Let’s Get Started!

You are probably wondering why I am taking the time to write so extensively about some pretty basic stuff that everyone should already know. Let me just say that the basics are the most important part of any business. If you don’t get the basics right, you don’t have a solid foundation. Without a solid foundation, your business will fail. You need to know where to start. To begin with, obviously you will need a website, but don’t jump the gun just yet. Since I am involved with digital products that is the model we are going to discuss and deal with.

The first thing to do is decide which niche you are going to be in. That is, what is the focus of your business going to be? Will it be Health and wellness? Survival? Pets? What is your passion? When you decide what you want to do, you then need to see if it is a profitable niche. Do some research and see if there are magazines available on the subject. The more magazines that are available the more profitable the niche can be. Also check on social media. Is this something people ask questions about on Facebook? What about Youtube? Are there an abundance of videos covering it? Check affiliate platforms like Clickbank, JVZoo and Warrior+. Are there products covering your subject? Are other internet marketers making products and money in that niche? They are? Great, it looks like you have found a niche that you can make profitable. Don’t let the competition chase you off, if there wasn’t competition in the niche, it would most likely not be very profitable. There are plenty of people for you to get your slice of the pie.

Now you are ready for your domain name. Find a domain registrar and search for a suitable domain name. Definitely try for a .com instead of the others like .org or .biz etc. What name should you get? Since the first site should be your blog, I would recommend getting your name for your domain. Look at the domain name for this blog. There are a couple of reasons to do this, first, you don’t want someone else to get your name and build a site around something unsavory, unethical, or illegal. As you gain notoriety, it could reflect poorly on you when someone searches for you on Google. Second, people are going to get to know you as you build your following and build your business. You will meet other marketers and in discussions you will give them your web address. I don’t know about you but I am likely not going to remember that Joseph Lewinsky told me to check out his site at crystalbottleseverydaybywzxy dot com. I can remember that I met Joseph Lewinsky. So it makes sense that josephlewinsky dot com would be a much better domain to get.

Next you need a web hosting company. This can get tricky as there are a lot of options out there. There are also a lot of platforms out there. By platforms I am referring to page and funnel builders.

Don’t be cheap with your hosting.

The first thing to know, even though you can get free hosting, don’t do it. They will fill your site with their ads and banners taking away your opportunities to monetize your site. Pay for your hosting you are, after all, building a business. Every business requires some investment. You also don’t want to go with a host that says unlimited domains but, you only have one cPanel for all of your sites. Each site you add gets put into a sub folder. What’s wrong with that? If one of your sites breaks, they could all break and you would basically be out of business until you got it fixed. Spend the money and get a good host, ask questions How many sites can I put up? Does each site have it’s own cPanel? What kind of customer support do you provide? There are a lot of hosting companies and each one has their own group of fans that will swear that they are the best. Do you due diligence and see what is the best fit for you. You also don’t have to buy the biggest package right away. After all, you are setting up a blog first and you don’t need to pay for the ability to have 100 sites if you only have one or two. You can upgrade your plan later.

Next you need to consider how you are going to build your site. No matter which option you choose, there will be a learning curve. Myself, I like to use WordPress for the platform. Most hosting companies have a simple one button installation process for WordPress. I can hear the arguments now. “But hackers target WordPress sites and they’ll mess up my site or steal my stuff.” Have you considered that the reason hackers target WordPress is because of the number of sites using it? You have a wide variety of themes for the appearance of your site. You can get plug ins that do just about anything you want. There are quality security plug ins as well. What is the most important thing about keeping a WordPress site secure? A good security plug in and stay on top of the updates. I use the free version of Wordfence for my security plug in. I get an email about blocked attempts to log in with incorrect usernames and passwords it tells me what IP addresses were blocked and what country they were in. I get an email whenever one of my plug ins or theme needs an update.

Now that you know that you can use WordPress, you need to decide on a page builder. Back when I first toyed with internet marketing, I spent a lot of time teaching myself to use Dreamweaver so I could build an HTML site to sell my eBook. If only I had thought of using WordPress. I like Optimize Press I have been using Optimize Press for about 3 or 4 years now. I use the smart theme and everything seems so easy. I still run into an issue here and there but, they have excellent customer support. The blog you are on right now is WordPress with the Optimize Press smart theme. it is affordable, great customer support and relatively easy to build your site. Keep your plug ins and themes updated and you shouldn’t have any problems. I can’t guarantee you won’t have problems but keeping everything updated goes a long way to reducing your sites vulnerability. You can check out Optimize Press here.

Again, yes this is basic stuff but, my passion is to help new marketers avoid the pitfalls and stumbling blocks we have all seemed to run into. Besides, I know that there are experienced marketers that have cut corners on their own foundations and if this post helps just one person to be able to start making progress then, all of the effort that went into this post is worth it. It is time to live life on your terms.

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