Part 8 - Developing a Website. Choosing a Domain Name and Choosing a Website Hosting Service 

"Don't wait. The time will never be just right"

Napoleon Hill

For step by step instructions on how to sign up for a website hosting account, click here.

Wow. This is amazing. We've come all the way from why you need to develop your own business on the Internet, to developing ideas, researching those ideas, and creating a sellable product from those ideas. That may be an eBook, an audio product, a video product, or a compilation of all three. Now we're actually getting ready to build your website and get that product on the Internet to hopefully make money for you.

So, now that we're here, I have a question for you:

What's in a name?

Unless you've already chosen a name for your product, now is the time.

Your name should reflect the product or be catchy enough that people will remember it. On the net, titles like, "7 Keys to Effective Communication" is a good title.

If your title could include some of the words or phrases that people search for in that subject area it would increase your chances of being found - although those words might not make for a great title. You need to make your own determination with your title and find what works best for you customer, your product, and you.

Also try not to use a title that is the same as a website that already exists. For example: If you searched for "Audacity", the free audio recording and editing program, and entered the website address of www.audacity.com, you won't end up at the recording software download site.

Instead, you will end up at a janitorial site from Seattle. In fact, this site gets so many emails from people asking about where to download the free program that they have actually placed a notice at the top of their website. It states that they are not an audio software company, they are a janitorial company, and if you want to download the free program then here's the link to the actual site! I have emailed this company and they chose not to generate money from all that misdirected traffic they are getting.

Now that's actually quite funny, but just imagine how disastrous that would be for you if you picked a product title that had the same name as a website selling products similar to yours!

People would search for your product by typing www.yourproductname.com into their web browser and end up at your competitor's site. How ugly that would be!

You would essentially drive YOUR prospects to a competitor's site and that's just NOT good for business, or at least not for yours.

So, make sure when you're choosing a title for your product, type the possible title into the address bar of your web browser and add ".com", ".net", and ".org", each time and see if you get taken to a website.

For example, if the name of your info product is "Gardening", then type in www.gardening.com, or www.gardening.net etc. Also, try searching for portions of your title. For example: If your proposed title is "Fixing You Honda Civic's Engine", try searching for www.hondaengines.com, www.fixingengines.com, www.fixingyourhonda.com, www.civicengine.com, etc.

Once you've selected a title for your project, it's important to choose the right domain name that reflects your product. You may have already found a domain to use from the search you did above.

A domain name is the address that people would type into their web browsers to get to your site. "www.yourdomainname.com".

As a side note: If any of the domain extensions are taken for your name, such as www.yourproductname.net, or www.yourproduct.org etc, then move on to a different title. Remember, this is a business and you don't want to take chances on losing your customers to your competitor, just because you were careless in your domain name selection.

If you chose a product title like, "7 Keys of Effective Communicating" you may find that the actual name is too long for an effective domain name. Plus, do people type in the number "7" or the word "seven"?

However, you could register both versions of the name, one with the number "7" and one with the word "seven" and have one site be redirected to the other. Consider registering not only your chosen domain name and its popular variations, as mentioned, but also common misspellings.

You can register your domain names and, for a small fee, have them "redirect" your prospects to your main site.

Check on the cost for this with the domain registration company you use because 1and1 web hosting can give you a beginner hosting package for a few dollars US per month. You can use the space they give you to store files etc. for safe keeping, as well as redirect your prospects to your main site.

Keeping the domain name the same as the title can increase your chances of being found and listed with the search engines - as long as you've researched your title and found that enough people are actually searching for it.

It's you're call when choosing a domain name. Do you want it to be easier to type or easier to be found during a search? Or can you get away with both? People may not want to type www.TheFastestWayToCrossTheMountainsUsingADonkey.com, but they may prefer, and even search for, www.mountaincrossing.com.

Once you decide on your product title and your domain name, it's time to register your domain name so that you have exclusive use to it.

A cheap place to register your domain name is:

http://www.godaddy.com/ . Don't sign up for anything else except a domain name at GoDaddy.

EVEN CHEAPER...

I currently use 1and1 almost exclusively for all my website and domain name registrations. At the time of this writing, as long as you have a website hosting package with them your domain name registration, and yearly renewals, are free.

You can either register a domain name only or you can choose a hosting package from a number of different options. Depending on what package you choose determines how many domain names you get to register free.

1and1 give you a tremendous amount of website space and bandwidth for very little monthly payments and they are, at the time of writing, one of the biggest hosting companies in the world.

I have a number of sites hosted by them and I haven't hit a problem yet. One of my Canadian hosted sites costs me close to $60 a month for a minute fraction of the size and bandwidth I get with 1and1 . Plus each domain name I register in Canada is over $40 per year. Compare this to getting free domain name registration and free annual renewals with 1and1. To me, it just made good business sense to go 1and1.

So, choose your website host carefully. My recommendation is that you stick with larger web hosting companies because you don't want your hosting company crashing the day you launch your product.

Also, make sure the hosting company you choose accepts domain registrations from your country. You may go to a hosting company’s home page and love what they have to offer, but get rejected during the registration phase.

Larger companies, like 1and1, will have links to the various countries they serve. Check their home page. It’s not a big issue, because you will always be able to find a hosting company to register with – it’s just a step to avoid disappointment and wasted time.

TWO BASIC TYPES OF WEBSITE HOSTING:

There are basically two types of website hosting services you can choose from. The first, and most popular, is “Shared” hosting, because of its price.

Essentially, you can consider this as the “apartment” building – or ‘flats’ if you’re in the U.K. – type of hosting. Everyone has their own front door, their own dwelling space. They can decorate it however they please but they can’t do anything that jeopardizes the rest of the tenants.

For example, they can’t play their music as loud as they want. Plus, they can’t invite 100 guests over to their place for a party get-together.

Shared hosting means that you “share” a computer hard-drive with other people. However, your websites are secured and private. No one but you has access to them or to your space on that "hard drive". Large website hosting companies have banks and banks of very large “computers” – they’re actually managed hard-drives of tremendous storage capacity; so it’s easy to share space with other people.

The advantage of this type of hosting is that it is relatively cheap. Some companies, like 1and1, offer hosting from a few dollars a month.

The disadvantage to this, business-wise, is that you need to follow some rules so all the “tenants” – the other website owners – can get along in the same ‘building’.

One of these rules has to do with the way you market your product. It’s a very serious and extremely important rule that has major implications for you. In fact, if you don’t follow this rule you will probably get ejected from the company’s servers without warning and you’ll be out of business – at least temporarily while you try to locate another hosting company.

With the proliferation of Spam on the Internet, website hosting companies have been forced into protecting their clients. An extremely malicious Spammer will target an online company, and then spike them with an explosive burst of false visitors. This sudden spike overloads the system and it crashes; taking everyone down at the same time.

When you plan a marketing strategy, you may joint venture with some major players in the Internet business world. These players may have anywhere from 50,000 to 550,000 people on their email lists. That’s tremendous if you’re able to pull that off. But here’s what’s going to happen:

Usually, when you plan a promotion campaign that large, you build up to a date when you ‘open’ the doors of your site to accept sales or sign-ups. Your J.V. – joint venture – partners are busy getting people hyped up for the opening day.

Then, like people lining-up overnight at a department store selling one of those toys that they just have to get their hands on, (like the ‘Tickle Me Elmo’ doll craze), there are thousands of people waiting to check out your site.

Then, you turn the key and open the doors. That burst of people stomping over each other to be the first is fantastic for business!

However, what your website hosting company sees is totally different. They see a spike in visitor activity that could be a potential spamming threat to the other tenants in the building. They don’t know that it’s you bouncing up and down with glee at all the traffic and business you’re getting.

So, they shut you down – immediately and without warning.

You now have to frantically make other plans, and re-contact everyone on every email list that was used in the campaign and hope that they will return to your new site location.

This is not an issue when you start small and build business as you go . It only affects you when you do a mass marketing campaign. You need to select what is right for you and then make the necessary plans. Some website hosting companies may be okay with the spike if they know it’s coming. But, out of the companies I contacted, they all had major concerns with it.

YOUR OWN SERVER

To eliminate this problem and also to allow yourself more flexibility, you may choose to go with your own server. This is like having your own computer hosting your own website; only you’re still using a hosting company.

This would be like buying, or renting your own home. You can have as many people over as you like. You can also choose whether to do your own house maintenance or have someone else do it for you.

Some hosting companies offer you your own server but you have to maintain it. Unless you know some of the programming required to run a server, you may find this intimidating. I did.

However, some companies, like 1and1, offer you both services, maintained or ‘do it yourself’. The maintained – or ‘managed’ -servers usually don’t cost much more than the unmanaged ones.

The only disadvantage with getting your own server at the beginning is that it costs a lot more.

At this point, getting a good ‘shared’ hosting account usually starts around $10 per month. A ‘server’ hosting account will start around $100 per month.

Obviously, you need to look at your business goals and strategies.

Most business entrepreneurs begin with a shared account and move to their own server account once their business gets bigger.

Once you've chosen your website hosting company and registered your website domain name(s), it's time to think about an actual website.

But first, **** CONGRATULATIONS!  **** You've gotten further than most people – literally.

Many people fail at the product creation stage because it takes determination to see product creation through to its finale.

A writer learns fast that a successful book is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration! You need the special stick-to-it glue that glues your rear end to the computer chair. So again I say, CONGRATUALATIONS! You deserve a pat on the back.

When it comes to website design, here's my advice:

Keep it simple because the confused mind never buys.

The first thing you need to do is sit down and determine what your website goals and objectives are.

Your first goal should be to collect your visitor’s first name and email address by offering something free like a 7-part mini-course, a free report, or an eBook. Why? Because, even if your prospect doesn’t buy from you this time, you will have the opportunity to build a relationship with them over time through automated emails, a relationship that will develop into trust. Now you have the opportunity to market and sell to them over and over.

When you become trustworthy in their eyes, and you are offering them genuine value, there is a much higher chance that they will buy from you. And, not only buy from you once, if you treat them with respect, they will buy from you over and over.

Your second goal should be to make the sale.

Now, your goals may be different. You may be collecting stories for a blog, or patterns for a quilting book, or getting ideas for a video. You need to determine what your own goals are.

Just keep yourself to 1 or 2 website goals. Too many and your visitor will get confused and leave your site.

Whatever your goals are, collecting your visitor’s name and email address will help keep you in touch with your audience – or target market.

Micro-sites work best for niche markets. Micro-sites – or mini-sites as they’re sometimes called – are usually less than five website pages. These may include the thank you page, confirmation page, download page, a “squeeze” page, an affiliate information and sign-up page, and the sales page.

A “squeeze” page is simply a page where a person needs to enter their email address before they can continue. Not all sites have a squeeze page but may have a newsletter-type sign-up form on their sales page.

Sign-ups and automated emails are accomplished through the use of an autoresponder, which we'll talk about in another section.

Sales pages are typically long but don't have to be. They will be covered in great detail in another section.

If you're a good writer, go ahead and write your own sales page. One piece of advice however - make sure you do a good job of it. Check other sites selling information products and see which ones attract you to their product. You'll begin to get an idea of how a sales page looks and "feels".

Depending on the viability of your product, a well-written sales page could be the difference between making hundreds of dollars or hundreds of thousands.

Some marketers believe this step is so crucial you should outsource it to a professional. Others believe you should be doing it yourself since you are intimately connected with your product. You need to find what works for you.

THE ONE QUESTION VISITORS TO YOUR SITE ASK THEMSELVES.

When visitors come to your site, only two things are going through their mind, "leave or stay", which is why copywriting is everything. “Copy” meaning the text or "copy" that goes onto your sales page.

Great copywriting is expensive, but bad copywriting is even more expensive, so make sure you pay a lot of attention to this area.

There are some programs out there that will almost write your sales page for you from questions it asks you and information you give it. One program I have heard about that seems to work well and is easy to use is Brett McFall's “Burpies” sales letter creation program. You can check it out at: BurpiesByBrett .

I met Brett at the World Internet Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada and he left a very good impression on me. Brett is the co-founder of the World Internet Summit and is currently making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and has zero staff - just the way he likes it. Before he launched out solo onto the Internet, Brett was a professional copywriter for other companies. Now he uses his skills to attract an amazing number of visitors to his numerous sites—with many of those visitors becoming repeat customers.

Mega-Internet-guru, Armand Morin, is also a pioneer in direct marketing sales letters for the Internet. He is highly sought after and either owns or is a partner in several extremely successful companies. Building upon his success he created the in-demand Sales Letter Generator software to help you create sales letters that convert prospects into customers.

As mentioned previously, we will cover Sales Letter Creation in detail later in this book.

There are various ways to build a website.

The most difficult way is by learning the actual HTML code and building it laboriously  - one code entry at a time. Good luck, because your product will be out of date by the time you get your website built. This is the way I learned to build websites years ago. Thank goodness we've progressed from there.

The fastest way to develop a website is by using templates that your website host provider gives you. You can actually customize these templates right on the Internet through their control panel. The only disadvantage with these templates is that they are usually a fill-in-the-blanks type of website template and leave little room to customize or vary from the template.

Another easy way is by using a “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) website creation program like Microsoft FrontPage. FrontPage comes with some versions of Microsoft Office. But typically you have to buy it, and it’s not cheap.

I have built many websites with FrontPage. If you can use Microsoft Word - probably the most used word processor in the world - then you can quite easily use or learn to use FrontPage, as they are very similar.

The program I use almost exclusively is XsitePro, which is even easier to use than FrontPage. XSitePro was built from the ground up for people like you and I who are specifically in the Internet marketing business.

While you can easily build regular websites with XSitePro, the program really shines when it comes to developing marketing websites. It takes the guess-work out of things, and cuts many corners for you, while it does all the laborious work and remembering in the background. This leaves you free to get your site up and running quickly.

There’s another website design software program, called NVU, that is absolutely free. I have developed tutorial videos for it. You can download the bonus program for both the MAC and Windows from our Extra Bonuses page .

THE QUICK AND EASY WAY TO BUILD YOUR SITE THAT SELLS => These bonus tutorial videos will show you how easy it is to get your site up and running using the free NVU program. Click  here to go to your Extra Bonuses page and locate the videos.

Above all, remember to keep your website simple.

Although NVU is an awesome program, you will eventually want to move up to a program with professional features like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, GoLive, or XsitePro.

Click here to view the "7 Reasons Why You Should Use XSitePro Now!" video

Publishing Your Site to the Internet

If your website host provider has a website builder built into its control panel then all you have to do is tell it to publish your site and it will automatically put it live on the web.

If you created your website on your computer, you need to use what's called an FTP (or a File Transfer Protocol) program to connect your computer to your website hosting company's server (which you can consider to be their computer). You then transfer all the files you made on your computer - which is essentially your website - onto your web host company's server so your site becomes live on the Internet.

Programs like FrontPage and XsitePro already have ftp programs built right into them. All you have to do is tell the program to publish your site to the Internet. You already filled in the information about where your site is located and the password you need to get into it.

In XSitePro, I simply click on the “Publish” button. It asks if I’m sure. I say yes and my site is published, or updated, on the Internet.

Don't worry too much about what information you need to enable you to upload your site to the Internet. Your website hosting company will have emailed that to you when you signed up with them.

The technical side of actually building a website is beyond the scope of this product. Any program you buy, if it’s a worthwhile one, will have a manual and a down-to-earth tutorial. That being said, if you haven't already done so, you can view the bonus QuickVeiw videos I have prepared, on how to use NVU, and also XsitePro, to build your website.

One thing to remember: You're going to have more than one website. So, unless you decide to outsource this task, you’ll get lots of practice at building websites. Information product sites are very easy to build - you'll be amazed at how simple they are.

Your goal is to get one site running and making money, move on to develop another site, get it running and making money, then develop another and another and so on.

Each site, of course, represents one product or package of products sold as one unit, even if you're selling physical products.

Stay on one site long enough to become an "expert" in that area.

According to Rich Schefren, one of the major reasons a business fails is because the owner fails to stay around long enough to become the specialist, the expert, in that niche.

Consider a lawyer. Law is very general. To become a specialist, the expert, the lawyer tightens his focus into one niche area, such as criminal law, divorce law, corporate law etc.

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