Website - Best way to get started? Designer?

[jacky_me]

Hello to all. I am new to the game. I have secured a domain name, and would like to get some inputs on who to use to build my website. Have most of you here build your own? If not, are there some website builders that are familiar with how affiliate programs work who would be able to guide me through the process. I have more questions, but first things first.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Jackie,

Welcome to 5 Star and thanks for posting your question.

Do you have any knowledge of site building and html???

If you do then A suggestion would be to start with a template from http://www.goldenpinecone.com/affordable-templates.html. Many of the templates are designed specifically for affiliate marketing. The owner is a professional affiliate marketer. She also does custom design, so thats where I would start.

The key is, you need to have someone design it that understands search engine ranking and builds a site that's good for the consumer as well as for getting good rankings. Some designers are only good at the cosmetics and their sites cant even be read by the search engines.

A GREAT FREE way to get started may be to consider a blog. You can build a blog at blogger that the search engines will love, choice of great designs, not programming required. Almost as easy as Word. Then you can transfer that blog to your new domain name. Honestly if I was just learning, thats where I
would START. You may not make a ton of money that way but I think it's one of the best ways to get started and begin to learn the ropes.

All things considered there are MANY ways to get started and other people would recommend other ideas. To a large degree, the "best" way to get started depends on your circumstances. More $ than time??? Then find someone to build a site for you, just be sure they understand SEO and affiliate marketing. More time than money? Then take the time to learn to do it yourself. In the long run you will probably benefit from learning to do it all yourself, but it may take longer to generate profit that way.

Those are my initial thoughts. Anyone else?

 

[Lynn Quario]

If you don't know anything at all about building a website Jim Edwards Minisite Creator Course is excellent for beginners.

He shows you everything you need to know with step by step video instructions.

It is a little expensive but I thought it was well worth the money because you can then build as many websites as you want.

Templates are included in the course.

You can have a website up and running in less than 3 weeks.

Just an idea...


Lynn

 

[stylemangi]

Wordpress is an option

Hi jacky,

Good question! One approach that you might consider taking is to use Wordpress, which is an open source (free) blogging platform whcih can be used as the base of your web sites.

The beauty of Wordpress, besides the fact that it is free is the large community of people behind it who create the many thousands of themes or templates that you can skin your site with. In addition there are many thousands of plugins, which are little software tools that you simply upload to your web site which expand the functionality of your web site to no end.

If you are not great with programming etc thats not problem, many hosts such as Bluehost where I have my stuff hosted offer a program called Fantastico which is a one click installer program. You simply select your domain, select the program, which in this case is wordpress (there are many others) and click install and the program is installed.

Trust me, once you get a handle on ftp and a few of the basics you will not be able to stop yourself from messing around with wordpress.

An alternative is to simply get a hosted version of wordpress from http://wordpress.com. The only issue there of course is that the domain will be a subdomain of wordpress.com.

I'm not sure whether I am allowed to post links here but as they are links to wordpress they should be ok.

Wordpress Information Site http://wordpress.org
Wordpress Hosted Version http://www.wordpress.com
Themes Viewer http://themes.wordpress.net

I just love this program...for a web site, I simply use a plugin which allows me to set a page as my home page and I have an instant web site which is optimised for Search engines etc.

Good luck.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Lynn and stylemangi for jumping in with suggestions.

I agree about Wordpress and think it's a great way to get started. I suggested blogger redirected to her host just because then you don't need to know ANYTHING technical at all. With Wordpress you do get into lots of technical issues that take a little time and learning. Installing plugins and stuff may be nothing to us but if Jacky is a complete web newbie it could be a lot.

Jacky if you want to go the WordPress route, which is a good one - then lots of the SEO stuff is automatically taken care of because search engines love WP blogs. If you aren't technical at all and would rather pay someone to set it up, design it and add all the plugins for spam and stuff that you may need then I have the guy for you. He does all my blogs, is an official WP designer, extremely reasonable and fast. He did a totally custom design for my 5 Star blog which is ranked #1 in all the search engines. He could have a blog set up for you in a couple days for probably around 150. Bobbie one of our forum members sometimes does WP set-ups and may even charge less.

Hope this helps!

 

[jacky_me]

Getting started

Thanks to all that have replied to my posting. The WordPress idea is great and by coincedence, my domain is being hosted by Bluehost as is stylemangi's. I have WordPress installed and have been playing around with it. It is not as easy as I expected. I will keep working with it.
Linda I would like to use the person that you recommended. Please send me the necessary info to get in touch with him.
Thanks

jacky