Building your website
So how do you start a website? Well you’ll need to do a couple of things, A domain name, a hosting provider, a content management system and a design.
Picking a Domain Name
This is getting increasingly difficult. It’s extremely hard to pick up decent domain names these days, basically they are all gone. You have to be extremely creative to get a good one, it is possible. Just use your imagination. Most dot com domains will set you back about $10 per year, you can check the availablity of them by going to Godaddy or similar domain registrar company.
If you can create a domain that’s memorable all the better. It certainly helps if it’s something that will stick in peoples minds and is brandable. I would also recommend going for a dot com domain, or if your site is for your locality then use your countries domain name. Apparently Google is starting to rank these higher for local searches.
Finding a hosting provider
There are absolutely thousands of hosting providers out there, its a difficult choice. To confuse things further there are various types of hosting plans usually offered. You can get shared hosting, dedicated hosted (managed or unmanaged), and colocation, which is basically providing your own server.
If like me and you can do some of the management yourself the you can get an unmanaged dedicated server, though you will usually need some system administration skills or long hair, unix beard and death metal t-shirt. If you have these skills though it’s worth asking whether you have root access to the server. Not all hosts allow it.
For many users starting out with their first online venture I would recommend a low-cost shared hosting plan, which allows you to perform most task from a simple web-host control panel. One such hosting company that offer this is DreamHost. This also has the advantage of offering one click software installs, for non-techies this is a godsend. An added bonus is the free domain name with your account.
Choosing a Content Management System
Web technology has progressed by leaps and bounds in the past 5 years. Most people who create websites no longer have the laborious task of putting these together in Dreamweaver or similar. That’s soooo web 1.0. Nowadays people use some for of CMS to build there site and manage their content.
There are tons of Content Management System’s out there. Some are simple and quick to use, others have tons of options but require quite a learning curve to really get to grips with and start using them effectively.
For my upcoming project I will be using Wordpress, in fact this site is built on Wordpress and in all honestly I have tried quite a few others and nothing comes close for it’s simplicity. It doesn’t have all the features of some cms but it’s not bloated with things you won’t need either. Of course, wordpress is primarily designed to run blogs, but there are a lot of people that use it in other ways, and have a static front page instead of the lastest posts displayed.
If like me you are planning to use Wordpress, you’ll find it in incredibly easy to install, for the totally non-techie though you can you DreamHosts one click installs if you choose them as your hosting company.
Creating a website design
There are tons of tools out there to create website, my personal favourite is still actually dreamweaver and fireworks to mock up graphics. Both are pretty easy to learn even for non-techies. However, in all honesty these tools have been gathering dust of late.
The reason being, I tend to get my designs online. Not only is this a huge timesaver, most of the designs out there are far better than I could knock together myself. If you are going to use Wordpress then you’ll be pleased to find there are tons of templates out there completely free.
For tons of free ones then check out this site. However if you’d like something a little more professional then your best option would be Template Monster. It all depends how slick you want to be. I’m not sure where I’m going to pick up my design from yet, though I have found a really nice free one on another site which caught my eye. The choice is of course yours for your own site.
Dreaming of escaping the rat race
Lately work has been kicking my ass. I don’t know if it’s my annoying male colleagues who have more strops than a pregnant diva; or the mundane work; or it could be just travelling to the middle of nowhere every day. But it’s getting pretty soul destroying.
To be honest I have just had enough. The thing is it’s a difficult decision to quit your job… you see this job is very well paid. And I mean extremely well paid! Plus there are tons of benefits. To complicate things I have shares in this company. The catch is however that these are retractable shares. If I leave before 2 years then I lose all the shares. Also the company division profit directly affects my ability to ‘earn out’ on these shares. It was all part of the deal when our parent company bought us nearly 1 year ago. (I was a 25% shareholder)
As it is, I am stuck in all honesty. I have to give 6 months notice if I wish to leave the company, as do they. I am trying to weigh up the pros and cons but honestly, unless I substantially increase my online income it’s just not realistic. I know I can do it, after all I have done it before, but this was with adult affiliate programs. However I gave this up for various reasons.
Still I can’t help but dream….
It’s going to happen sooner or later.. it’s just when. I guess this young jedi needs patience! Good things come to those that wait, or so they say. Till then I will continue with not having a live outside of work because of the hours and this dreadful weather in middle England!
Anyway, I will continue building my websites and prepare for the day when I can buy a bachelor pad by the beach….
Writing your website articles
I’ve selected by niche, and done by keyword research so now I need to start writing. Not something that I’m particularily good at in all honestly. I always avoided doing written work when I was at college. I can produce technical diagrams, requirements documents and write software code with ease. But creative writing… it’s not that easy, for me at least.
So how to I overcome this for me new site? And this site for that matter.. Well, it always helps if I break things down at least twice. So here’s what I have done. I took the niche and keywords and broke it down into various headings which focused on my subject. These had to make sense as far as the logical flow of my website. I then further broke them down into various subject headings.
Under those subject headings I scoured the internet for source material to help me research the subject and then begin writing. Simple huh?
Well fortunately for me, with this document in hand and all the source materials, I decided if it was cost effective enough then I’d contract this work out to a professional writer or company.
Why? Well primarily I’m a techie, though I can write.. I mean I’m doing it now for manahead.com but because of my demanding work schedule and the long commute getting to and from work, I found I am often far too tired to do this sort of thing when I get home in the evening.
I managed to get a quote for the first lot of articles which covered a good portion of my website, this actually worked out extremely inexpensive at a few cents per word. So I gave it a try and sent my requirements and payment. Sure enough, the work which I got back a few days ago was absolutely outstanding + I got about 500 words more than I paid for which I can’t complain about. So I would definitely recommend the guys over at Webmaster Labor if you need any content writing services. In all honesty the articles are a lot better than I could of managed myself.
Of course there are alternatives. There are tons of content repositories around many of them do require payment of course, although I have yet to use these it is worthwhile if your are going to use these services then make sure that the content is unique. Apparently google doesn’t like duplicate content and it may penalise your rankings. It may be beneficial to juggle some words around and grab a thesaurus to change a few words here and there.
It is also worth noting that some affiliate programs provide content as well as guides to help your maximise your traffic and earning potential from your website. For more information check out the MakingYouRicher website.
Picking a profitable niche
Like I have previously stated, it is worthwhile picking a subject that you at least know something about when creating your money making website. This will obviously mean that you can write about your particular subject with ease and provide a useful insight to your readers.
However, this is not the only consideration. It is worth picking a niche that is going to be of benefit financially. What’s the point of writing about some obscure subject if you are going to be unable to turn your hard work into hard cash.
There are a couple of options when trying to cash in on your website, one of which is contextual PPC ads such as googles adwords/adsense. There are also tons of affiliate programs out there, of course there difficulty is finding one than works with your site.
For my new upcoming site I plan to use adsense, I have picked a niche and worked out some keywords for my site. With the help of Googles Traffic Estimator I have worked out where I can pick up keyword phrases to aim my pages around and hopefully provide the right content to get those high value ads on my pages.
Below you can see some of the fields from the Google traffic estimator, and yes I have blocked out my keywords… You’ll have to find your own I’m afraid. What this is actually the costs of using adwords for a bunch of keywords. This is a good indicator of what you can expect to gain from the clicks from your website, taking into account that’s what Google charges the advertisers. Your cut will be a percentage of that.
As you can see, there are some very high value keywords in there, up to approx $15 dollars a click. It doesn’t take a genius to guess just how profitable adsense sites could be. Anyway, I’ve picked my niche as you can see, researched my keywords… now all I have to do it come up with some content.
Starting an online business
Hi fellas, one of the reasons I created this site is as a service to my fellow man, to help others get ahead in life, and also to make a little money myself along the way. Anyway, before I go through the basics I will explain a little about myself… I have been working with computers now for about 7 years at the time of writings this in a professional capacity. For the past 4 years I have also been doing internet marketing. I have been very successful at this even surpassing my income from my main occupation.
Anyway, to the point of this post. The beauty of having an online business is the flexibility it gives you. Imagine being able to work from just about anywhere with an internet connection. Fancy going to Bangkok to party for the week, no problem, you can update your website from your hotel room. In fact, imagine making money while you sleep, waking up to check your stats and finding that you’ve made more money while you slept than most people make when their awake.
Golden rule number one when running a website is ‘Content is King!”. It’s that simple. Without interesting, well written content to rouse your visitor’s interest, then they are not going to stick around and they certainly won’t come back. You have to learn how to write your own content or come up quality unique sources.
The next most important point to remember is that you need other websites linking to your site and even better to your content within. It also helps if the sites linking to your are related or a similar topic to what your focusing on. Of course, links in have the added benefit of improving your search engine rankings and bringing traffic into your site.
So where do you begin, first things first, you need to pick a niche. Find a topic which you are knowledgeable in and can provide an interesting insight into and start writing. Write 10-15 articles before you start your website and keep them to about 500 words each. Ensure you use good grammar and punctuation, and break your articles into easy to read paragraphs.
It is important that you steer clear of flashy banners and animated graphics. This will make your site look gimmicky and unprofessional, it may have been cool in 1995 but not in this day and age. Make your site look as slick and professional as possible. Don’t try to do everything yourself, if you can’t design yourself then get someone else to do it or buy a template.
As long as you keep your focus on your content and writing interesting articles then your visitors will come, and people will naturally link to you as an authoritive resource. Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day and the riches aren’t going to come overnight, but by consistently adding material to your site it will increase your chances of making money.
For more in depth internet marketing information head right over to the MakingYouRicher website for realistic strategies to making cash generating websites
Welcome to ManAhead.com
On this site we will be discussing various important aspects in a man’s life and how you can make the best of it.
In particular this will follow my progress as I set up various web sites to aid me in my goal of generating a substantial income to help me escape the rat race. It is my intention that this site serves as a guide to others with the same goals.
It will also discuss other men’s issues both social and econimical as I see fit.
I hope you enjoy this site and please feel free to comment on any issues that you like.
Thanks for visiting ManAhead.com
