Starting An Online Business – Part 3

Hello and welcome to part three of my ongoing series…

Last time out we concentrated on finding a demanding  and needy customer base to market to…

Our ‘hungry Crowd’

So now we have our target audience the next thing we need to do is start building a  list of potential customers. To do this we need to set up a simple website so we can start collecting names and email addresses.

Now I know that the thought of doing this is going to make a lot of people want to run for the hills and to be honest when I first started out I had no idea HOW or IF I would be able to mange it either.

But the truth is, it really isn’t as complicated or technical as you may imagine.

I imagine if you are anything like I was you are having doubts about whether you can do this or not. Maybe you are thinking that its just going to be too difficult and for that reason there is no point in continuing with this…

Can I just say at this point if you are having doubts as to your ability to do what I’m asking, Please don’t give up just yet. Please give yourself a chance to make this work, don’t let your fear of the unknown stand in the way of building your own online business.

As I said, building a website is nowhere near as complicated as you may think…

I am going to show you how you can build your own website in just a few short hours.

All you will need is a  computer, an internet connection and half a day to do it in.

You may think you need to hire a professional company of website designers to build you a beautiful looking website. You may think you need to spend hundreds in order to have your own site.

You could do this of course, but it really is unnecessary when you can build your own perfectly functioning website for very little outlay in a single afternoon.

The kind of website we need in order to sell our information products is just a simple one page site. An example of this can be seen here: Build Your Own Website Today

This website was built in exactly the same way and using exactly the same products and services that I will share with you.

As you can see, the website is just a simple one page site with a headline at the top to grab peoples attention and then details about the product so that the customer understands what is on offer.

Finally at the bottom you have your ‘Call To Action’ button,  which in this case is click the button to place your order.

After that your customer will automatically get an email copy of the order and a link to download the product or a login and password if (as in this case) it’s an online course.

The beauty of this system is, once the page is set up you don’t have to do anything else, everything such as adding the buyer to your email list, taking payments and delivering orders is done automatically.

So, how do we build one of these websites and how much will it cost?

Well you have two choices…

Firstly there is the budget option which can be done for just a few dollars and was how I started off.

Alternatively you have a slightly more expensive option which gives you greater ease of use,  freedom and flexibility when building your website. This will cost a one off $97 payment plus a couple of other costs such as $7+ for a domain name and $10+ a month for hosting.

I have been using the second option for sometime now and it is well worth upgrading if you decide that you really do want to make a go of the whole internet business thing.

Having said that I’m assuming as I did, you want to start with as little cost as possible…

Therefor today I’m going to concentrate on the budget option and I will revisit the more expensive alternative in a later post.

Even though we are going to be building our own website on a budget we still want it to look as professional as we can make it with as little outlay as possible but without cutting any corners.

With that in mind we want our OWN domain name and a decent hosting platform.

These of course can be acquired for free but your domain name would include the name of the provider before your own and the free hosting can be somewhat unreliable to say the least.

Cost-wise a domain name is going to be a one off payment of between $7 and $20+ and hosting will be between $10 – $20 a month.

Not a bad outlay when you consider what you could be getting in return.

I cover how to create your own website in a previous post…

You can access that post here: How To Create A Website On A Budget

However if you would prefer a more detailed step by step guide then you can download my free eBook by Clicking here: Get My Free eBook

Once you have created your website you will need to ensure you have a way for your customers to pay. This is not essential now unless you already have a product to sell, but it is worth getting one in place for when you do need it.

The best way to do this is through a PayPal account and if you don’t have one you can sign up for FREE here: PayPal

Again I will show you how to incorporate this into your website in a later post.

Remember don’t give up now you have come this far, work through the methods I show you to build your own website. Take everything one step at a time and don’t give up as soon as something gets a little difficult. The more you do this the more familiar you will get with how it works and the more familiar you are the easier it will be.

If you have any questions please feel free to drop me an email and I will personally answer as soon as I can.

Most of all HAVE FUN, after all that’s what this is all about right?

Once you have created your fist simple website you will wonder what all the fuss was about. The great thing about knowing how to do it all yourself is, you can alter it as you go along…

You can update it, change it, rewrite it, move things around, add stuff or take stuff away…

All without having to contact any website designers and all without incurring extra cost just because you have decided you want to change the colour of your title font.

AND you will have learned a new skill in the process.

Let me know how you get on and I will see you next time.