Right, by now you should have your idea, your website or blog and your keyword rich Domain name. All you need now is quality content, revenue streams and marketing!
As far as good quality content is concerned, if you have followed my advice in lesson 1 and decided on a business idea that you are passionate about, I am sure that you will already have access to lots of good content of your own. If you don't, then don't worry because the internet is full of superb content that you can use. If you are using affiliate products and services on your site as part of your revenue streams, then producing a 'feature' of the product or service is a great way of producing useful, quality and original content as well as being a great recommendation of the product or service which should result in affiliate sales and commission!
WARNING! Do not be tempted to simply copy and paste other websites' content into your site! This is not only illegal, but it won't do you any favors with the search engines because one of their pet hates is 'duplicated content' - so don't do it. You can however, 'borrow' useful content from different sources and re-write it completely. I personally wouldn't recommend content 'spinners' (software that re-writes articles and content by changing selected words) because I believe this to be sailing a bit 'close to the wind'. You owe it to your readers to give them original quality content, not just a spun article. Add your opinions and views and your own personal thoughts about the subject and intersperse the article with useful links to other related articles and/or affiliate links. Keeping the reader interested and provide them a place to obtain further information or to to buy a related product or service is providing a good service. Remember, that if you direct your reader away from your site, they may never come back - so whenever possible set your links to open in a new window (target='blank_' is the HTML code to do this) so that your site is still present.
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STOP! Just for a minute, it is now time for you to complete two very important steps!
Please now join ALL of the affiliate networks and programs! Once your site is set up with some basic content, make sure you visit our Affiliate Network page and sign up with each of the different networks by clicking on each link. This will allow you to maximise the affiliate products and services you can add to your site.
Please now also join our TEAM!
Remember I said that we wanted you to be in our TEAM? Well, you haven't actually joined yet, if you would like to be kept up to date with all our updates, FREE marketing ideas and new FREE money making opportunities, please click here and join our FREE Exclusive Affiliate Social Network by invitation only. You will be able to exchange views with other members and we will be able to keep you up to date with all the latest news, free to join programs and top marketing ideas etc.
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Now that you have joined ALL the affiliate networks (and we will let you know of any new ones that we find) it is time to look at another revenue stream - advertising! If kept relevant, useful and non intrusive, advertising can be another superb way of offering a great service to your readers and generating a source of revenue. Contextual advertising (like Google's AdSense as seen on this site) works really well as it keeps the adverts relevant. The software scans your webpage and picks out keywords and places adverts automatically in the space you have selected. You can control the size of the ad box and the colour scheme. You can even select advertisers that you wish not to show and you can select between text only ads or picture based ads. because it is run by Google, it is reliable and trust worthly, but beware! You cannot alter the advert code in any way which means that you cannot set any links to open in a new window. This means that you will be directing traffic away from your site. Google has very strict Terms and Conditions which they can change at any time and without any warning. If you inadvertently click one of your own ads or place an ad on a website that Google doesn't like, you will be Terminated from their program, again without warning and this decision is final. So please be careful. However, Google can generate a superb revenue stream.
Alternatives to Google includes Bidvertiser and some affiliate networks including TradeDoubler offer contextual advertising for placement on your site, so you decide on which is best for you. They are all FREE to join and to use.
So, to recap... You now have your idea, your site, your Domain, your content and 2 revenue streams - Affiliate links and Contextual advertising.
Finally, if your chosen website creation software and hosting is sophisticated enough to have a secure, password protected section, you can offer a membership revenue stream to you online business. By requiring your users to register their details in order to access protected quality content, you can simply add a paid subscription membership fee for this service. You will need to set up an online billing and credit card processing facility like PayPal, WorldPay and AlertPay. These services charge a small percentage of any credit card transaction that they process on your behalf. A monthly subscription paid by credit card can generate a large monthly revenue stream providing your content is up to paying for it.
Thanks for reading. Next lesson is all about marketing your website and getting the all important traffic.
...... [Please read lesson 4]
Keep reading & believing!
David Moore
