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If you
don't have a website, find content that you would like to
build a website out of and get going. Let's explore this further
today.
Content
For Your Site
What's
your website going to be about? Public speaking? Gardening?
Children? Well, what's the content of your public domain file?
Create a website on the theme you choose. It can be anything.
Your own niche. Perhaps something you enjoy, like cooking.
Or even something you know nothing about, like astronomy!
That's the beauty of public domain. All the content you need
is already there for you to simply copy and paste. That gives
your website value. More people would be interested to visit
your site.
Where
to start? It's a good idea to get your own domain name. An
online tool I like to use to find good domain names is DomainName-Search.com.
(I suggest you bookmark the site). Enter a keyword, like 'gardening'
and you're presented with plenty of possibilities to choose
from. You can register a domain for less than $7 a year.
You can
also use an existing domain you own and create a sub-directory
of the subject. If your domain is something generic like yourname.com,
create a directory like yourname.com/gardening to setup your
gardening site.
Since
you probably have plenty of content to use, you will probably
want to break up the content and put them on several pages
according to appropriate headings instead of dumping the whole
bulk of text on one page. This is where a good understanding
of the content is handy.
For example,
if your site is about "Learning Tennis In 10 Days",
(to use an example from Lesson 1), it would not be a bad idea
to divide the site to ten pages - day one to day ten. This
would present the content to your visitors in an attractive
and uncomplicated way. It's always a good idea to keep things
simple and intuitive. Your visitor will know that the lessons
starts on Day 1 without you having to explain or write out
an FAQ guide. And each day can have a sub-title to explain
what the lesson is about. For instance: "Day One - Choosing
A Racket."
All depends
on how you package the content for your visitors. If things
are too complicated that a visitor can't navigate your site,
he'd much rather look for another site.
Besides
cutting and pasting text, there are other things you can do
to 'enhance' your site and make it attractive to visitors.
A few subtle graphics is important. You can download a FreeWebTemplate
and edit it with DreamWeaver or FrontPage. Then upload it
to your webhost server.
Also if
your public domain file has 360 pages, you don't have to use
all the content on your site. You can even focus your website
on a specific niche. If you have content on dozens of different
species of dogs, you don't have to create a website on every
dog in the book. How about focussing on just the terrier?
Did you know that 'terrier' is searched for hundreds of thousands
of times a month? That's huge! That's not all. You can even
drill down further and focus your website on a particular
type of terrier like the 'silky terrier'. Overture shows approximately
12,000 searches a month for 'silky terrier' alone. That's
a big enough market to warrant a dedicated website.
You might
have heard of automated software tools that produce a complete
website of hundreds of pages from public domain content you
input. I do not recommend it for 2 reasons. One, your website
will be exactly the same as a hundred other people who use
the software. And two, with so many similiar sites indexed
by the search engines, increases the chances of your site
being banned for what the search engines might consider spamming.
One of
the most most crucial element of the website in my opinion
is the TITLE. We talked about that in the first lesson. The
title will be the first thing your visitors see and can decide
whether he/she stays to explore your site further or goes
away. That's why you need to entice them with a solid compelling
title. The book on dogs may be "All About Dogs"
and showcase 12 different species. But if your niche is "terriers",
then "All About Dogs" is not appropriate. You'd
have to create a new title of your own where owners of terriers
will be compelled to visit.
Making
Money With Your Site
To make
money with your website, you need to have or find related
products you can sell on your site. Digital products like
ebooks are excellent examples because there is no stock or
shipping to worry about. everything is handled digitally.
You can find hundreds of products to choose from at Clickbank.com.
By inserting an affiliate link, you can earn handsome commissions
on sales. If your site is on dogs, find an ebook on 'dog training'
for instance, and put the link on your site. A visitor who
happens to enter your site, reads the interesting content
you have and thinks to himself, this guy knows what he's talking
about. I'll check out his ebook. And you make your first SALE!
Another
way you can earn money is by placing ads on your site. Sign
up with Google
Adsense. Copy a piece of code and Google puts an ad on
your site that's related to your content. Take a look at the
Google ad at the top of this page. If you click on it, Google
pay me for advertising for them. (Go ahead, I don't mind waiting
while you do that :o) )
A health
site will have ads on health. An insurance site will have
ads on insurances. If a visitor clicks on one of these ads,
you earn money, anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars
per click. Some clicks can make you up to $10 or more! You
can create a content-rich website and have Google display
relevant ads on your site.
Creating
a website is not the end of the story. It is, in fact, the
easy part. Optimizing your site for the search engines is
the tough part. Having lots of good quality content will improve
your rankings. Your site needs to get good rankings so that
if someone searches for information pertaining to your niche,
your site should ideally be in the top 10 or 20. Not on postion
543, where no one will find you. Search engine optimizers
(SEO) charge hundreds or thousands of dollars but let me see
if I can save you some money....
Here
are some very good free tips and techniques you can implement
yourself to give your website a boost in the search rankings.
Visit http://www.GoogleWebsite.com
We're
done with Lesson 2. Feel free to email me at ofs-at-openforsale.com
if you have questions. I will try my best to answer them in
the coming days.
Earlier
we talked about ebooks. Tomorrow, I'll show you how you can
create your very own ebook too for free.
Today's
GIFTs:
How
To Create Killer Mini Sites
How
To Create A Website in 5 Days
(Both
come with resell rights. Enjoy.)
If you have ever wondered how to locate public
domain sources, look at:
http://www.instantauthors.com/pdresource.htm
All success,
http://www.InstantAuthors.com
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