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1st Affiliate Website? Where to get it? How to build it?

Has anyone ever used site build it!? seems like they have many tools to help catapult your site to the top of search engines. $300/yr but that's who I plan on going with unless someone can sway mefrom them. any input is appreciated
 
I think you have made the right choice in choosing Site Build It. I have three sites with SBI and all are bringing me good traffic and income. SBI has great tools that is so easy to use that anyone who has no technical background can create a keyword focus and search engine optimized web page with a few click. It also has step by step tutorial to guide you from choosing your niche, brainstorming keyword, website design, monetizing ideas to traffic generation. The best of all, there is a support forum where so many SBIers are willing to help you.

Strongly recommended.

PS: If you are a technical person, you may find SBI to be very restrictive as it does not allow php script
 
Subdreamweaver looks pretty good if you are on a budget and you want to learn to do stuff on your own.

Mind you, I have yet to come across a CMS system that i like, i'm open minded though!
 
My advice to newbies that i have trained in affiliate marketing is simple. BUILD THE SITE YOURSELF FROM SCRATCH! Get a free HTML editor, get a good domain name from someone like go daddy, build your site, host it at a good host like go daddy or hostgator. You must aim to build your site yourself. It may seem daunting but it is sooo very easy once you get the hang of it.
 
Did you mean Blogger, Jonnyr?

Blogger is really good for people new to online marketing. It is free and easy to use

My only concern with Blogger is the rumours that your blog could get deleted overnight. Now for someone building a business online, who has put a lot of effort into writing great, search engine optimized posts, generated traffic, losing the blog could be a major disaster.

I still think that hosting your own website is the way to go. You really cannot affort to go cheap when trying to build a business.

A hosting account with someone like godaddy would cost you about $10 a month. [If i remeber correctly]. And other people like hostgator or globat have similar deals.

I use blogger but only to generate traffic to my main websites. Not as my money making site.
 
Looks like some good solid information and good resources to research and test. Appreciate you guys sharing your knowledge and experience.

Darwin
 
I use NVU to do all the instructional videos and it's the exact software I used to start building my sites. It's free and it's just like using a word processor to build your sites. You see what you're doing while you are building so you don't have to learn how to do coding right off the bat.

Like Linda mentioned, it's easy to just go find templates to use them to build your site from. You can find tons of nice looking free templates if you search "free CSS templates" or "free HTML templates." They are free to use as long as you give credit to the designer in the footer, no biggie.

Once you get started, it will get easier and easier and you'll be cranking out websites in no time.

Practice makes perfect.

But, I will say that you definitely don't want to use free hosting. You want to have control of your website. Free hosting has a lot of ads and stuff that you may not want linked to your domain.

Sheree
 
Joomla

Someone mentioned a paid CMS but why pay when you can use Joomla for free and it has such a huge range of functions to addon called mambots or plugins, components and modules.

It is a bit of a learning curve at first to work out how to make the menu links but overall once past that stage its like wordpress only better - no coding to do.You can generally install easily with fantastico thru Cpanel if your host has it.

Components include storefronts, classified ads, community pages, event managers - you name it - someone's made it and most are free to use including a great range of templates.
 
Building My first website

I am fairly new to the affiliate marketing game and I built my site with Xsite Pro. It is a great software program designed with the Affiliate Marketer in mind. It is also not expensive and they are coming out with an updated version shortly that anyone who has Xsite Pro, will be able to download it for free. I suggest checking it out. Good luck.

Leigh
I am just beginning. I know my niche market - I have some ideas how to get started.

However, I need to create a website. In the past for antoher project I have built free website (using tripod) but I know that I get what I pay for.

Where do you recommend I look for a user friendly cost efficeint website?

Rob
 
I'm just perusing the forums so I might necromance a few threads...not on this one. I'll just add a few things.

NVU drives me up the wall. Dreamweaver's not bad...plenty of tutorials. Blogger's free and can end up pretty decent looking. I'm not sure how much you have to work with, but I'd suggest elance to try at least once. That way you'll have an idea of what's available for you out there.

I have a wordpress blog also at the moment which took a few hours to figure out, but is very easy once you get the hang of it and there are a ton of free templates.

I'd recommend blogger first, just to get a taste of things.

Another thing...there's really no need to buy any of the e-books out there. Just search places like this, get your own ideas and go with them.

1 more thing. I think people can get too hung up on web design. Don't be afraid to outsource the setup and design of your page. I've wasted a lot of time trying to be a pro web designer on my on <-not even close...and that's what it was, a waste of time. Leave it to the professionals.

Incoherent ramblings...done
 
XSite Pro is Very Good

I use XSite Pro as well and greatly recommend it for website making on the home computer. Its greatest value is it has a built in CSS system that you can see visually as you create it and a form type insert for meta information. All this is well documented and there are templates you can import in to use with it.

They are coming out with an updated version shortly that anyone who has Xsite Pro, will be able to download it for free. I suggest checking it out. Good luck.

Leigh
Just a slight correction on the above. If you buy XSite Pro now at the current price you are promised the updated version which will be more expensive. I bought it some time ago and will have to repurchase the new version.
 
This is how I'm doing it

Hi everyone! My first post! I'm building my website very frugally, using a paid domain name (from GoDaddy), but free webhosting.

I paid for my domain name, because I found out that if you get a free domain name, it's very hard to transfer it to a paid domain if you choose to. Almost all of them will make you buy the name from them to transfer it, and depending on how well known your name has become, it may be quite costly.

I'm using free webspace from Google Pages and Freewebs. I mostly use Google Pages, but I'm building my backup site on Freewebs, and may be using them more.

Downside is that the bandwidth usage isn't high, and if you're going to be getting a lot of traffic, it's better to pay for a hosting space. Also, the sites go down for no reason whatsoever, and they'll even delete your webpages for no reason, so my best advice is BACKUP! BACKUP! BACKUP! I'm working on having a backup site with all my webpages on it just in case. That way, I can just redirect my domain and subdomains to that site, instead of having to build the whole site over again. It's not very time consuming to upload the same page to two, or even three, sites when you make it, and it's worth it to avoid downtime.

To avoid the bandwidth problem, you can spread your pages out over several free sites, and change the location of your main page from time to time by loading it to several sites, and redirecting from your domain. That way, no one site takes up too much bandwidth. I'm going to try to change my location about every week or so, depending on traffic. If I start getting a lot of traffic, I may need to do it more often.

Also, as to building your site, there is a great free sitebuilder called Kompozer that is owned by Google, and is a remake of the old Netscape Composer. It's really simple to use, and if you know a little html, even more functional. If you know css, it's even better! I know very little HTML and even less CSS, but I was able to create a template page easily, and just change the variable content.
 
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Marketing My Site

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your input regarding what software to use when building my site. Actually, I built my first site with Xsite Pro back in October and I still work on it. I like the program and I am looking forward to the new version. Right now I am concentrating on getting my site ranked by almighty Google and also re-designing my product pages.

In addition, since this is all new to me, I am taking a marketing course which is very interesting. I don't know if you have heard of James Martell, but he teaches an interactive Affiliate Bootcamp course which is great.

I am also on the look out for PAD articles. In case you don't know what PAD is, basically it means exchanging article posts with back links to your site. Google loves this and gets you ranked higher.

Any marketing tips that are low cost are always appreciated.

Leigh
 
Hello,
I am Olga new to this site, just starting my venture. Great Forum, lots of great info and I've only read 2 pages.
I hope it's legal to mention this here-there is great software Webeasy7--$49.95 for website design--very user friendly, no HTML or programming knowledge required. They have a website with a nice coupon, just google the name.

Also Linda in your post you mention this fact:
The other main issue which hosted solutions is that you don't own these sites you are just renting, so the landlord controls everything and you aren't building up equity. The marketing you do and traffic you send will be building up someone elses property value, not your own![/I]

1.What is the alternative to hosting? Does that mean buying vs renting the domain? Don't you always need a host?
2. Also anyone have any opinion on StartLogic for web hosting?
3. I noticed people mention, obtaining a domain name and hosting services from different places, if the web host like StartLogic and Yahoo gives a domain name with the hosting service why not just do that?

Thank you for the input
 
Hi Olga and welcome to our world! :p

You said: "I hope it's legal to mention this here-there is great software Webeasy7" We welcome helpful tips and resources so no problem at all. (People just can't promote anything they own because then it turns into a selling thing instead of an unbiased helpful tip kinda thing.)

1) Sorry I wasn't clear. Yes if you have a host then you own your own site.
When I said "hosted solution" that means just having a site on someone else's host like having a blogger blog or a Squidoo lens. It's like renting because you don't own the space. You can paint it and make it pretty but it's not your property you are improving, it's theirs... and they can kick you out. :eek:

2) Have heard the SL name but don't remember if it was good or bad.
ALWAYS, ALWAYS search WebHostingTalk.com for the host name and
also search there for host name downtime, host name review, host name support.
(Especially check for Y hosting. Last I heard it didn't sound like users were very happy.)

3) Lots of good hosts give a free domain these days. I think after you learn the game you may want to keep your domains at a separate registrar and not at your hosting company for a few reasons. Especially after you get a few sites, but for your 1st one it's no big deal. Just be SURE if the host has downtime and you need to switch you can take your domain with you. I think if they give you a domain sometimes you are locked in for a year or 2.

Knowing what I know today I'd never do it that way, not ever. But again for a 1st cheap and easy solution may not be too bad.
 
Thank you Linda

Thanks a lot Linda that is very helpful, I think I will go with GoDaddy for the domain and then a separate host.
 
freewebs i think, but there are lots of sites where you can sign up and make you own e commerce site. You better search for it. Blogspot too you can use it.
 
MI
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