Is the term "website" a scary one for you? We have good news....

It does not have to be. Websites can be created easily and created without investing any money at all! The benefits of having your own website are undeniable and we are going to explain how to get your very own website up and running within this section.

Having your own website is a favorable alternative to direct linking, which we discussed back in week two. A website allows us as Internet Marketers to leverage our ideas and information to consumers to increase overall conversions. With a website you have much more control over the sales angle and this alone gives you a HUGE advantage. This section we are going to walk you through the process of setting up a website and teach you some great optimization strategies that will make your sites sell like crazy:

How Will a Website Benefit You?

Besides being able to brag to all your friends that you have your own website and a piece of virtual real estate, having your own website provides a TON of benefits for Internet marketers.

Building a website is usually "scariest" thing that you can say to someone who is just getting started with Internet Marketing. If you are feeling overwhelmed right now and telling yourself that "I can't make my own site", then it's time to change the way you are thinking. Building your own website doesn't have to be difficult and it is just like learning to ride a bike. Once you learn the fundamentals of riding a bike (pedaling and balance), you will be able to ride a bike forever. The same goes for building websites!

Having your own website is very beneficial for Internet Marketers because it provides you with the ability to create your own sales angle and voice your own opinions. This will typically lead to much higher conversions and you will have the ability to cover anything that the merchant pages are missing on. The bottom line is that you can tweak your website so that it tightly matches your sales angle and is very highly relevant to what your customers want.

There are also less obvious benefits to having your own website, especially if you are a Google Adwords advertiser. Google does not allow multiple instances of the same URL under the same search term, so if you are direct linking you are directly competing with everyone else who is direct linking to the same site. This is the HUGE drawback to direct linking to a merchant site and a benefit that having your own site presents.

Monetizing ALL website traffic is also something that you can do if you have your own website. You can collect the names and email addresses of your visitors, offer bonuses or incentives, and connect on a personal basis with each and every website visitor; something you cannot do if you don't have your own website.

Statistically, having your own website that is optimized will convert at a much higher rate than sending traffic directly to a merchant page. By the end of this week's lesson you're going to know exactly how to do that!

Get Your Free Hosting Account at WA

In order to own a website that people can find online, you need a web host and a domain name. The best way to describe these is that a web host is like your home, and a domain is your mailing address. In order for people to find your home, they need directions on how to get there. This is the role of a domain name. The domain name www.wealthyaffiliate.com points you to our website that lives on our web host. A web host is basically just a computer where the website files live, and the domain points to those files.

Now that we've got that out of the way, we have some great news for you! All members at Wealthy Affiliate get their own web hosting accounts included with the membership. Generally, getting a web host will run you anywhere from $5 and $15 per month, but we have decided to offer hosting to ALL WA members for free!

Sign-up For Your FREE WA Hosting Here

WA Hosting is very comparable to the largest hosting companies available, including 1and1.com, GoDaddy.com, and Yahoo.com. Our servers are even newer and faster, so there are absolutely no drawbacks to using WA Hosting for your Internet Marketing endeavors. We also limit the number of people we put on each server, so our servers will often times be much more stable than a host like 1 & 1 who are notorious for "stuffing" as many people as possible on a single server.

Once you've got your web hosting setup, you will need to decide on a DOMAIN name that you want to use to point to your website. Finding a domain name is difficult these days because there are so many millions of websites on the internet that already have the names taken up.

When choosing a domain name, we recommend that you choose something that is "General" in nature so that you can use the domain name for many different purposes. If you decided to register: www.train-my-dogs.com, you won't be able to use the domain for anything that isn't related to training dogs. If for instance you registered a domain like: www.carsons-product-reviews.com, you could use that to host many different sites!

So, where do you get a domain name? We suggest sticking to the BIG domain registrar sites online as they offer the cheapest and most easy to use services. We recommend using:

Visit 1and1.com Here Visit Godaddy.com Here

Note: WA Hosting supports 3 domains, meaning you could run 3 different websites off of the same account.

A Little Info About How You Can Make Money with Domains

As we just mentioned, finding a good domain name is getting more and more difficult as a lot of easy to remember domain names have already been scooped up. This presents an opportunity that not everyone is aware of. There are entire companies that have built empires on registering domains, holding onto them, and then selling them for more money than they were purchased for. When someone wants a domain that you own, you can sell it to them for whatever price you want and this can make you some huge money if done in bulk. We're not talking about purchasing 5-10 domains, we're talking thousands! Hey, it's not for everyone, but there are people making millions of dollars a year by registering domains and selling them for more. We had to tell you about it!

How to Build a Website

Once you have your FREE web hosting setup here at Wealthy Affiliate and have registered at least one domain, all you need to do is build your web site! Sounds easy and once you get the hang of it you'll agree that building a website really isn't something to be afraid of. Most of the time people love building websites and it becomes a hobby that will enable them to make a lot of money online.

Since you are a Wealthy Affiliate member you have full access to the most easy to use website builder available anywhere online. With Site Rubix, making a website is simple and very intuitive! You can start building your first website right now if you click the "Site Rubix" button in the Quick Launch menu above.

We have also created a full guide on Website design and how to physically build your pages, what applications that you can use, and the resources which will help you learn all about the website language HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language). We definitely recommend reading it:

Website Getting Started Guide

We really want to help you become comfortable with websites, how they work, and how to build them. This topic is by far the number one reason why people feel that they are not "able" to make money online. DO NOT let the fear of building your own website get in your way. With Site Rubix you don't need to know any HTML or have any special technical skills to get your first site published online. With this being said, the more you know about building websites and HTML, the more you will be able to do. HTML is the absolute easiest programming language to learn, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of free sites on the internet that will help you with ANY question that you could think of. Also, don't forget that we (Kyle & Carson) are professional web developers by trade and we're always able to help you if you get stuck.

Here are a few of the best resources for web programming using HTML:

http://www.w3schools.com/html
http://www.htmlgoodies.com
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com

Different Types of Landing Pages

Landing page? You're going to hear this term very frequently, if you haven't already. So what exactly is a landing page anyway?

A landing page is simply the page that people land on when you send them to your website. That's it! Whether you are sending traffic from pay-per-click ads or from articles that you've written and submitted to Squidoo, the landing page is where your visitors "land" on your website. It is simply a page within a website.

There are many different types of landing pages which can be used for different purposes. As you read through this section, keep in mind that a good landing page can separate a marketer that is profitable and one that is not.

In saying this, you are not going to become an expert with landing pages overnight. Often times a sale can be initiated from something as simple as a good headline, or even a relevant image on your page. Please read over the following Landing Page tutorial that we have created for you to learn all about the components of landing pages:

Components of a Landing Page

Here are some terms that you are going to hear at WA quite often, and we highly suggest that you familiarize yourself with these:

Squeeze Page: A squeeze page is a single web page that has the purpose of collecting the email and name of your website visitor using an opt-in autoresponder form (something you will learn about in the coming weeks).

Multi-Page Site: A multi-page site is exactly what it sounds like, a website that has more than one web page. For instance, if you visit: www.wealthyaffiliate.com, you'll notice that there is a homepage, testimonial page, frequently asked question page, contact page, join page, and more. This is an example of a multi-page site. The website www.wealthy-reviews.com is an example of a SINGLE-page site as there are no links to any other pages on this domain. Google Adwords likes multi-page sites and will contribute to a higher Quality Score.

Long Copy vs Short Copy: When we refer to "copy", we're talking about the sales text or "content" on a web page. Long Copy are pages that are very long with a lot of content on them, while short copy is a more condensed version of this. The wealthyaffiliate.com homepage is considered Long Copy while http://www.wealthyaffiliate.com/affiliates.php would be considered short copy.

Review Page: A review page is again, just like it sounds. It is a type of web page where multiple products are reviewed and compared to one another. This is among the most effective styles of a landing page that Internet Marketers use to make money online. Review pages are explained in detail within the landing page tutorial above.

Website Templates Here at WA

We have created different website templates that you can download, modify, and use as a guide to help you put together your sites. The framework of a website is typically the most difficult aspect of the development process and we have simplified this for you by creating these templates. It will be much easier for you to modify a web page that already exists, rather than trying to create it from a blank slate.

We have created these downloadable templates so that you can just download them to your own computer and edit them with an HTML editor of your choice. Please feel free to use the website templates in anyway that you want as they will be very helpful for getting your first web page started.

View Website Templates Here

Here are a couple of free website editors that you can use to edit and modify these website templates:

http://www.nvu.com
http://www.bluevoda.com

If you are looking for an option that doesn't require you to know any HTML or web programming, we suggest using Site Rubix. Site Rubix does not require you to upload or worry about templates as the system has pre-loaded templates ready for you to utilize!

Site Rubix - (Our Online Website Builder)

Landing Pages That Convert

This is very important section that you should not overlook. Earlier we mentioned that statistically, having your own optimized web page converts better than direct linking. Simply throwing together a landing page of your own and sending traffic to it will NOT automatically make you more sales...just because you have your own page. You need to "optimize" your page so that your visitors click from your site, to the merchant page using your affiliate link.

A poorly optimized web page / landing page will "bounce" visitors away from your website. Ideally, you want people to come to your site and have an instant connection with your content and images on your site. The purpose of a web page is to provide information to your visitors so that they will be more inclined to make a purchase when they visit the merchant homepage through your affiliate link. If you do not optimize your web page for your prospective customers, they will come to your page and bounce very quickly from your site. You often times only have a few seconds to capture the interest of your visitors.

Below we are going to talk about ways to optimize your webpage so that it will convert visitors into customers (which also means money for us as Internet marketers).

Relevancy

At Wealthy Affiliate, you'll hear the word relevancy being thrown around all the time (in fact you already have in prior weeks!). Relevancy plays a very large role in creating a web page that has the ability to convert visitors into customers and sales.

For instance, if you were direct linking to a general weight loss program, you wouldn't be able to hyper target sub-niches of the weight loss industry. There are a lot of people who want to lose weight, and targeting specific groups is exactly what you can do on your web page. Using the weight loss example, you could create a website that targets women trying to lose weight after pregnancy, or men who want to improve their abs. Your landing page can connect with these types of customers directly.

While we're on the topic of offering highly "Relevant" and specific content to your visitors through your own website, here is a tutorial that will teach you all about relevancy:

Understanding Relevancy Tutorial

This is one of the most important tutorials we have here at WA because if you can learn about relevancy and how to correctly connect with your visitors, you will be earning a healthy income online in no time.

Landing Page Components

There are many components of a website that allow it convert into sales at a high rate. In this section we are going to discuss these components in detail and show you exactly how to optimize your webpages so your visitors make purchases.

We have a full Landing page Optimization guide available that we highly recommend working your way through.

Landing Page Optimization

Headlines:

Statistically speaking, a webpage has approximately 5-10 seconds to grab the attention of the website visitor. If that visitor is not engaged by "something" on the page within this timeframe then they are going to proceed to either closing their browser window or hitting the back button. Initially, the most important component of your landing page is something that grabs the attention of the visitor, and helps them understand that your website offers the information that they are looking for. A headline typically acts as the "attention grabber".

Creating a captivating headline on your webpage can make the difference between a $0 profit/day website and a $500 profit/day website. The key to writing effective headlines is to create interest and instantly grab the attention of your website visitors.

Check out the tutorial on writing effective headlines here:

Landing Page Optimization

Page Content

The content or "sales copy" that you use on your webpage will act as the secondary item to capturing the visitors short term interest and ultimately the content will make the difference between the consumer making an action (could be a sale, an opt-in, clicking something) and them leaving your page.

Effective content will keep your visitors on your webpage for extended lengths of time, and allow you to make your "pitch". The longer that someone remains on your page, the more likely they will be to click on your affiliate links which take them to the merchant site. Without good content on your webpage you can lose a lot of potential customers.

Below are some points to keep in mind while writing the sales copy on each and every web page that you create:

Is it Relevant?

Being relevant in regards to what you write on our webpage is definitely the most important aspect of "good" content. If someone was to do a search in Google for "how to train my German shepherd", and your ad is clicked on, they will be expecting to find an entire landing page full of ways to train a German shepherd.

Writing content that includes general "dog training" information is not good enough. Relevancy and specifics are what make good content convert into sales, so ask yourself the question, "is my content relevant enough for my visitors?"

You should include the exact same search terms that your traffic is coming to your page from within the content on your page, including the headline and filler text. This is very important not only for the visitor, but Google will give you a higher Quality Score (discussed later), and when optimizing websites and articles for search engines, this will allow you get listed naturally under search terms.

Relevant Images:

When you visit a webpage that has relevant images on it, you tend to stay longer on the page because you are visually engaged. Including relevant images on your website can drastically increase the effectiveness of your content, and landing page in general. We have experienced tests where adding a relevant image to top of the landing page increased the rate that people clicked through to the merchant site, by over 40%.

It takes 2 minutes to add a relevant image to your webpage, so do it! If you are selling dog training e-books that are specifically related to German shepherd training techniques, make sure you have a picture of a German shepherd on the page!

Is My Page Visually Appealing?

You DO NOT need to be a graphic artist to make your website visually appealing. In fact, as we look back some of the "crappiest" looking sites have been the highest converting. Why? Because the content was there!

If someone visits your page and all they see is paragraph after paragraph of text (a sea of text), they will hit the back button so fast that your website statistics will barely report that they were there at all! Useless content will detour visitors, whereas relevant and concise content will increase conversions.

Writing paragraph after paragraph of sales copy without breaks, images, headlines, links, and other visually appealing components will KILL your chances of making sales. In most cases, a short paragraph or two is sufficient for the first part of your website. We would like to refer to the following web page as an example of what we are talking about:

Sample Optimized Landing Page

Are there Sufficient Links?

Many marketers overlook the fact that if you are promoting a product and someone cannot find a link to click on to buy it, or your linking techniques are not obvious, then you will not make a sale. It make us cringe every time we analyze a website for a member at WA and it only has one link buried within a sentence at the very bottom of the page. This is a HUGE factor in determining the effectiveness of a landing page, or an entire website.

Links send your visitors to the merchant page so they can purchase. They also help with readability and making the page visually appealing. Using BIG call to action links between your paragraphs can really help your visitors find their way to what they are looking for.

"Click Here To See An Example Of an Optimized Page with Sufficient Links"

The link above is exactly what we are talking about! You most likely clicked it so that you could see what an optimized page looks like. That type of "call to action" link is what you can use on your webpage to entice visitors to click on your affiliate links.

Are the Products Relevant & Visible?

On any landing page where you ware trying to sell a product directly, you will want to make sure that first and foremost the product is relevant to your visitors needs. If you are trying to sell a weight loss program to someone looking to train their dog, chances are you will be completely wasting your time (and money)!

Make sure the product information is obvious and easy to find. If you were to create a page that compares and reviews a few products, don't hide those reviews at the bottom of your page. Put them at the top of the page so that your visitors can see them immediately when the page loads. Having reviews at the bottom of the page, not visible in the first fold (the visible portion of the page when it loads), is not optimal at all. People love to read reviews, but people do not like reading a lot of prelude text before they can actually get to the "goods". If you have taken the time to create a review page, do yourself a huge favor and make them visible.

As you can see there are many different factors that are involved when putting together a webpage / landing page, so keep these in mind when creating your page. You may feel overwhelmed by all of this, but after a few tries and some tinkering around, you will quickly learn how to create quality landing pages.

Use this checklist to help you make sure that your landing page is fully optimized for your website visitors. An Optimized page is an integral part of a successful campaign.

Is your page content highly relevant to what your visitors are looking for? Your webpage should include the exact keywords that your customers are searching.

Does your page have an effective Headline that will grab the interest of your visitors?

Does your page have relevant images?

Are you sure that your page is visually appealing? If you have too much text on the page your visitors will not read it, so make the page visually appealing and easy to find your affiliate links.

Do you have sufficient links? Make sure that you are using "call to action" phrases that will attract your visitors to click on your affiliate links.

Are the products on your page easy to find? If you are reviewing products, those reviews should be visible when someone lands on the page. Having them too far down will not be effective.

Check your affiliate links: Make sure that your affiliate links all work, and that your "cookies" are being set correctly.

Spelling / Grammar:Double check that the spelling and grammar are correct on your page.

How Relevancy Affects Google Quality Score

We've been talking about how relevancy is integral to a fully optimized webpage, but there are other reasons why a page needs to be relevant, especially if you plan on advertising your page with Google Adwords.

Google has an algorithm called "Quality Score" which checks to make sure that your keywords, ads, and landing pages contain relevant content. In order to get a "great" Quality Score, you need to have a relevant landing page.

There are many benefits to having a great Quality Score and Google rewards advertisers who are highly relevant by offering them incentives. Adwords advertisers with a high Quality Score get better ad positioning, lower minimum bids on their keywords, and lower overall cost-per-click (CPC). The Quality Score of your Adwords account is directly related to how relevant you are with your keywords, ads and landing pages.

Here's what we mean by being relevant with your keywords, ads, and landing pages.

Let's say that you want to review a few dog training guides on your landing page by advertising keywords such as:

-how to train my pug to heel
-train pug to heel
-ebook on training pug to heel
-guide on training pugs to heel
-training pug to heel
-how to train pug to heel
-training my pug to heel
-training pug to heel

You may have an ad that looks something like this:

Train Your Pug To Heel
Review Top Pug Training Guides
Start Training Your Pug Today
YourWebsite.com

The main common keywords that we want to focus on here are"train pug to heel".

Now that we have an ad that is highly relevant to the keywords, we need a landing page that is highly relevant as well. You want to make sure that you have the common keywords from your ads and keywords in the title, headline, and initial paragraphs of your landing page. When Google sees this they will determine that indeed, your landing page, ad, and keywords are all highly relevant, and they will award you with a high Quality Score.

While we're on the topic of Quality Score and landing pages, Google prefers that you have a multiple page site with relevant content on it. So, if you want to advertise with Google and achieve a maximum quality score, build your landing page, and connect it to other pages on the same domain. Here are some examples of pages you can have connected to your landing page:

Home
About us
Contact
Reviews
Comparisons
Articles
etc.

The more relevant content that you ad to your website, the more likely you are to achieve a high quality score in your Google Adwords account.