content, add links and graphics), or to build the entire website themselves from scratch using one of the professional design tools like Adobe DreamWeaver or Microsoft Expression Web. There are certainly exceptions to this rule but, in general, this is true. The reason is because knowing how to manage and/or build your own website allows all your ideas to come to life without having to pay a web designer (who usually can’t ever quite deliver what you intended anyway!). APlease visit BestWebsite.com for step-by-step instructions to building profitable websites. ARTICLE 3: Success Means a Profitable Website (and Profitable Doesn’t Require Perfection!) By Nelson Bates, Author Best Website: Simple Steps to Successful Websites I believe people lose money online for two reasons. The first reason is because they get bogged down in the details of building their business. Things like server platforms, coding choices, graphic design, layout options, entity formation, and search engine optimization, among others. It’s very easy to get confused and lose track of where you need to go. The second reason is that they don’t allow enough time for their business to succeed. Most people will not continue past three months if their business does not start to make money. They become frustrated with the process and give up. In my opinion, you’ll need at least 3 to 6 months to establish a solid website and start generating enough traffic to become profitable. It just takes that long to refine your website and gain search engine traffic. But, as long as you know what the right path is, you’ll know to keep going. Success Means a Profitable Website - The 100% Rule There is one key difference between those who make money online, and those who lose money online. Those who make money online know about the 100% rule, which is that they don’t need things to be 100% correct before they move on. I’ll give an example: When a friend was designing a website in the past, he needed a login function to check for a user ID and password to be able to view a membership section of the website. There wasn’t any sensitive information located in the membership section, so security was not high priority. Instead of hiring out the database design he needed to be able to validate logins, he just used a submission form where people entered their username and password, and it took them directly to the members’ section without checking to see if the entered information was correct. Since he knew that the vast majority of people, probably 99% or more, would fill out the new user form first and then attempt to login, he knew it was fine not to have it 100% correct. There were several reasons to do this. The most important is that he still had control over his website because he could easily create a login function himself using the tools provided by the Web design software. He also saved money that he would have needed to spend on the designer. Having as much control as possible over your own website is essential. Also, saving time and money is critically important. Most of the time this advice is met with aversion, and I can understand the criticism. However, I am merely stating one of the differences between people who make money online and people who don’t. Those who do know how to build the function they need quickly without involving an outside designer or spending a lot of money. Profitable Doesn’t Require Perfection! Most people who start an online business will spend far too much time just getting things set up and won’t have enough time or money to spend on the things that will actually make him or her money. Whether it is dealing with web design, database design or internet marketing, the key is to not try and make things 100% right. I have seen many websites never get off the ground, mostly because they were trying too hard to make things 100% right at the beginning. Think about the aspects of your website that can be solved the easy way first. Then, once your website is up and running and you understand how people use your website, you can come back to that aspect and correct it or possibly realize that nothing more needs to be done. My intention with the Best Website book is not to describe the Utopian way to build a website; it is to describe how successful business owners build and run their websites to earn significant money online. Please visit BestWebsite.com for step-by-step instructions to building profitable websites. ARTICLE 4: What Type of Website to Start By Nelson Bates, Author Best Website: Simple Steps to Successful Websites I want first to mention the structure of a successful website. I’ll define a successful website as the website that makes the most money, takes the least amount of time to run, and provides the most flexibility. The most successful website structure I have encountered is managed by a single owner who hires out some of the duties of his or her website business, like graphic design and database design, and then manages the Internet marketing campaign and any website updates alone. There are certainly many ways to build a successful website. For instance, if you have the Internet marketing knowledge, and someone else has the website design knowledge, you can partner to build a great website. Of course, this means you lose some control, and you have to split your profits. I will show in Chapter 4 how to get all the work done by either doing it yourself or hiring it out. Deciding what “type” of product to sell is pretty simple. You'll have the best opportunity of making the most money with a product to which you own the rights, whether it is a physical product, an information product, or a service. If you have a product that can be delivered completely online, preferably without your involvement, this is probably your best bet at making a consistent and significant profit online. I'd like to use BuySellWebsite.com as a great example of a service product. Among other things, BuySellWebsite.com sold classified ad listings to people wanting to sell their website businesses. The classified listings we sold were $99 and cost essentially nothing to provide. Whether we sold one or one thousand, it still cost the same small amount of time and money. Note: I sold BuySellWebsite.com in 2006. The classified ad listing is a great example of a product that can be delivered online. If you have a product or service that is delivered online without your involvement, your profit margin will be much greater than with a traditional product. You'll see, later on, that you'll probably need this extra profit margin and any extra time to survive the startup process and pay for your marketing campaign. By choosing a product that is delivered online, you are starting out on the right foot. I don't want to make it sound like you cannot succeed with a traditional physical product. I'm just saying that, in general, on online product is probably the most effective and profitable option. A few more examples of products delivered online are e-books or membership sites where users pay a monthly fee to access information. Another example is Website Appraisals. This is a service that we sold on BuySellWebsite.com and the appraisals were then delivered through e-mail in an Adobe PDF document. Please visit BestWebsite.com for step-by-step instructions to building profitable websites. ARTICLE 5: Databases: Your Hardest Working Employee By Nelson Bates, Author Best Website: Simple Steps to Successful Websites When it comes to making money online, you have the best opportunity of making the most money with a product that you own the rights to. My recommendation is to create a product that can be completely delivered online, preferably without your involvement as this is probably your best bet at making a consistent and significant profit online. For instance, BuySellWebsite.com is a great example of a service product delivered online since among other things, BuySellWebsite.com sold classified ad listings to people wanting to sell their website businesses. Just to give you an idea of how powerful this can be, I’ll walk you through the steps of creating this database from scratch, with no programming knowledge. To start, I need to give a brief explanation of how BuySellWebsite.com operates. The website accepts classified listings and then displays them on its website for users to search. The pages are set up similarly to eBay’s with a number of listings on each page where you can click the hyperlink to read more about each business for sale. The database for BuySellWebsite.com ran most of this site. This is fantastic because it’s like having an additional employee for free. After successful payment, the database took the listings, inserted them into the database, rotated the ads properly, deleted old listings, processed renewals, retrieved lost passwords and allowed users to update their listings. The classified listings we sold were sold for $99 and cost essentially nothing to provide. Whether we sold one or one thousand, it still cost the same small amount of time and money. Since the database basically ran the website, this is why having one is so valuable. Note: I sold BuySellWebsite.com in 2006. How did I do this? Employ a database. When a person wanted to place a classified ad, they clicked on a payment button to start the process. We used PayPal as our merchant account provider (more on PayPal later). Once payment was made through PayPal, they were redirected back to our site where they could fill out the ad listing form that was then automatically uploaded to the site and rotated into the active listings through the database I created. The database also allowed users to retrieve lost passwords, delete old ads, update their listings and track how many times each ad was viewed. A database can be your best friend and hardest working employee. It might sound like a complicated process to set up, and it can be, but I built it entirely by myself using my web design software's Database Wizards. (I use Microsoft Expression Web; there will be more on web design software in Chapter 4.) What does this mean? It means I built the entire database by going through a ‘wizard’ that asked me questions about how I wanted my database to operate, then Expression Web wrote the database code for me! This is an incredibly powerful tool. By learning the Database Wizard, you can eliminate having to pay for a database designer. Virtually all people who work with Web developers find the process very expensive and incredibly difficult to get what they want. Most people fail to make it beyond trying to design their site because it becomes too difficult to continually explain what they want and then they run out of money. The more you are in control of your website, the better off you'll be. Please visit BestWebsite.com for step-by-step instructions to building profitable websites. ARTICLE 6: What’s In A Name? Creating Credibility for Your Business By Nelson Bates, Author Best Website: Simple Steps to Successful Websites Most people who start an online business will spend far too much time just getting things set up and won’t have enough time or money to spend on the things that will actually make him or her money. It is important therefore, to get past many of the start up issues as quickly as possible, so you can focus on creating additional traffic to your website and improving your sales process. Two of the most important decisions you will need to do, before you even begin to design your website, are to choose the name of your business and your domain name. The Name of Your Business: In most situations I recommend the name of the business be the same as the domain name. It makes things much easier in general, as you'll see below. There are two schools of thought here: go with a keyword generated name or go with a name you make up. My preference is to go with a keyword-generated name because it’s easier to target the search engines and it’s more recognizable in marketing campaigns that have the URL listed in it. Examples of keyword-generated names are BuySellWebsite.com or BabyCribs.com and examples of made up names are Yahoo.com or Digg.com. As another example, when I chose BestWebsite as the name of this business, I registered the domain name BestWebsite.com, then formed an LLC in its name (BestWebsite, LLC) and filed the Federal Trademark “BestWebsite.” I also opened a Bank account in its name and set up a PayPal account in its name. The name also serves as my email account moreinfo@bestwebsite.com. I think this is important because when people come to my site they like to see that the domain name is the same as the LLC name and when they make a payment they like seeing that the payment is going to the same business name as everything else. Creating credibility with your website is certainly the most important thing when convincing people to do business with you. The little things do matter. And it is definitely worth it to expend the effort to set your business up this way. Domain Name: In general, you should try for a two or three word domain name that contains the keywords of your industry. An excellent way to discover the best keywords for your industry is by using the keyword service by WordTracker.com or KeywordDiscovery.com They do a great job of showing which keywords are the most searched for and least competitive, giving you the best chance of success. More often than not, the most searched for keywords in your industry will already have the domain name registered. However, as an example, if you really wanted BabyCribs.com, you could register myBabyCribs.com or BabyCribsHome.com. Having an excellent domain name will definitely make things easier when it comes to search engine optimization and creating credibility when people visit your site. For instance, the domain name BestWebsite.com had already been registered to someone else before I negotiated to buy it. I knew it was exactly the name I wanted and was willing to pay a premium for it. You can find lots of premium domains for sale at SEDO.com or GreatDomains.com. If you are just starting out, however, I recommend going to GoDaddy.com and registering a domain name as close as you can get to your keywords. That way you only end up paying nine dollars for your domain name, instead of possibly thousands of dollars for a premium domain name. It's difficult to make a recommendation of what exactly to do without seeing your situation. But a name is very important and carefully choosing the best name for your business is important. As a general rule-of-thumb, don't spend more than 10% of your budget on it. You'll probably need every dollar you've got to make sure you get through the start up process. You can rethink the name when you’re profitable. That might sound crazy, but businesses do it all the time. For instance, here is another example of choosing a domain name. A friend of mine is building her photography website to sell her photography services. She has decided to use her own name, Sarah Martini, as the name of the business, Sarah Martini, LLC and the domain name is SarahMartini.com. This arrangement is fine and works well for this situation. Know that the goal from here on out is to make sure you make it through the start up phase. To me, the start up phase lasts until the website can earn enough money to operate without any outside money being put in. Only a very small number of people make it past this phase and in the Best Website book, my goal is to help you through it. Note: Be aware that when you are registering a domain name with GoDaddy.com, they will try to sell you a bunch of add-on services, like hosting, advertising and an anonymous listing to name a few. I don’t recommend purchasing anything else from them. Also, there are certainly many other places on the Internet to register your domain name, such as NetworkSolutions.com and TuCows.com, I just have a preference for GoDaddy.com. Please visit BestWebsite.com for step-by-step instructions to building profitable websites. Copyright © BestWebsitetm LLC. :: 2008. All Rights Reserved.