I assume you found your way here to my website because you are wanting to start an online business, learn how to make money online and/or learn how affiliate marketing works.
It is a very exciting path to head down and the possibilities that await you are limitless. I’m going to give you some building blocks to guide you on your path to getting started.
First Ten Steps: Building Your Foundation
1. Getting Rolling
2. Understanding How To Make Money Online
3. Choose A Niche
4. Building Your Own Niche Website
5. Setting Up Your Website
6. Getting Your Site Ready For Search Engines
7. Creating Your Initial Website Content
8. Creating Custom Menus On Your Site
9. Understanding Keywords
10. Congratulations, You Are Ready To Get Started
1. Getting Rolling
If you’re going to be successful with any online business you’ll first have to build a strong, sturdy foundation that can handle the growth.
It’s like building a skyscraper, you can’t start in the middle or at the top. It would just keep toppling over. No, you have to start at the bottom with that strong foundation and build your way up
If you do this the right way you will build a strong business that will make you more money than you have ever dreamed of and can weather any storm.
Once you have the foundation set, it can sustain you for the rest of your life with very little effort on your part, but it can’t be rushed.
In the end it will morph into a business you can be proud of and will someday pass on to your loved ones. Don’t try to rush it. If you do, it will just fail and crumble just like trying to start the skyscraper in the middle.
Success is a journey, not a sprint.
If you’d like help getting started click here to get started for free.
Some Facts
a) anyone can do this
b) It may feel overwhelming at first (like riding a bike)
c) No prior technical skills required (I’m living proof)
d)Success is a journey, not a sprint. It takes time
Here’s What Your path To Success Will Look Like
1) Choose an Interest, passion
2) Build a website
3) Attract visitors
4) Make money
A Piece Of Advice For You
Unless you’re already a pro at marketing, you’re going to need some help. There are things you need to know before you can become successful with your business and it’s more than I can tell you in just one article.
All the information and training for success that you will ever need can be found at Wealthy Affiliate. That’s where I learned everything I know about affiliate Marketing.
You can get started for free (no credit card required) and build two free websites, as well as start learning the process of building an online, money making business.
They do offer a premium membership as well with much more in depth training and tools but there is never any pressure to upgrade and you can remain a starter member as long as you wish. You will lose a few of the premium benefits after the first seven days but you can continue to work on your websites as a starter member.
2. How Will I Make Money
The making money part will not happen overnight or even in the next week or month probably (although it has happened rarely, a few have made some money in the first couple of weeks). That is NOT the norm.
There is a proven process, that when followed, step-by-step, in the right order, can get you started making some money in (usually) 4-6 months.
It will start like a drip in a bucket. As you continue to build out your website with awesome content and offering help to folks who are struggling to find answers, the money will slowly begin to increase until it finally builds into a steady stream.
Here’s How It Works
I know there are people out there all over the internet telling folks they can make them rich overnight or in a week. They are lying to you. They are out-and-out scam artist. (I’ve been the victim of a few.
It is never going to happen that way. If you don’t follow the process you will never be successful. It’s that simple.
3. Choose A Niche
A niche is a particular segment of a market, it’s an audience, a group of people with a common interest. Finding the right niche is one of the scariest parts of starting an online business for a lot of people but it shouldn’t be.
Some things you should know about a niche: It should be something you are very interested in or passionate about, can talk about a lot, know a lot about or want to know a lot about.
It’s what your content will be based on and you will be writing many, many articles of content about it. It also needs to have relevant products that are profitable associated with it. That will be where you make your money..
Here’s an example of a niche: Cooking
I could write thousands of articles about cooking. I could post many great recipes, Talk about the best cookware, dishes, wine glasses and stemware, table linens, small kitchen appliances and gadgets, and so much more. You get the picture.
4. Building Your Own Niche Website
First things first, you’ll need to choose a good domain name for your website. Be careful doing this because the domain name cannot be changed. The site name can be changed any time you like but the domain cannot. It should be relevant to your niche, and try to go with a dot com name rather than a dot org or other.
WordPress has made building websites very simple and easy these days with no coding required. In fact, you can have a new website online in less than two minutes once you have selected your domain name.
5. Setting Up Your Website
Of course it doesn’t stop with just getting you website online. There’s still a lot more work to be done. You have to create a few pages, install some plugins, set up your menus and get your site ready for search engines.
6. Getting Your Website Ready For Search Engines
The wordpress platform comes with the All-In-One S.E.O. plugin already installed for you. This makes it very easy to set your site up for ranking with the big three search engines, Google, Bing and Yahoo, although Google is the main one we want to focus on since they own 65% of search traffic and 95% of mobile searches.
Website Rankings = Targeted Traffic = Revenue (money)
7. Creating Your Initial Website Content
Search engines are after one thing, pure and simple, and that is THE most relevant content. If you can build out your website so that it is ready for S.E.O. and you create awesome, quality and relevant content, you can look forward to a very bright and prosperous future ahead.
Write your about me page first. Write something about yourself that visitors can relate to. Be friendly and down to earth, make them feel a sense of familiarity.
You’ll also want to write your contact page, privacy policy and affiliate disclaimer as soon as possible. Once these pages are done you can start to build out your content with relevant post.
A good way to start building out your content is by writing a review or two on products that are relevant to your niche. Always remember to keep everything relevant to your niche when writing content.
8. Setting up your menus
The next step you need to do is set up your menus. You can set a simple menu by going to appearance and then click on menu.
Some themes offer several menus such as a header, a footer and sidebar menus while other themes only offer one primary menu. Keep that in mind when choosing your theme. You may need more than one menu depending on your needs.
9. Understanding Keywords
A keyword is a word or phrase that people search for in search engines. Every time you do a Google search, you are entering a keyword into the search box.
If you incorporate keywords into your content title and paragraphs, search engines will send people who are searching those keywords to your website. Each post you write should be targeting a keyword.
Google and other search engines exist because of content and if you can write quality content (that targets low competition keywords) you will be able to get great rankings for your articles and your website.
Learn more about keywords here.
Rules For Quality Keywords
1. More than thirty monthly searches
2. Less than 100 QSR (competition)
3. Keyword must make sense
I’ve given you a lot of information here to get you started but it’s not even the tip of the iceberg. There is so much great free training at Wealthy Affiliate that can take you to the next level and help you develop your skills for success.
You no longer need to struggle and there is absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain. Start living your dream today!
Join our free program today and start building your own successful business.
Hi Fran; your article is direct to the point. I enjoy reading it. When all of this information is accepted only illegal interception can create a problem and caused delay.
Won’t there be an indefinite delay in your making money if your Google plus account is disabled without your knowledge causing everything such as Google Analytics AdWords Sitemap and everything to depart from your site?
When something of this nature happens, how does one fix them? Or Can these be corrected in a short time?
Cheers!
DorcasW
Hi Dorcas: Thanks for stopping by my website. No worries Dorcas, Google has a great support system in place and my hosting platform has great support as well.
Fran
Hi Fran
Thanks for the great article .
I have engaged in many programmes previously to make money online. Unfortunately , most of them ere merely scams, either they give you false promises or they take your money for nothing at all in return.
I have recently enrolled in the Wealthy Affilliate program that you recommended , created my own website , and started making money online through product reviews to my website visitors . thanks a lot for the great advise.
Hi Sam: Thank you for stopping by my website. There is so much bad out there on the internet today. Reviews are important in letting folks know when a product id a fraud so they don’t lose money aand on the other hand show people that the good ones are legitimate. Thanks again!
Nicely written article and a lot of great visuals. it’s hard to know what is legitimate these days and what is not. I’ve signed up for Wealthy Affiliate and I’m giving it a try. I have no idea how long it will take to make money online, but I’m going to see if I can make a go of it.
Thanks for the article and the steps required. That’s a lot of great info and helps draw the full picture of what it really takes.
Hi Jen: Thanks for stopping by. Glad you found my article helpful. You can certainly achieve success here at Wealthy Affiliate. Anyone can. If you just concentrate on writing awesome content on a regular basis and follow the training, you will be just fine.
When you create a new website and start a new business, it takes some time to start getting traffic to your site. Once you start getting traffic the sales will start to trickle in. That usually takes 3-6 months to get started, but it depends on how often you post content and how well it gets ranked in google.
Thanks again for stopping by and leavin a comment on my post.
Fran
Great article!
Thank you for having everything so detailed. I’ve been searching for a while to find something legit online. I joined Wealthy Affiliate and I’m almost finished with the Level 1 training.
And I love it! Not only because of the training but also for the community. It’s better to make this journey with others!
Hi Jenny: Thank you for taking the time to stop by and for leaving a comment. WA is a wonderful place to learn and having such a large community that will step up to help you when you need it is just the best! Best wishes on your journey!
Fran
Hi Fran, I really enjoyed working my way through your content.
It is really well set out, easy to navigate and very informative. I am sure that anyone who has an interest in becoming an affiliate will benefit from your website.