Internet business for newcomers

This page attempts to explain how an internet marketing campaign using affiliate programs works and makes money. In the text you will see embedded links to various sites and programs that I recommend. These are the ones we suggest any newcomer to the business should start with. Where relevant, these links have a special code embedded, which informs the company where the link has originated, so there is the possibility of a future benefit to this site, but at no cost or reduction of future benefit to you. They are all free products or services (with one exception) and useful for anyone trying to succeed in the web marketing business. The best part is, you can invite other people to follow the same procedure in their marketing campaigns and both you and we will benefit from their future sales, so everyone wins.

Subject and page content
The first step (after deciding on a main topic) is to try to create original content for your pages. It is quite common to use material from other web pages, but don't copy large chunks, or worse, whole pages. Rather use some of the words only, then change sentences and word order a little. Plagiarism is not punishable by death but it is not a good idea. The danger is of having 'page duplication' picked up by the search engines and your pages overlooked because of it. Compose simple, plain text documents using Word (even Notepad or WordPad are fine) without any formatting, except for paragraphs and headings. Don't worry about the layout at all. Just the words. Spelling and grammar will need to be checked at some point. Good use of language adds more credibility to your ideas and objectives. Page layout comes later.

Important inclusions
According to the 'experts', the following points are important to get good ratings with directories and search engines (without those you won't get enough of the right traffic).

Your pages should all have the same 'look' – and the site itself should be easy to 'navigate', and without many obvious errors in spelling or grammar;
On every page, there should be links back to the home page as well as to the others (a menu, or at least previous, next and home page buttons or text links are ways to do this);
Keywords are important and should be included both in the correct 'meta tag' format near the top of your page code, and used in your text, important ones near the top of the page; they should be repeated, especially in the first heading and sentence, and put in bold (just keywords or phrases, but not whole sentences!). This makes it easier for search engines to establish the theme of a particular page – important for advertising link campaigns you may want to use. More on this below. While we're on this, be very sparing with the use of ALL CAPITALS except for headlines. They are ugly and difficult to read.

There's much more, but of lesser importance. See the link to Web CEO further down the page under Site visitors section.
The most critical factor is the content itself. Get all your pages completed and looking nice before uploading them. Blank pages or those still under construction are not looked upon favourably by anyone – search engines or visitors.

Page design and layout
Using Microsoft Word definitely isn't the right or easiest program for creating web pages. Unless you have really extensive knowledge of it, it will end up as a mess. One recommended program is Dream Weaver, but for a newcomer, it may be too complicated and difficult to learn. Microsoft FrontPage is mid-range and quite popular. It has many features of little value to the average user.There are others page editors, both free and for purchase.

Unfortunately, with FrontPage or any other HTML editor or page layout program, there's always a learning curve, no matter how simple they all claim to be! You need to practice first, or get hold of a program which contains its own web page templates which you can modify for your own purposes. Trying to copy someone else's format often requires the use of the same program. An alternative is to pay someone else to do it all for you! Complete web site creation, domain name registration and web hosting services are available, sometimes for a very low monthly subscription.

Free resource sites
Joining free sites and forums gets you lots of useful tips, tools and free training.

Using a template for a consistent layout
Whatever program you use, you need to make a template page which contains everything that you want to appear on every page, including the font sizes, headings, justified text etc. Also a menu of some sort (a topic on its own), the banner header and the main boxes for text and ads. Then you just paste your text from Word into the main text box, change the title and keywords in the code, add images etc. saving as you go with its own .html name. It will probably need more modifications, including adding it to your menu if you have one, and site index page (also important) before uploading to the server.

Search engine and directory submission
When your pages are ready, including a site map to submit to Google, you should submit your site to the most popular directories and search engines. DMOZ (learn about it later) is free, but very important because many other services uses their listings. All of them are interested only in content and keywords. When you have good listings, you can add advertising. Here is an excellent service you can use:

Monitoring your web site visitors and optimizing your pages
Once your site is launched, you need to have a way of knowing who your visitors are. Your own clicks may be included too, which don't count! Many hits will be from robots which crawl pages regularly for search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. You may have traffic, but not all will be from potential customers. You can get an excellent free analysis and promotion program called Web CEO. It provides comprehensive feedback for your page content, search engine and 'real' traffic – even who the visitors are! It also shows you how to 'optimise' your pages. Download the free edition here: Web CEO - ultimate software suite for Web site promotion. Upgrading to the paid service may be useful at a later stage of your web site marketing. StatCounter.com is also an excellent and free service.

Page length and word count
A point to note is that a web page ideally should contain less than about 1300 words, which is why this article is split into two pages.