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These days, blogs are among the most big secretly weapons that business owners can put out. Management are a ace practice to have opinions stated in an unfiltered and diffused place, where ideas and insights can persist shared.<\p>

In place of business owners, blogging builds credibility for the website through and through the many opinions and ideas that are shared there. The company, and its owner, become recognized therewith their readers as a invention for suitable information. Under the circumstances, clansman will not only visit once, but crave reenact therewith and backward to gather up unconscious what else is new.<\p>

Blogging yours truly is an extremely inexpensive, and simple blank check up reach out to thousands of website visitors and potential customers. Ourselves draws people who are in your direct target market, making association building a world more natural process. <\p>

Blogs make you an expert intrusive your gymnasium. The right researching and writing skills (or with a handy at writer and researcher in your obtain) allow you to get to be an expert adit your field. To be an expert, all you need on do is keep up with the latest in your industry within your blog posts, and maintain it regularly.<\p>

To make sure that you're headed in the right direction with your blog, check up on other blogs in your handwork to touch what alter have posted. Naturally, this doesn't mean that you be necessary post the same trousseau as your competition. In fact, that is soon the worst rightfulness that himself closet do. You're gratuitous over against share an opinion now and then, exclusively your blog probate need to survive out if it is to be taken seriously. If you are readily reiterating what others are erstwhile saying, on this account you will be seen as well old news, and will breathe overlooked in favor in regard to the original thinkers.<\p>

To start your own blog on your website, you need to admit the all there tools in place. <\p>

When you placard on your blog, make sure that you're doing it because them have interests to say, and not because it's time to post. If it feels be pleased with a transaction, other self won't use it and you won't post respecting a regular basis. Your blog posts poorness in order to be interesting if i are to yield a featureless readership. If you're not openmouthed in what you're ideogram then the odds are that your visitors won't be interested in what they're reading.<\p>

Into penitentiary tumescence the interest, don't take yourself too devoutly. In connection with troughway you are allowed to write practically serious and important topics good graces your dynamism and about your products, but you can also include some trivia and waggish commentaries that outspokenly or indirectly relate to to your blog topic and will amuse your readers. This is perfectly acceptable in blog posting and is, contemporary in fact, encouraged. The very thing allows the readers to feel that they have made real contact in conjunction with you, and that you bring a real joy in what you attend.<\p>

Blogs aren't very christly for creating regular visitors in transit to your website, but inner man are also that is so beneficial seeing that bringing in new visitors as well. You'll pass sentence that on what occasion they are nonbook about any given topic inlet your industry, ourselves are using the words and terms that apply to your topic. As these words become beyond frequently pawed-over sporadically your website, for example, within your recent and archived blog posts, search engine spiders will pick up on their use and may increase your gauging for those keywords.<\p>

In order to sum up, aboard is what you need to benefit from your blog:<\p>

The right blogging tools<\p>

The cleverness and power of attorney to contribute regularly<\p>

Something happy as far as division<\p>

Some ingenuity with writing ± if she don't, hire someone who does<\p>

Some knowledge in your industry. If you don't possess a great amount as respects sense, hire someone who can research this information Some perspective and vernal insights, not just aleatory ramblings<\p>

By Sam Leccima<\p>

We learned yesterday ways to attract people to your website and grow traffic.  That's the easy part.  The hard part is getting them to come back continuously.  That's what we will be looking at today. 

How can I get people to revisit my website?

To get people to keep coming back to your website, you need to give plenty of reasons why they should.  If you think about it, it's just common sense.  You wouldn't keep going to a shop every day if nothing had changed each time that you went.  You need to continually add to your site in a variety of different ways.  Add new blog posts/articles, tutorials, videos, pictures, interviews, competitions, news, events, etc.  Doing this regularly gives people an excuse to click on your site and catch up with what's new.  Not only that, but it shows to new visitors that your site is not dead, and there is an active presence online.

When just starting out with a brand new website, you should have an almost endless list of things that you need to add, so you have got more than enough to get you started.  A lot of people think that they need to add everything at once before publishing their site, when actually a single blog post is a great way of starting.  As long as you build upon that on a regular basis, then that is enough reason for people to revisit your website. 

Techniques to bring traffic back to your website



Apart from regularly adding content that we have discussed through out this training course, there are a number of other ways to encourage people to come back to your site. 


Email Marketing

This is a great way of getting people back to your website.  The key is to build a large email list of your customers/visitors.  When people register to become a member, you get their email address.  When people sign up to your weekly newsletter, you get their email address.  The more ways there are to get someone's email address the better.

With an email list, you can build a brand, recommend products, promote any events/workshops that you may be holding and more importantly to can encourage people to keep returning to your website.  Just don't go overboard with emails so that they are viewed as spam!  Nobody likes spam!  


Newsletter

These are a great way to encourage people to return to your website.  Within your newsletter you can keep referring people back to your website.  You can automate the whole process as well, letting it run on autopilot.  This FREE 7 Day Training Course is totally automated.  We use Aweber to automatically send out these series of emails over the week.  It gives us the chance to refer you back to our website.

RSS Feeds!

These are great for informing people about your latest updates.  Feeds update themselves automatically when you add to your blog.  People that have chosen to subscribe to your RSS Feed are automatically told about your new content, giving them incentive to check it out. 

These are so easy to set up and do everything automatically for you.  Google Feedburner is a great tool to use to do this.  This is something that you should definitely include on your website.

Be Friendly

If someone takes the time to email you with a question, then put the effort into replying.  Even if you don't know the answer to the question asked, perhaps you could refer them to somebody that does, or be honest and say I don't know!  The fact that you have shown to actively respond to a visitors question can go along way.

If you are getting lots of emails about the same question, then that might be a good subject to write about in an upcoming blog post.  You could send emails back thanking the individual for the question and stating that you will be writing an in depth post outlining the answer for them.

Post comments on your own posts answering peoples questions, refer to people that have asked questions in videos, etc.  This all helps to build a community around your website.  Doing this sort of thing shows to your visitors that you aren't a faceless website that doesn't interact with its viewers, that you are willing to help if you can. 


Network

Get in contact with other people that are involved in your field of interest.  You may not get too many replies if you still have a small reputation, but that will change as you grow your online status.  You could offer to link to their website in return that they similarly link back to you. This can help your credibility and increase your reputation.

As the saying goes, "It's not what you know, it's who you know that matters!"

Homework

These are just some ways to get people to come back to your website.  Again, this is something that you have to continually work on, it won't just happen over night.  Get in the habit of adding articles/blog posts every few days, regularly tweeting, posting things on your social media sites, running competitions, making videos, etc. If you continually produce reasons for people to return to your site, then they will.  For today's homework we want you to continue with some of these methods.



1. Set up an RSS Feed with Google Feedburner.

2. Put a link to your new RSS Feed on your homepage


3. Write a new article/blog post for your site



Congratulations, your site is starting to take shape.  You now have more reasons for people to come to your site and keep returning.  Remember, the more traffic you get, the more money you will make!  

Tomorrow we will be looking at things that help you manage and keep track of your website.  

We'll email you tomorrow with the final Day 7 of the FREE Training


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We hope that you found yesterday's training helpful and completed the day's homework. If so you should have a great website that is starting to take shape.  You have a cool looking theme, a great initial article/blog post that people want to read and one or two ads that can make you some money.  Not bad for a few hours work!  Today we will be looking at ways to increase traffic to your website.

How can I attract people to my website?

Attracting traffic to your website is one of the most important parts of making money online.  The more people you can get to visit your site, the more money you can potentially earn.

If you have the money that you can invest in advertising for your site, then that's great.  You will be able to attract visitors in many different ways.  However, there are plenty of simple FREE methods that are great for start-up websites.  We will be focusing on those methods today.

It's vitally important that you don't give up at this early stage.  It can take time to build a steady amount of traffic for your website.  Unfortunately, the main reason why people fail online is because they don't put the effort in and use the wrong methods to attract large numbers people to their site.  This usually results in people throwing in the towel almost immediately.  It won't happen overnight (though it can!) but if you invest the time and effort working on the right method, it will reward you in the end.

Traffic Building Techniques


Social Media Marketing

Social Media has taken off in a HUGE way!  Everyone seems to be on it these days.  That is great for web site owners because it allows us a way to interact and advertise our presence to huge number of people. 

1. Twitter

   Twitter allows people to communicate with each other across the world.You may only have 140 characters, but that is plenty to get your voice heard by lots of people. You need to tweet regularly (post regulatly) about things that are happening with your website, such as; new blog posts, competitions, events, tutorials, videos, interviews, etc.  Mix that in with general tweets from you that are related to your website niche, such as related news stories.  The next step is to start following people that are related to your website subject matter. Find some of the biggest names in your niche/industry and follow them AND whoever they are following. This allows you to target potential visitors of your website.  They will see that you are of interest to them, so they will likely follow you back.  Friends of friends will start to notice you and your tweets, resulting in continual growth of people following you.

2. Facebook  

There are an estimated 800 million users of Facebook worldwide, that's almost 10% of the earth's population!  Facebook can be used as a tool to try and attract some of these people to your website.  By creating a 'Fan' page for your website, you can advertise your presence to lots of online people, letting them 'Like' your page and tell their friends about this new cool website that they have just found.Obviously, just like Twitter, you need to be posting updates to your page regularly.  Updates, news, upcoming events, workshop dates, etc. with links to your website.  This will all help to drive traffic to your website.To increase your Facebook presence, networking is very important.Like Twitter, find people who are interested in your niche and become their 'Friends' and/or 'Like' their 'Fan' page.  Some of these will begin to follow you back, which starts the process of building your profile.

Once you have built yourself a bit of a reputation within your niche, you can try to attract more people.  A good way to do this is to politely ask high profile people within your industry to become fans of your page.  This way, when they do, all of their followers will see that they are friends with you, which will attract more people to you.

3. Other Social Media Sites

   There are loads of additional popular social media sites that you can use to advertise your site.  Sites like Digg, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, etc., all have huge amounts of members.

Again, making regular updates to all these sites is vitally important.  

Video Marketing  

On Day 3 of this training course we looked at using videos as an alternate way of producing content for your website.  These same videos can be used to also help promote your website and attract traffic.  Many people just make short videos advertising themselves, which is great.  But the best videos to make are ones that offer something to the viewer.

There are many video websites out there that will allow you to post your video, it doesn't just have to be YouTube.  Just remember that the aim is to get people to your site.  A good way to do this is to display links to your website at both the beginning and end of each video as well as underneath the video where you can write descriptions.  If you watch the video back and there is no reference to your website at all, then nobody will ever visit your site, making the whole video pointless0

Blog Marketing!

When you are just starting out, it can be difficult to build an online reputation.  A method that you can use to increase your presence is blog marketing.  This method involves posting comments on other blogs.  Simply find blogs that are in some way related to your website subject matter and start commenting on them.  Post valuable content that people want to read and you will grow your reputation.

Many blogs use forms that let their readers add comments.  The good thing about these forms is that you can add a link to your website under your profile name, this way whenever anybody clicks on your name, it will take them to your website.  Again, you will need to add quality comments  for people to do this, but this is a great way to increase your online presence.  Therefore the more blog comments you make, the more links to your website there will be.

Homework!

These are just some of the ways that you can begin to grow your online presence and start attracting more traffic to your website.  This is something that you have to continually work on, it won't just happen overnight.  Follow these initial steps and continue to produce quality content, over time, you will begin to see that your traffic starts to grow and grow.  So, for today's homework, we want you to make a start on these methods.

1. Set up a Twitter account for your website.  Use a decent profile picture and a short description that explains what your website is about.

2. Set up a Facebook Fan page for your website.  Use a decent profile picture and a short description that explains what your website is about.

3. Invite everyone that you know to “Follow” you and become your “Friend”.

4. Find some targeted people that are involved with your niche and “Follow”/”Friend” them.

5. Start Tweeting and post regular updates on your Facebook page.  You can start by adding a link and short description to your first article/blog post that you created on 'Day 3'.

6. Put links on your website telling people that you are on Twitter & Facebook.

Congratulations, you are on your way to building your online presence and attracting an increasing amount of traffic!  Tomorrow we will be looking at ways to get visitors to continually keep coming  back to your site.

We'll email you tomorrow with Day 6 of the FREE Training


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Day 4

We hope that you completed yesterday’s homework. If so you should now be the owner of a brilliant looking website with a great initial article/blog post that people want to read.  Today we will be looking at ways that your website can make you money.



How to make money online



We bet the majority of people reading this training course think that to make money from your website you just need to put advertisements on your pages.  Wrong!  There are many ways to make money from your website, advertisements make up just a small portion.  The best way to make money online is to use a combination of these so that you aren't relying on one method.  After all it's better not to keep all your eggs in one basket!  



Different methods to monetize your website


Advertisements

Let's start with advertisements.  We’re sure that you have all seen these before.  Many websites display advertisements on their web pages.  These can vary in size, with the most common being;

Wide Skyscraper 160x600

Banner 468x60

Square 250x250

Leaderboard 728x90.  

These can be placed anywhere on your pages.  It isn't however as straight forward as simply adding an ad, there are many different forms of advertisements out there that can be used.  Understanding these can help you earn the most from them.

1. Pay Per Click Advertising  

These types of ads pay you every time someone clicks onto them.  You have to sign up with a provider, who will give you code for you to place on your site.  This code allows the provider to send contextual ads to your site (either image or text based) that are relevant to the content of your site.  Google Adsense is the most famous and widely used provider of this service, but there are many other providers out there.



These types of ads vary in profitability.  It all depends on how many clicks you are getting.  The more traffic that you get, the more likely that someone will click onto them.  This can be helped by positioning your ads properly.  Certain parts of your web pages are more valuable than others, such as the beginning and end of an article. 

2. Cost Per Mile Advertising  

This type of ad is similar to Pay Per Click, however instead of earning for every click that you get, you get paid according to the number of impressions that you receive.  This is worked out for every 1000 impressions that it has.  For example, a website that gets 200,000 page views per month that displays a $1 Cost Per Mile ad will generate you $200 a month!  

Just like Pay Per Click, Cost Per Mile ads can pay you more depending on where the ad is placed on your website.  The higher the ad is placed and the bigger the ad is, it will generally make you more money. Blogs that focus on celebrity news generate great incomes from this method because they generate so much traffic to their sites.

3. Advertising Space  

You could cut out the middle man and make money by selling your own advertising space.  This way advertisers would pay you an agreed amount for you to display their ad(s) for a set time. Example: A blog/website that reviews beauty products can sell ads to local salons, or manufacturers of beauty products. 


Affiliate Advertising 

This method can net you some serious money if done right.  It takes a little more time to set up, but the rewards are much bigger.  Affiliate advertising allows you to promote other peoples products, services, website, etc.  In return, you get a commission for every sale that resulted in your recommendation.  This is often worked out on a percentage of the sale price, maybe 10-20%, sometimes more depending on the individual product.  You have to do a bit of research for products that you can do affiliate ads for.  Sites such as Clickbank are great for this.  There are many ways of implementing this type of advertising.

1. Text Link Ads  

Text link ads allow you to place ads within the text of your websites.  These just appear as a normal link, but for every visitor that follows that link that results in a sale, you get a percentage.  There are plenty of sites out there that that can supply you with plenty of text link ads, such as Text Link Ads. 

2. Product Reviews  

Simply write a detailed review about a product (that has an affiliate program) and publish them on your site, just add a link at the bottom.  Obviously it is better to review products that are related to your website.  Example: If your blog/website focuses on health and fitness, sign up for Amazon’s affiliate program.  When you review a health and fitness book, just post an Amazon link to that book.  If someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase, you will earn some money.

Make your own Product 

You don't have to rely on making money by selling other peoples things, you can make your own.  Write your own book or ebook and sell it on your site.  If you are good at programming, write your own software program and sell it on your own site.  Sell your own art work, photographs, sculptures, etc.  

The great thing with selling online is that you have a potential market place of 6+ billion people. 

Sell your Self 

Not literally of course, but if you have a skill that you are good at, then you could sell your services.  For example, if you are a fitness instructor, you could sell your services on the weekend as a private trainer.  Clients could find you through your website and book you for an hour on a certain day.  If geography is a problem, you could charge people for a one-on-one video call to outline a personal fitness regime and diet plan.

These are just some of the ways that you could make money online with your website.  

Homework!

We hope that these ideas have opened your eyes to the possibilities of making money online.  As we stated earlier, the best way to earn money online is to use a combination of these ideas.  

For today's homework, we want you to follow these steps and add your first advertisement on your website.

1. Sign up for Google Adsense.  It’s FREE!



2. Pick which size ad that you want to display on your site.



3. Copy the code that they will give you.



4. Paste it into your WordPress account in the proper place. 



Congratulations, you have got your first ad up on your site!  Now we need to increase the traffic to your site to try to increase the chances of someone clicking on it.  Tomorrow we shall be looking at ways to increase traffic to your website.



We'll email you tomorrow with Day 5 of the FREE Training


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Sam Leccima : Married Millions

Sam Leccima : Brand Your Self

Day 3

We hope you enjoyed yesterday’s training and completed the homework. If so, you should now own a brand, spanking, new website that will allow you to start making money.  Today we will be looking at the importance of creating quality content that will help generate traffic to your website.

What makes Website Content so Important?

Website content is vital for your business. Content is the thing that brings people to your website.  You can't begin to think about earning any money from your website if you are not prepared to put the effort into producing good quality content.  

You have to attract people and make them choose to come to your website.  The best way to attract visitors is to offer them value that they want to read/see.  This can be in many different forms, such as news, images, opinions, videos, tutorials, etc.  As long as people perceive that what you are offering is of value to them, then they will visit your website.  The trick is to do it on a consistent basis that keeps them coming back for more! We’ll focus on that on Day 6 of the Training Course.

This of course can be on any subject matter.  For example, couples want to find photographers for their wedding day.  You, as a professional photographer, are perfect for the job and want to grow your business.  On your website, you would need to display your best quality photographs in a portfolio form to attract potential customers.  Putting poor quality photos up for people to see would only keep people from hiring you, as that offers them no value.  Therefore they would go elsewhere.
 People looking for tutorials and guides on gardening would only go to websites that offered useful help on that subject.  Simply stating that you need to water plants after planting them, may be accurate, but people already know that, so it offers no value to them.  Therefore they would go somewhere else.

It sounds like a bit of a cliché, but you should produce content on what you're passionate about.  The more you enjoy what you are doing, the more effort you will put in, often leading to better content.  You will need to put a lot of work into making a successful website, so you may as well do something that you enjoy.  There is no point spending your time building a site about horses, because you think you can make a bit of money from it, if you hate horses or are allergic to them.  Not only will you be less likely to build a great website, but people will be able to tell that your heart’s not in it.

The more effort that you put into making your website content better, the more people will visit your site and the more traffic you get, the more money you will make.  It's as simple as that.



Ways to produce quality website content.

Write what people want to read!  This may sound obvious, but there are many sites out there that don't do this.  They concentrate on such a small niche, that nobody visits the website.  For example, you may want to produce a website about your local town park. You could produce the most amazing website that has ever existed, but only a handful of people from the town itself is likely to visit it.  That is not enough traffic to make any sort of money from it.  

This however could be remedied by broadening the reach of the target audience.  The website could focus on all town parks throughout the country, or perhaps on the towns themselves, discussing all the events that take place throughout the year. Remember that your website's aim is to attract as many people as possible (without being too broad) so produce content that would satisfy them.

Use a great headline!  You need people to read what you are writing, whether that be in a detailed tutorial or a daily blog. A great way of getting people's attention is to use an attractive headline.  Now, we don't mean in a visual, graphic design sense (though this can help), you need to use a headline that instantly tells the reader what the article is about.  You need to keep it reasonably short, while clearly stating what the article is about and making it sound appealing.  This can be more difficult for certain subjects, but a good headline can be written for anything, you just need to be a bit creative.

Nobody wants to read an article with the headline 'A study into the history of the most influential computer gaming software within the last 50 years'.  But by simply changing the title to 'Top 10 Video Games Ever!' you are more likely to get people to read it. It sounds much more exciting, while retaining all the information that is necessary.

Other Content that you could use for your Website



Whatever your website concentrates on, there is other content that you could include that would make your website better.


Write a blog 

A blog is a great way to keep your website updated and show your visitors that your site is active.  We would recommend that you place your blog on your home page, though this can depend on what your website is about.  By placing it here, it shows your visitors that your website is regularly updated. Search engines like sites that are updated regularly, ranking them higher. 

People often ask, "How often you should add to a blog?"  A lot of people would advise you to post every day, however we believe that it is better to add 2-3 posts a week that are of high quality.  Adding content every day just results in posting short entries that are of some interest. We like to spend time writing a longer, good quality post that will be of more interest to our readers.  Not only that, but readers sometimes find it hard to keep up with a blog that posts everyday. 

Include Videos 

People like watching videos because they are much more attractive than reading text.  Many websites have realized this and have started to make videos for their website.  This is a great way to promote your website to people. It offers them a more exciting way of finding out about you.  It doesn't matter what your site subject matter is, you can be creative and think of a way to include a video.  You could include video tutorials, video competitions, video interviews, etc.

Include Pictures

Pictures are a great way of brightening up your website.  Nobody likes boring, dull looking websites.  Even if your site is about a boring subject, quality images can brighten up the appearance, making it more appealing to visitors.  We would advise that you stay away from flash images.  These tend to slow down web pages and can distract people’s attention.  If you feel you have to use them, just try to use them sparingly.

Homework!!! 

Your homework for today is to follow these steps and write your first quality article/blog post.  This way you have something to add to your website. 

1. Spend some time planning out your first submission.  What are you going to write about, what sections will you include, include a good headline, etc.



2. Write out your article.

3. Read through, edit and correct any spelling/grammar mistakes until you are happy.



4. Add a couple of images to brighten it up.

5. Publish your new article/blog post for the world to see.

Congratulations, you now have a new website with an amazing piece of content that will help to attract visitors to your site.  Tomorrow we will be looking at ways that your site can generate you money.

We'll email you tomorrow with Day 4 of the FREE Training.

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Sam Leccima : Married Millions

Sam Leccima : Brand Your Self

Sam Leccima

Follow me on my on the Following

Sam Leccima : Married Millions

Sam Leccima : Brand Your Self

Day 2

We hope you completed yesterday’s homework. If so you should now be the owner of a brilliant new domain name and have it hosted with a HostGator.  Congratulations, that was the boring bit over!  Today we will be starting on the more exciting aspect of actually building your blog using WordPress!!

What is WordPress?

WordPress is amazing software that allows you to create a beautiful blog/website without the need to be a techno-nerd.  It allows you to simply add content - articles, blog entries, pictures, videos or more, edit how your site looks, by changing themes, and you can add thousands of different plugins, such as a Twitter feed or Facebook icons.

WordPress is a CMS (Content Management Software) that makes it easy to fully manage your blog.  Being an Open Source program, WordPress is FREE to use and has a huge active community that help one another.  

How to Install WordPress for your Website?

It is easy to install WordPress for your website.  Simply log in to your HostGator account and go to your cPanel.  Scroll down to 'Software & Services' and click on Thesis.  Click on 'WordPress' and start a 'New Installation'.  Simply fill in the information required for your new blog, such as username and password and click 'Install WordPress and then Finish Installation.  Within a couple of minutes, it will be installed!!!

You will now be able to log into your WordPress website and see what your website looks like.

How do I make my website look good?


Having installed WordPress your site probably looks a bit basic and boring.  Don't worry this is just a basic default theme that is pre-installed.  You can change EVERYTHING on it, be it the background, images, the layout of each page, you can add videos, social media icons, the list of possibilities is endless.You should have a bit of a mess around with your new blog now.

Experiment with all the different features and change whatever you want.  Don't worry about changing anything permanently, we will be changing the theme in the next step.  Just try to familiarize yourself with the different functions of WordPress.

WordPress Themes


Many websites are let down by their appearance.Humans do unfortunately judge a book by its cover.  It doesn't matter how good your website content is, if it is displayed in an unappealing way, you will lose traffic.

The good thing about WordPress is that there are thousands of high quality themes that you can use for your website.  They are easy to install and make your blog look great instantly.

We personally use Woo Themes for a couple of our websites.  They have a variety of very high quality themes that you can use for your site, offering both FREE and Paid themes.  The paid themes are much better as they offer better functionality, which only cost $70 for two themes.  Our website uses the Thesis theme.
They are really easy to install and work on.  You simply download the one you want from Woo Themes, go to your WordPress admin panel, go to Themes, click Upload, Upload Zip file and Activate!  That's it, as easy as that and now you have a professional looking website that is more likely to attract people.

The internet has allowed small business people like us to dramatically decrease the cost of setting up our websites.  You don’t need to pay a web designer hundreds or thousands of dollars to build a website for you anymore. 

Homework!

Your homework for today is to follow these steps so that you have got a great looking website that we can start adding quality content too tomorrow.



1. Install WordPress on your website



2. Play around and familiarize yourself with WordPress



3. Install a professional looking theme for your website that you want to use.



We'll email you tomorrow with Day 3 of the FREE Training



All the best

Samuel Leccima and Shani leccima

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Sam Leccima and Shani Leccima

Follow us on our Social Media Account of Sam Leccima

Samuel Leccima - Twitter

Before we can start making any money online, we need to get you online so that you can start building your website!  Today, we will teach you how to register a domain name for your website and show you how to get it hosted online.

Your domain name is your online real estate. Location, location, location is very important.  How will people find you online?  Take the time to come up with a domain name that people will remember.  We always suggest that you purchase your own name or some variation of it as a domain name. It may surprise you just how easy this is.

What is a Domain Name?

For those of you that don't know what one is, a domain name is the address of your website, which is sometimes referred to as a URL.  These are most commonly recognized as ending in .com but there are many others out there, such as .biz, .tv, etc.  Our website's domain name is Marriedmillions.com, but we also own Samleccima.com, Shanileccima.com as well as a host of other domain names.

What makes a good Domain Name?

The difference between a good domain name and a bad domain name can cost a website several thousand visitors a month.  This is why it is important to spend time picking a good one.  Don't just rush in and buy the first one that comes to mind.  There is an art to picking a good domain name.  Really long URL's like HowIbakecookiesoutdoors.com can be harder to remember and sound boring. Chickendiapers.com is fun and easy to remember.  (Yes, there really is a website by that name and it’s very successful.)  Try to limit your name to two or three short words.  Your address needs to be easy to remember.

Think about if you were to tell a random stranger in the street your website url, would they be able to remember it after an hour or so.  If the answer is no, then you need to think of a shorter, catchier name.  Some of the best domain names are descriptive of what you website is about, for example Marriedmillions.com tells people instantly that it is a site for couples.

Perhaps you are a photographer and you want to make a website to display your professional portfolio online, YourNamePortfolio.com might be a good choice.    

You can use key words to help you decide before you commit to one.  List all the keywords that are associated with the website that you want to make.  Then see if you can use a combination of them to create your domain name.

Having a Thesaurus close at hand helps.  To make sure that your domain name is easy to remember, make sure that you don't use any hyphens or punctuation marks within your url address.  It makes it much harder for people to remember.  If your site is MyName-Blog.com then people will more likely visit MyNameBlog.com instead, leading to lost traffic.

For the same reason, make sure you use a url that ends in .com not any of the other .net or .biz because people automatically are more likely to enter .com.  This may make it a bit harder to find a suitable domain name, but having .com is worth it.

How to Register a Domain Name?

You register a domain name by paying a small fee to a registering company.  This gives you full ownership of that url for the set period of time that you have paid for.  
You should make sure that you register your domain name at a proper registering company, so that they will look after your domain and provide any support that you may need.  We personally use a company called GoDaddy for all of our domains.  They are the largest domain registrar in the world and we have never had a problem with them.   Their 24 hour customer service people are just a phone call away and the support is excellent for non tech people like us.




What is a Hosting Provider?

Now that you know how to register a domain name you need to know where to put it.  This is where you need a hosting provider.  

A hosting provider gives you online space to place all of your files that are needed to get your website online.  You rent disk space and bandwidth for about $5 a month.  This way, your site is available for people to visit 24 hours a day.

Disk space is the space that your website is stored in.  Every single letter from your site is stored here and each of those letters uses 1 byte of space.  Images and video use considerably more space, for example 30 images may use up 3MB, whereas 5000 pictures would use 500MB.

Bandwidth is the total amount of data that the host server allows your website to send in a month.  The more traffic that your site gets, the more bandwidth your site uses.  

Choosing not to use a host requires you to invest in your own dedicated server which is much more complicated and costly than using a hosting provider. 

Which Hosting Provider should I choose?

There are many different hosting providers that are available online.  You need to choose one that is right for the job.  

You need to find a host that offers good support to you.  This is very important because should any problems arise with your website, you need to be able to get in contact with their support team who will help you out.  Also, hosting providers can have limits on the amount of disk space and bandwidth.  Finding a host that offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth will be beneficial in the long run as your website grows, plus you won't be hit by any additional charges. 

There are many free hosts that you could use, however we wouldn't recommend them!  They don't give you permission to add any advertising to your website, which is a big part of generating income for your website.  They allow little control over the structure and design of your website, often giving you a cheap template that looks “cheap”.  If you want to make money online, don't use a free host! 

We personally use HostGator to host our websites.  We have found their 24/7 support line very useful when we have had any questions and they offer unlimited disk space and bandwidth which is very beneficial.  One of the main reasons we chose HostGator is that they allow easy installation of WordPress (We will be looking at this tomorrow!) with just one click.  There is no extra charge for this, whereas other companies can charge you extra for this.

How to Host Your Website


This is really quite simple.  Once you have found a hosting provider that you are happy with, such as HostGator, you need to choose a hosting plan that is right for you.  These can vary in price, but offer additional features, such as a larger number of domains.  

Pick your hosting plan and enter the domain name that you registered at GoDaddy.  Enter in your details and proceed to purchase your hosting plan. 

   Connect your new Domain name and Host together


We connected our domain names to our hosting by simply calling the toll free number that HostGator sent to us after we created an account.  Our customer service rep was patient with us and we completed the procedure in a matter of minutes.  For those people who are a little more technically savvy, we have provided instructions below. 

To join the two together so that they are both linked, you need to login to your GoDaddy account.  From here you need to navigate to Domains > My Domains and click on the url that you purchased for your new website.  

From here, click on the 'Nameservers Icon' and change the default 'nameservers' to the ones that HostGator will have emailed you.  These should be something similar to;



NS1.HostGator.com
NS2.HostGator.com

That's it!  As easy as that.  The two are now linked together and you will be able to start constructing your website.  (More on that tomorrow in Day 2 of the training course!!!)

It bears repeating that the steps outlined above can also be achieved by simply calling the toll free customer service numbers at HostGator and GoDaddy.  They can walk you through this simple process over the phone once you have created an account.


Homework!!!

Your homework for today is to follow these steps so that we can start building your website tomorrow.  



1. Register a good domain name at GoDaddy that you want to use for your website.



2. Get onto HostGator and get your Hosting plan sorted out.



3. Connect the two together!



We'll email you tomorrow Samuel with Day 2 of the FREE Training


All the best,

Sam Leccima and Shani Leccima

Follow us on our Social Media Account of Sam Leccima

Samuel Leccima - Twitter