Back in lesson 23 I talked about why you need to have your own website.
Since then, we’ve covered several of the prerequisites for having a website (getting a domain, hosting, etc). Today we’re going to talk about your options for building a website, and then we’re going to make it a reality.
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
IMPORTANT: I did not mention this in the video, because it sort of goes without saying. But I think I may need to offer this reminder:
A website does not constitute a business. It is an essential component of your business, but it is not a business by itself.
So please keep that in mind throughout the next several lessons as we focus on building your website.
– Getting your website online is a milestone
– You can start marketing it before the product is done
1) Build it from scratch (using a web language like HTML)
Do you need to know HTML to be an internet marketer? No, but it can be very helpful.
2) Use a web authoring program (ex. An HTML editor such as FrontPage)
WYSIWYG = What You See is What You Get (ex. NVU)
3) Use a template or site builder (ex. HostGator’s site builder)
Template = shortcut
My favorite site builder for non-techies: XSitePro
4) Use a script or CMS (ex. WordPress)
Great website script for internet marketers: Butterfly Marketing
Forums: phpBB, Vbulletin, etc.
WordPress: my favorite free publishing application
5) Outsource it (pay someone else to do it for you)
Action step:
1) Choose a method that you will use to build your website
Think about all these options, do some research if you need to, and choose ONE to start with. We’ll start building your website in the next lesson.
By the way, if you DO have a website already… be sure comment and let us know what worked or didn’t work well for you!
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂
Have a great day!
I have a site but what worked better for me was to buy a template. I first tried Vistaprint which was great since I was such a newbee on making site and the net and business in general! They had everything ready and I could do few clicks and I had my site ready and very cheap. The problem was that it was very limited in fonts and space and other things. For my type of products, I needed a much better looking site. So I bought a template that totally got me attracted. But as I was a total new bee, I went through a very hard time building it. By the way, hostgator was cool but for me they did not answer the phone and I needed help and did not have your lessons then and could not get through the building in the time needed. I guess they were so busy. So I went to Justhost which was a utter complete painful disaster. Then I went to Bluehost which was a breeze in many aspects! I finally got my site together with the help – that time! – of a net frick! and I finally could get a more pro looking site! This is not ready since I need more legal docs and probably more stuff too. And I need to test my price. But the market is sometimes much more expensive than on my site, so it should be fine. I will survey though soon.
I am trying to consolidate to save time and energy; my question- which is better: Obtain a website and host a blog on it; obtain a blog and devote a page to the information originally on the website, or retain both, individually?
You’ve already answered my second question as to which hosting site would be the best one. I will check out your suggestion.
Thanks
Mrs. D. Barron
Hey Eric,
As always I enjoyed this lesson! I am really getting interested/excited because you are finally making it into so of the lessons that I am really interested in and believe will go along ways to answering some of my questions as well as some of my readers questions!Thanks for such a great site and wealth of info and I’ll see you menyana!
Al The Best,
Jason
http://www.affiliatextreme.info
Hello Mrs. D.,
That would depend on whether or not you want the blog to be the main thrust of your business. In the case of EricTips.com, the blog is why people come to the site. You could follow a similar strategy. However, if your online business is in selling merchandise, a regular website, with storefront pages would be more fitting.
Hi, Eric. I’ve downloaded your eBook on webhosting reseller and I think it’s the best reseller guide ever!
I also want to continue with the lessons that are sent to my email from your website. But since my internet connection speed is low, I cannot watch the videos. I wonder if you have them in text. Please let me know.
Thanx
Thanks!
For now you can read the main points below each video. When I am done creating the lesson series I am planning on releasing it with the full transcripts.
Hi Eric,
I have had my own site with another provider for about 6 months and came across your courses by sheer luck. I was looking for legal documents.
My site was built to be a “front” for a landing page & I now realize that I have made many mistakes to learn from.
The Hostgator set up looks like it has a far lower learning curve and is more flexible than the one I am using.
I would like to share some of the pluses & minuses;
Plus:
One of the best things needed, as you have remarked, is service & support. My current provider seems pretty good at this using chat, phone & email. I had a major problem at the start and it was fixed with one hour of contacting them. In fact, the product itself is not what I would call state of the art and is more unwieldy than the ones you are showing. The support is the only thing that is making me undecided about changing.
Minus:
I had the site set up for me as a review site with an IM course about 8 months ago. It was difficult to change & add things. E.g. to edit text I had to learn to edit the php and use File Manger. This led to many time consuming mistakes (typos, positioning etc.)
There was a website set up tool CM4all which was fairly easy but rigid. There are templates, but not as many as Hostgator.
The pages using the website tool were difficult to manage if you wanted to add code in. The naming of the pages as very complex numbers rather than names for example.
Additionally, something people should look out for is the “added value” charges in some packages. To get features & manage websites always seems to be an extra cost. I.e. more websites, limits to the number of pages etc. With the charging you have to know how to structure to avoid being stung every time you need to make a change.
Thank you for your material it’s great.
Question: My new host can’t upload Frontpage because my version is too old. I have a working copy of my multiple page site in a document file. Is some program where I can load the file have it uploaded to my host, so I can make changes when necessary and create additional pages?
Hi Eric
Today’s lesson #27 was very interesting one.I’m looking forward to next one.
Regards Buren
I would recommend asking your host’s support department. I would think there is a way to do it.
Actually I think you can export the HTML files from Frontpage to your hard drive. Then you can just upload them via FTP to your web host.
Then I would recommend using a new system to manage your site, whether it be a CMS like WordPress, or a new site builder such as XSitePro.
I used google sites. It has been great so far. So many applications are integrated, Analytics and Webmaster, to help me in making the site stronger for crawling (I admit I need to work on that more)and analyzing traffic patterns. There have been a couple hangups with adding html codes, but overall the ease of use has been suprising.
you are so great of giving your best to help us to be a successful internet marketer….
this is second time that i reply your lesson in eric’s tips, i might have a lot of messages soon….
thanks & regards,
louie lopez
Your timing couldn’t be any better! I am waiting for the webmaster that I hired to turn the website over to me this week and he is using CMS. He will also be giving me a CD to show me how to make changes to my website and with the lessons you are currently giving us will help me understand the concept more fully! I am ecstatic that I found your website and please keep up the good work.
A very nice lesson on website building and looking forward to more, but I can’t help wondering why you’re recommending Xsite Pro when you were promoting Site Bot Pro, not long ago.
XsitePro is more of a web authoring software with a ton of flexibility to build many different types of sites.
Site Profit Bot is more of a pushbutton site builder, which is great for FAST websites in a pinch, particularly for monetizing unused domains. But you would not use it for building, let’s say, a sales site.
hi what would you recommend for a membership website drupal or wordpress?
between those two options I would go with WordPress and I would use either a WP membership plugin like this one:
WordPress Wishlist
Or I would use Amember: http://www.ericstips.com/amember/ For example this membership site is WordPress and I protect it with Amember: http://dailyma.com
I talk about membership sites in lesson #32:
Hello, super course, I really am learning at last with your easy to follow lessons, thanks a million,best regards Nuala
Dear Eric
Hi
Thank you so much for your beneficial lessons. Dear Eric I would like build website for online business. This lesson said ways build website but you didn’t say how can build , I need to a lesson that educate how build step to step a website.
Dr Narges Delafrooz
Thanks Eric… very interesting lesson, although I already know html.
All the best,
Arne
The upcoming lessons will show you how 🙂
Good morning Mr Eric, i m frm Malaysia, i m a newbie in all this, thank you so much for all your tutorial videos, it’s so helpful, i have purchase the Xsitepro thru your link u recommanded , it is such a great and easy to use website buiding software, i recommanded to my friends which is also newbies like me, and they also agreed that XsitePro is a great website building program.
i would like to ask for some advcie pls, if i want to build a monthly subsccription membership website, can i build my website using X-sitepro, and plug in the butterfly marketing script or should i buy the A-memberpro and plug in the a-memberpro script to my XsitePro build website ?
Thank You.
Thank You so much for the great lessons, i would like to enquire please, i have purchase the Xsitepro thru your link, and it is a great website building software,
can i use Xsitepro to build my membership website and install in the butterfly marketing script or should i purchase the Amember and install in the script ?
Thank You for any advice.
Amember would be more compatible with XsitePro, because you can use Amember to protect any pages or directories that you create with XsitePro.
I have to tell you that I am on my third website since september of 2009. It is supplied with smc products. The problem is I havent made many sales. I can count them on one hand. I gues my problem is advertising to get a list. I have whent with AWeber but not sure how that will work. I cant do much on a shoe string budget. Just wanted to let you know
Wilbur
Hi Eric,
Another good lesson today, thank you very much. My blogs are at Blogger.com and they’re usually cluttered with ads just like what you kept mentioning during the lessons, very newbie. My other website was outsourced from PIPS. I really want a professional looking website which I built myself that’s why I have to learn hard from your tips. Thank you very much for being a good teacher, you are so kind. I really want to succeed, God willing.
Presentacion
What you said about xsitepro is 100% that and wordpress will pretty much cover most people! The site in the link above is an XsitePro and I believe they will shortly be bringing out an even better version soon!
Thanks, Eric ! Great job !
I have been learning internet marketing but so far have stumbled into so many difficulties, things that I don’t understand and have nobody to ask, especially about how to build websites, etc. I am very grateful to you for the free lessons, otherwise I have to pay thousands of dollars. I will keep on learning.
I am a retired translator/editor, 62 yrs. old woman. Hope someday I will able to do my online business with your valuable help.
Lots of thanks, Eric !
I actually have a WYSIWYG editor. CLICK HERE. It is free. As a newbie,I don’t know how it compares to other editors, but, I learned a lot from it. I can do everything from my desktop and upload it straight to my site, its cool! I believe you can do a lot more than what you learn in the video training that comes with it, but, I’m still playing with it…It has options for templates or new empty web pages. My only problem is, I haven’t decided what I want my site to look like!!!
Not fair, that doesn’t work! lol Oh well, try this… http://nowwork.freese.hop.clickbank.net/
I tried to hide my affiliate link with CLICK HERE(I tried to do this in “WORD” and then copy and paste). It didn’t work. I’ll use tinyurl next time! the WYSIWYG is free, I only make money if you buy something.
Hi Eric:
First off, thank you sooooo much for these well organized, concise, relevant (and other positive adjectives) lessons.
Second, Yes, I do have a website that I worked at a few years ago. It’s http://www.russianbridefacts.com. It’s a WordPress blog. I’ve kept the domain and hosting active though I no longer post because after many hundreds of hours of posting,I made no bucks. You know, no clickee no buckee. And after watching your lessons I finally figured out why it failed.
I was posting according to what I felt was important for readers to know rather than posting according to what readers wanted to know about. A simple bonehead analysis of search terms used to find my blog revealed the customer’s desires. Lesson learned – – Don’t give them what you want; give them what they want. They are the masters of their needs. I am the servant to fulfill those needs.
Amazingly enough, I still get some “micro” traffic and an occaisional “click” on this blog after not posting for 2 years. I went away, but the customers did’nt. I’m exploring various ways to re-activate this blog and see if it has value to my wallet as well as to my heart.
Thanks again Eric. You’re the first IM who’s had the veracity to provide real-world value with a connection to scripture in the same message.
I offer back to you Mark 11:22-26 (KJV)- – that all your missions achieve success according to your belief.
Gary.
Cool, and you are right… it’s important to give people whhat they WANT. This is especially important if you’re selling a product. Selling them what they want is even more important than selling them what they need. But if you can match the two (Want and need) then you’ll have a long-term product that truly benefits people.
YOUR LESSON HAS MADE ME DIFFERENT AND CHANGE MY FOCUS TO INTERNET MARKETING GOD BLESS YOU
NABI
Thanks so much for the info. I used NVU to build my web site but I’m having trouble doing a FTP to the web hosting site. I’m getting a http://403 error. The hosting site has frontpage extensions (ex: _vti_cnt). I’m a beginner at this. I tried moving the html files and replacing with the new files with addition of new html (built a totally new site). I know is not a forum for problem but I thought I would try. Anyway thank you for the various videos. The videos are very helpful.
Hi Eric,
This course is amazing… and free! I have been building a website using cpanel’s sitebuilder and the templates that came with it. It is quite a lot of work, but it is coming along. I log into cpanel and I do all my work while logged in.
My question: Is there a way to save what I have done so far and download it onto a usb drive so that I can work on my site offline? Then upload it the next time I log on? Will that be covered in the lessons?
Thank you so much!
Thanks! To answer your question,- no, not exactly.
Since the site builder is a web-based application, you can not work on it offline.
You CAN download a copy of your site using FTP to download it to your hard drive or USB drive. (See lesson #29, but reverse the process) I do recommend doing this as a backup in any account.
You could then edit your pages using an HTML editor, but then when you re-upload them to overwrite the old ones, it may no longer be compatible with the site-builder.
Thanks Eric for your pro-education.
I am told there are several ways to copy and paste links into websites,I have only one system.Are there better methods?
It really just depends on how you’ve built your website. If you’ve coded it from scratch with HTML, then there’s one main way, and that is to use the standard hyperlink tags, which I’ll show you in the next lesson. If you’re using a web authoring software, then you may be able to simply paste the link directly into your page. Likewise if you’re using a CMS such as WordPress, you may be able to simply paste the link into your page/post.
Great info you are giving!
What about all these gurus with the premade websites for sale? For example, right now there is one called WordPress websites for dumb-dumbs.
It is cheap enough but are these kinds of offers worth anything.
Hi Richard,
Premade websites can be a great option for those of us who aren’t master web designers yet.
But, not all of them are quality.
Here’s one option you might want to look at:
http://www.ericstips.com/instantwebsite/
Hello,
just wanted to say, my experience with the phone service at Hostgator was pretty good. And I called them from Italy (Having a flatrate otherwise it would be to expensive:-)
They were all very polite and tried their best to help me even with the most stupid questions.
Given that Bluehost is among the hosting companies recommended by many IM´s you have probably made a good choice but I can certainly recommend Hostgator.
Best wishes
Wolfgang
Thanks for message, I donot have a website yet and I want to know how build my own and how to host it on the internet please.Read from you soon sir.
whats best website builder?
I cover some website building software in lesson #30 and #31. As far as what’s best, it depends on your needs, and whether you want to do a lot of customization. One of the programs that I recommend is XSite Pro
Eric,
I am trying so hard to finish setting up my website. I am working on a site created from Website Tonight. I am not sure if this is a good service or not since it is my first time. So far its going well but I am still trying to get all my affiliate products uploaded. I wanted to change my domain name(bestnhealth.com) so I could get more variation in products, what do you think?
That is actually a great domain name! Many of the best health related domain names are already owned by others. It looks like you found a great name that wasn’t already taken.
Eric,
Great tips. Great videos! Great everything. Hey, is there anything you don’t do great? Speaking of greatness, I also know what makes a good blog great…
http://www.what-makes-a-good-blog-great.blogspot.com
Hi, what is this security loop? I installed one blog using Fantastico and didn’t come across this. I did find when I changed the theme the columns didn’t display on all pages. I don’t know how to cloak words without a software plugin to do it. I don’t know lots of other things too.
Eric,
It must have taken quite a long time to acquire all this knowledge. I am very grateful for the tips. Another great lesson. Thank you so much.
I have been using Net Objects Fusion 9 for some years now. It’s not cheap but it does everything (there are new versions of it now). It is a drag and drop program and I never see the code, but it is easy to add code for something like a banner etc. These websites were made with it http://www.bigticketguy.com http://www.pelicantheatre.org.au http://www.warbirdnut.com.au (not finished). I use only a fraction of what the program can do. Well worth the cost. Jeff Cox