Overview (based on an interview with Jake Solochek, webmaster@mybizlounge.com)

1. You need products.

2. You need a domain name, a name for your web site.

3. You need a practice or draft web page.

4. You need a web host and a "monetized" web site

5. You need to boost the RANK of your web site.

6. You need to maintain your web site.

7. You need to drive visitors to your web site.

This program will help you start and maintain a web site that pays for itself.

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1. You need products. (Preferably DIGITAL products).

a) If you are a teacher, you can make a DVD and get it registered with a distribution company. You want your product to carry a bar code, so www.filmbaby.net is a good place to start. I have my products registered there. If you search on www.filmbaby.net/films/1389, you'll see my DVD about Skype (a free piece of computer-to-computer communication software)

b) If you are a musician or signer, create a CD. www.CDbaby.com is a useful distribution company.

c) Can you write? If so, why not create an ebook.

d) If you prefer a physical book, work with a company that makes "just in time" on-demand printing. Call Santiago at www.factoryprinting.com in Miami. He handles plenty of clients. 786 797 1611, santiago@factoryprinting.com.

e) Can you take photos? Short videos? Post them at www.photobucket.com and you can send the link to customers who pay for your digital product.

2. You need a domain name, a name for your web site.

There are dozens of companies that will register a domain name for you. I use www.godaddy.com. For now, set up "forwarding" to your practice web site. You'll need the address, so make it simple. Type in "http://www.geocities.com/youryahooID" (where "youryahooID" is your Yahoo ID. For example, "roadlovers" is my yahoo ID for www.roadlovers.com, so www.geocities.com/roadlovers is the location of my draft web site. This site is used by your host peson or the

3. You need a practice or draft web page.

We discuss this above. The instructions for geocities.com is for www.geocities.com/countries2001/instruction. The Geocities.com web site has its own ads and you can't get the full benefit of a "money-earning" web site when you use a geocities site. You need a stand-alone site that is hosted for direct access. Your draft Geocities site is on a "sub" level. Search engines can miss the words on your site, so the "stand alone" site (that you host will set up for you) will have the potential for a higher profile than your practice geocities site.

Question: do i haveto learn how to use Geocities?

Answer: No. But it is nice to have a little flexibility. You can have a link from your Stand Alone site to your Geocities site and (without bothering your host) you can make some changes. For example, the structure of Roadlovers.com is "come read articles about countries around the world." Where do we put "tips for travel"? Well, the tips that are specific to a location or a region can go in those

4. You need a web host and a "monetized" web site

The geocities.com is a guide for your host. Your host can see where you want the columns, where you want photos, and where you hope to put articles. Youcan compare my web site www.roadlovers.com with the draft that I prepared www.geocities.com/roadlovers. Oops, yo might say. "Steve, the geocities version has larger letters and there are some different positions for some of those categories."

Reply: Yes. Because the software that receives articles is a bit complicated, my web guy (Jacob) told me that the width of the columns had to be constrained. It's a little hard for me to read, because I have older eyes, but I am willing to live with that because "I have a monetized web site!"

Monetizing a site means making the clicks pay money. Clicks can pay if you have signed up with adsense.google.com and obtained a pub number. You have to register a social security number or tax ID to get this pub number. Your host will embed that code where you need it to have ads appear on your web site that are related to the content of your site. For example, my travel web site has ads for hotels, car rentals, air travel, reservation companies, tourism bureaus, clothes and other articles for travel. Say it again: I want my site to be MONETIZED. The next click is going to be "pay for clicks" (you might get 3 cnets or 10 cents just for the pass thorugh) or "pay for action" (where you get more if the visitor actually buys something on another site, such as visiting an Amazon site).

Tip: Put a google search bar on the top of every page of your new web site. Why? If the search bar is monetized, then every search done on your page will result in a little money coming your way.

You can earn money

a) when people visit your web site and click on an ad. (This is called adsense, and you get a "Pub" number by going to adsense.google.com)

b) when visitors click and buy your products

c) when you set up "affiliate marketing" relationships. You write the following email message to the web person at another web site: "Your products are related to my web site's subject. I'd like to set up an affiliate link." Sometimes the other company agrees and then you place their web name on your web site. Clicks to the link earn you a percentage of the sale.

5. You need to boost the RANK of your web site. You can do this by:

a) getting your web site address planted on a lot of other web sites. You could be selling a workbook for students. I sell educational CDs and DVDs on my web site www.CDsforParents.com. You could write to me and suggest that we both post each other's web links. This exchange of links builds traffic and builds points with search engines like Google. This request for one-on-one linking can take a long time!

b) setting up affiliate links

c) submitting a lot of articles. You can put your web site address at the end of each article. You can submit your articles to sites that seek articles. You can do this submitting MANUALLY or with a "robot" or "bot" -- and my host (Jacob Solochek) also sells a useful program to submit articles (I've used it and it routinely put the article on 221 article sites). You can contact him for rates about hosting charges and how much the "bot" costs.

d) look for people in social networks who might visit your site. Set up an account in MySpace.com and arrange a link back to your web site. Send requests to other myspace account inviting them to be your "friend." This process can be automated with a "bot" (such as one created by Jacob, my webmaster and host of my web site). His Myspace Bot can send requests to up to 40 friends each day (under curent myspace rules).

6. Making money

Don't sit back after your web site it up. You have daily and weekly "to dos" -- and you should keep a running check list of what you plan to do each day.

a) If you hired Jacob to set up your web site, then you have an article submission site -- and you need to approve new articles and authors promptly.

b) Reply to your myspace "friends" and friend requests.

c) Develop new products

d) Submit more articles (to our site and to article submission sites).

e) Ask other sites to list your web site as a link.

f) Ask friends to visit.

g) Post a video on youtube.com and put your web address on the description. You might need to put a space or write roadlovers dot com to get around the restriction about posting a web site. In your REPLIES to anyone who writes to you, you can mention your web site.

h) Set your product on an ebay auction for 10 days and be sure to put a link to your web page. You will want to increase links to other sites to increase your site's rank. (See tip number 7 and ?LiveCustomer.com?).

Some people believe your web site should be connected to highly ranked sites. Some sellers of article-submission software claim that articles should be submitted only to highly ranked sites. Google uses a term called "page rank." Any site with a rank over Page Rank 4 (the maximum I've seen is 6) gets greater attention than most sites. To view an Internet marketing rank of a site, use www.golexa.com or www.alexa.com.

7. You need to drive visitors to your web site.

You can pay for some of the visitors by advertising a ?text-link-ad? on a web site that has a higher page rank than you have. You can check the page rank by going to www.alexa.com or you can go to www.LiveCustomer.com and find web pages that are renting their space for a month at a time to help pull you up the ranking ladder.

A final word of encouragement: You are creating a new business. This is not just a bunch of emails, sent out, with the hope that you will get some sales. Internet marketing is constant and on-going. It's an opportunity for you to show your tenacity and persistence. Submit articles to other web sites (using an article robot or "bot"), visit myspace and find a few more friends (and write to some of them, too). Then add more articles to your site. Build energy and go onto blogs and chat rooms. Post a video at least once a month on Youtube or other sites that accept videos. Constant marketing!

By Steve McCrea

www.Roadlovers.com

www.BibleSATWords.com

www.FreeEnglishLessons.com

List of resources

http://www.yahoo.com for the yahoo ID (needed for geocities)

http://www.geocities.com for the draft web site

http://www.godaddy.com for the web address (domain name) of your site

Write to my web master, Jake Solocheck at webmaster@mybizlounge.com for a hosting company, and source of software

-- He created a robot called Buddy Promoter (by Jake Solochek)

-- article submitter Articlepostrobot.com and "RobotPoster" (by Jake Solochek)

-- the structure of your web site. See http://www.roadlovers.com to get the idea of the structure for an article submission page that Jacob can set up for you. Your web site can be updated daily just by submitting an article to your own web site.

http://www.myscape.com for lots of "new friends"

http://www.golexa.com, http://www.alexa.com Learn about page rank

http://www.adsense.google.com for monetizing the web site.

http://video.google.com

www.youtube.com and http://www.photobucket.com for uploading videos

http://www.sxc.hu

http://www.LiveCustomer.com