How
To Build And Promote A Website With
Little or No Money
You
can afford the domain name and the
hosting for a year....now what?
One of the easiest things to do
is to start a blog. You can get
free Wordpress templates and the
Wordpress program itself is also
free. Heck, even the plug-ins that
you will need for promoting your
sites are free. You will find plug-in
that automatically build a site
map for you...crucial when you want
search engines to find and index
your site. There are plug-in that
will automatically ping any number
of RSS services the minute you post
something on your site. There is
also a plug-in that will put all
the icons from numerous Feed Readers
on your site, thereby making it
easier for people to add you to
MyYahoo, MyMSN, Google News Reader
and dozens of others.
The
most important plug-in is the Adsense
one. This is the one that helps
you make money with your site. When
I start a blog my initial cost is
$25 for domain name and hosting.
Once
you have your site up and it has
matured a bit it's time to start
submitting it to sites that carry
RSS feeds. Although done by hand
it doesn't have to be a tedious
job. I simply did one or two a day
while I was building content for
my site. At the same time you should
also be submitting your site to
different search engines. Make it
as accurate and detailed as possible
so that the search engines have
a good understanding of what your
site is about.
When
I set up a domain name and hosting
for a blog, I post to it at least
once a day. Within a month I should
have 30 some odd quality pages.
Once I start the promotion I usually
start to see some Adsense money
coming in. Once I have covered my
cost of domain and hosting, I then
start using any extra money to set
up Google Adwords. This is where
you give them money and they display
your ads on websites around the
world. When someone clicks on your
ad, you pay them a set price and
hopefully if you have a really informative
site you have a visitor for life.
One
of the most underused free products
out there is Google Analytics. In
the published tools section of Google
Adsense you can click through and
set up their analytics. This gives
you a wealth of information of what
people are looking for at your site,
where they are coming from, the
pages they are viewing and the pages
they are exiting from. This allows
you to tailor your site more to
what your visitor wants to see.
It's an invaluable free tool.
Sounds
like you are just about done. Think
again. Posting once a day is easy
and not time consuming, but now
it's time to start building links
to your site. This means you need
to approach other webmasters and
try to get them to link to you.
Make sure they have a Page Rank.
This will help Google to find you
and gives you credibility in their
eyes.
Another
great way to build links to your
site is to write articles. Make
sure they are on topic for what
your site is about and then distribute
them to the dozens of ezine article
sites. You will also include at
the bottom of your article, information
about yourself, information about
your website and the most important
thing, you will put in your full
domain name. When someone uses your
article on their site you have an
instant link.
To
keep your site fresh with what is
happening in the world; subscribe
to Google and Yahoo keyword alerts.
Everything there is a news story
on your topic they will email you.
You can them immediately read it
and decide if it's something you
want on your site. Will it give
your visitor valuable information?
Value = return visitors. They will
come to trust your site.
Last
but not least you need a newsletter
on your site. Used prudently this
will bring you return visitors every
time you send it out. I currently
send out my newsletter for Alternative
Medicine ( http://www.alternativemedicinenew.org
) once a week. Some I know send
out twice a week, but I would not
do it more often than twice a week.
Your readers can only take hearing
from you so often before they decide
they do not have the time to read
your newsletter and then unsubscribe.
So
you are thinking a newsletter is
easy to do but where do I get subscribers
from. This is the point where you
scour the internet for free things.
Ebooks, free programs that are helpful,
articles...etc. Offer them on your
site to people who subscribe. You
then need a reliable service to
send your newsletter. I use Aweber.
Not only do they send the newsletter
for me but they build the code for
me to insert into my blog. People
sign up, Aweber handles putting
them into your folder and then sends
you a notification. Now this one
will cost you money. It's $20 a
month but it can be well worth it.
In the beginning you can set up
a group mail in your Hotmail account
and if you can do web design you
can create and send the newsletter
this way for awhile. Aweber has
pre-done newsletter templates, making
the whole process much easier. They
also handle the double opt-in that
is required so that you do not get
accused of spamming people.
When
you have enough money saved through
profit do a press release. This
sends your site out to hundreds
of media sites, newspapers, magazines
and if you're lucky someone will
pick up your press release and go
with it. In time it will pay for
itself with new visitors and clicks
on your Adsense.
You're
almost finished. The one last suggestion
I have for you is to get a Feed
Reader and subscribe to as many
feeds on search engine optimization
and what new in search engines.
This free information will prove
to be a pot of gold for you.
About the Author
Jean
Sutherland is an author and writer
with works published online and
in print. She has worked online
for over 10 years and currently
runs over 20 blogs. Her main website
can been found at http://www.thecompanynewsletter.com
