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EarnMoney-week #1

It’s a lucky time for entrepreneurs.

It used to be that you needed a lot of capital if you wanted to start a business. At the very least you needed a decent advertising budget, office-supplies budget, and postage budget if you were going to start a mail-order business. And unless you were selling “print on demand” reports or had a drop-shipper lined up, you also likely needed to buy products that you could later resell.

If you didn’t go that route, then you’d probably need to have even more money to start your business. For example, you might need office space or a store, and all the expenses that go along with it such as a lease, electricity, furniture, etc.

But ever since the Internet came along, all of that has changed. Nearly anyone with a business idea and the desire to follow it through can start an online business!

You don’t need a big budget for inventory, especially if you deal in intangible goods such as ebooks, or if you’re an affiliate for someone else.

You don’t need a physical store, so no expenses there.

And the best part is that you don’t even need a big advertising budget to get started, since the Internet offers you many free and low-cost opportunities to promote yourself and your business.

This is perhaps the “age of the entrepreneur.” Online the playing field is level, since the “little guys” can go up against the big businesses. Anyone can start a website and sell a product. And anyone can succeed and make a fortune online if they truly desire it, if they’re willing to learn, and if they are willing to work hard.

Do you desire to make your fortune online? If so then you’re reading the right report. You’re about to discover the proven step-by-step method to making money online. Let’s get started...

Choosing your market

In a very general sense, there are two ways to choose a market: start with something you’re already interested in, or “chase the money.”

This is entirely up to you, of course. However, your very best bet is to start off by choosing something you’re interested in that is also profitable. You could call it “chasing the money doing something you love.” You could also look at it as “do what you love and the money will follow.”

You see, there is no guarantee that any niche market and any product is going to be wildly profitable for you. For example, years ago people used to jump into the gambling markets because there was big money to be made. However, many people ended up with websites that got very little or no traffic. Most of those sites were eventually abandoned.

If the creators of these sites had started off doing something they loved rather than chasing what they thought was a profitable market, they might be making money today.

Just look around online and you’ll see what I mean. There are some people running very odd sites, likely doing something they love, and they’re making gobs of money. Meanwhile there are sites built around known profitable niches, and they have cobwebs growing on them.

In other words: there is no guarantee! That’s why it makes sense to start with what you love, research to see if it’s profitable (e.g., if there’s a hungry market), and then jump in.

At this point many aspiring online marketers get a little baffled – how, exactly, do you start with what you love? Sure, some people eat and breathe certain topics. But for the rest of us, where do we start looking for a market we’re interested in?

In order to start uncovering potential markets, ask yourself what topics interest you. What types of websites do you visit? What types of books, magazines, and newsletters do you read? What do you like to do in your free time? Where do you spend your money? Are you a member of any groups or clubs? Where do you go on vacation? What topics often come up when you’re talking with friends? What’s your favorite part of your job? If you could take any college class right now, what would you take?

In other words, peer into your own life and take note of where you spend your time, money, and energy.

Another way to find a market is to actively look for markets, and then choose one that matches your interests.

For example, pay attention to the news. What’s hot? What’s being talked about? Likewise, pay attention to what your friends and family are talking about. Eavesdrop on people at your local café, bar or beauty salon.

In doing so, you’ll likely hear about hot markets like children and young adults who are lining up to watch the latest Harry Potter movie. Or perhaps the football season is starting and people are picking their favorite players or teams. Or maybe you hear a news story about cell phone use and illness. Or perhaps you see a “top ten” list that reveals the best vacation spots in the world.

All of these topics have researchable markets.

So how do you research a market to see if it’s profitable? Remember, you want to find a hungry market. In other words, you want to sell to them whatever they’re already buying!

Researching your market

You have a market in mind. Your next step is to research to see if it’s profitable. Are they buying what you’re selling?

For example, it does you absolutely no good to sell a product that no one wants. It’s also worthless to sell a product that people want, but that they can’t buy. For example, trying to sell something to homeless people probably won’t work, because they don’t have the means or the money to buy much.

The other constraint is that you need to be able to reach your market. For example, if you’re marketing online, you can’t reach people who don’t use computers (like homeless people).

You also can’t reach people who don’t congregate in groups offline or online. Let’s take a crazy example: how would you reach people who have a birthmark on their left hand?

Chances are, the only way to reach this group would be via mass advertising. And unless you have very deep pockets like a big corporation, you probably won’t even reach a fraction of the group.

You see, it’s much easier to reach a segment of their market if they already exist as a group elsewhere. For example, bird watchers read birding-watching magazines and websites, meaning you can advertise in those places. People with medical problems go to doctors (perhaps you can do a joint venture with a doctor). People with all sorts of interests and problems search Google in large numbers. You can take advantage of that.

Indeed, knowing what people are searching for in the major search engines is one good place to start your research. You can go to WordTracker.com (or your favorite keyword tool) and find out what people are searching for in your market.

For example, let’s suppose you’re interested in dog training. If you put the words “dog training” in a keyword tool, you’ll likely find that people are searching for everything from dog-training manuals to dog-training collars. You may find that people are searching Google and others specifically for housebreaking tips, or perhaps they want to learn how to train their deaf dog, or perhaps they want to know how to train their golden retriever.

In other words, you are going to see segments of the overall market emerge, or “niche markets.” Indeed, you want to choose a niche. The more you focus on a niche, the more customers you’ll get.

This seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? You’d think that the more general your market, the more customers you get since the are more prospects in the pool. But that’s not the way it works. You see, if you try to appeal to everyone in a larger market, you’ll likely appeal to no one in the market.

Imagine a prospect walking into a bookstore to buy a book on housetraining her beagle puppy. She walks to the dog section and sees three books: “How to Housetrain a Puppy,” “How to Housetrain a Poodle” and “How to Housetrain a Beagle.”

Which do you suppose she’ll choose?

She’ll choose the beagle book, of course.

Right behind her in walks a gentleman who needs to housetrain a poodle. Which book will he choose? You guessed right: he’ll choose the book that focuses on poodles.

In both cases these customers ignored the general book, and instead bought the product that was most relevant to their situation. Your customers will do the same thing, which is why it’s absolutely essential that you choose to focus on a niche.

Even the big companies focus in on niche markets…

Have a look at the difference between McDonalds and Wendy’s fast food restaurants. Look at both their products, their stores, and their marketing, and you’ll see which niche markets they’re targeting.

For example, McDonalds has Happy Meals and Playlands. Obviously they are targeting families with children.

On the flip side, Wendy’s has carpeting in their stores, and they offer foods like baked potatoes and chili. They are targeting the adult segment of the market.

For another example, just look at the automobile makers. In theory, cars solve the problem of getting people from point A to point B. But car-makers know that cars become an extensions of the owner. They say something about the owner.

And of course different owners want and need different things in a vehicle: hence the reason car-makers can focus on different niche markets. For example, an environmentally conscious person may love the hybrid cars but detest a SUV. A family will choose a larger five or six passenger vehicle as opposed to a two-seater sports car. Wealthy people may choose expensive and prestigious cars like the Rolls Royce.

Again, this example shows that you simply cannot be all things to all people. If you want to succeed online, you’ll need to choose a niche.

As discussed, a good keyword tool like Wordtracker.com is a good place to start in uncovering niches. Once you’ve dug up a few niches, you can further your research by looking around online.

What does your market want?

As you go around to these sites, you’ll also want to pay attention to what sorts of products are being sold to meet the needs and wants of the niche market. As we’ve already been mentioned, the easiest money you’ll make is if you sell what people are already buying.

In some cases this may mean selling a very similar product to someone, except that you’ll have a different unique selling proposition (AKA USP, which we’ll talk about more later on in this report). Ideally your product will be a little better than the competitors’ products.

So how can you make your product better?

First off, you’ll need to study your competitors’ products to see how they help the market. In this report we’ll be talking a lot about information products (such as downloadable books, reports and audios) – so in that case, you’ll need to read or listen to their products. In doing so you’re likely to see gaps that your product can fill.

In addition to simply studying the products yourself, you’ll also want to see what their customers are saying about their products. What holes or flaws do they see? What do they like about the product?

You can find this out by going to places like Amazon.com and reading product reviews. You’ll also want to check out newsletter, blogs, and forums that discuss these products. Keep in mind that on some sites you are likely to run into primarily glowing reviews because affiliates are reviewing the product in hopes of selling it. Even then, some affiliates will share perceived flaws of the product.

As you go around online collecting this specific information, be sure to keep your eyes open to see what people are buying and what’s selling. For example, when you run a search on Google, the ads that appear along the side are paid placements. If there are plenty of paid ads – especially if they remain week after week – you can bet someone is making money selling to the market.

The same goes for classified ads that you see over and over in both offline and online publications. If the same ads run for weeks and months, you can bet people are buying what they’re selling.

As you visit forums related to your niche market, you may want to become a contributing member. Once you’ve spent some time becoming a part of the community, you can ask members of this niche what they want. Pay attention also to the types of questions and discussions you see coming up repeatedly on these forums, as you may be able to create a product around these topics.

What are you going to sell?

After you’ve spent some time researching your proposed niche market, you’ll likely come up with an idea of the type of product or service the market wants and needs. The next question is this: how are you going to make money providing this solution to them?

There are a few ways to do it…

First off, you can create the product. Indeed, we suggest that you create and sell your own product whenever possible, as this is one of the most rewarding and profitable ways for you to run an online business.

If it’s an information product like software, audio’s, DVD’s or written books/reports, then it’s a fairly simple process for you to create the product. For the purpose of this report, we’ll focus on how to create and sell an information product like a downloadable ebook. Later on in this report we’ll go through the exact product-creation process.

Another option is to become an affiliate for an existing product. That means that you get a commission every time you referring a paying customer to the merchant.

This model works best if you are unable or unwilling to create products to serve your niche. If you’d like to sell a physical product to your market, it may not be feasible for you to create the product yourself due to patents, manufacturing, delivery, and those sorts of issues.

For example, it’s easier for you to become an affiliate for hard goods like mattresses, dog kennels, cigars, computers, etc. In that case, you may find it easier to refer your customers to an existing product and receive a commission every time someone buys, as opposed to trying to create your own product.

Even if you have your own product, you’ll likely still want to become an affiliate for other’s products for a commission. For example, do you regularly read any online newsletters? Then you’ve probably noticed that the newsletter editor not only pitches their own products, they also pitch other people’s products from time to time.

The final major way to make money from a particular niche is to get paid to show other marketer’s advertisements on your site. You may sell advertising and links to other marketers directly. Or you may choose to display Google AdSense ads, where you get paid every time someone clicks on an ad on your site.

Generally people who make money with this model have a large content site or blog that attracts plenty of traffic. The more traffic they get, the more likely it is someone will click on the displayed ads, and/or the more money they get from paid advertisers.

The downside to this model is that you are sending people away from your site …and possibly they may not return. Your best bet is to get as many people to become your customers or newsletter subscribers before sending them to a section of your site that displays other people’s ads. That way even if they leave your site and forget to come back, you can remind them by sending out an email.

Bottom line: as discussed above, there are three major ways to make money from your site. You may use a combination of these methods, or use completely different ways to make money online (such as by selling products on eBay.com and CraigsList.com).

However, you’ll likely find the most success if you focus on selling your own product, and put less emphasis on those money-making methods that send people away from your site.

With that in mind, let’s talk about how to differentiate yourself from your competitors…

What’s a USP?

A unique selling proposition (or USP) is what makes you different from your competitors. When a prospect lands on your site, your USP is what answers the question that’s already on their mind: “why should I buy from you and not your competitors?”

Many beginners completely forget or skip over this important step. Instead of differentiating themselves, they put up “me too” sites and “me too” products, perhaps hoping to ride the coattails of someone else’s success. Instead what happens is that they lose out on sales, because the marketer simply gives no reason to a customer why they should buy from them.

Domino’s Pizza in the U.S. started out with their slogan being their USP: “get it in 30 minutes or it’s free.” All other things being equal, Domino’s gave customers a clear reason to do business with them rather than their competitors.

Burger King’s slogan and USP is “have it your way.” For a customer who’s tired of assembly-line fast-food that sits under the warming lights, “have it your way” sounds like a refreshing change – and a darn good reason to go to Burger King rather than a competing restaurant.

Scope mouthwash goes for their biggest competitor’s jugular with the slogan and USP of “no more medicine mouth.” Listerine is known for it’s medicinal taste, so Scope capitalized on this and differentiated themselves.

Not to be outdone, Listerine then created the slogan “you can handle it, germs can’t.” In doing so they created a USP that differentiates them from the competitor’s mouthwash, and turns a perceived liability (strong taste) into an asset (germ-fighting ability).

These are just real-life examples of the USPs of big business. The real question is, how can YOU differentiate yourself?

The first thing you need to do is figure out what’s important to your prospective customers. In other words, you’re not doing yourself any favors if you base your unique selling proposition around something that your customers don’t care about.

For example, let’s suppose you sell baby clothing. One way to differentiate yourself from your competitors is to offer a lengthy guarantee, such as a “lifetime guarantee.” But that doesn’t make very much sense, does it? Baby clothing is only worn for a couple months at most. As such, buyers probably aren’t interested in a lengthy guarantee.

What would make more sense is to differentiate your products based on something that IS a concern to parents. For example, perhaps the clothing is stain resistant or flame retardant. Or perhaps it’s designed so that it adjusts as the baby grows, thereby allowing parents to save money so that they don’t have to constantly be buying new clothes.

Now think about your products and your business. How is your product different from your competitor’s product? How is your business different from your competitor’s overall business? Why should a customer buy from you?

You may wish to differentiate yourself based on price – either low or high. For example, WalMart’s USP used to be “always low prices.” Meanwhile, watch maker Rolex is known for having high prices (as such, a certain amount of prestige goes along with buying a Rolex).

You may wish to differentiate yourself based on customer service. For example, offering “after hours” customer service or telephone customer service may appeal to your market. If you sell software, offering free installations may appeal to a non-technical market.

A unique guarantee may set you apart from your competitors. For example, you may offer a lengthy guarantee (perhaps even a lifetime guarantee). Or you may offer a guarantee that actually gives the customer something back if they’re not satisfied (e.g., they get to keep a gift just for trying the product, or they get $50 back if they tried the product and it doesn’t work as advertised).

An interesting way of creating the product may set it apart from similar products. It doesn’t even have to be a completely unique way of creating the product, but rather this method hasn’t been used a selling point yet by competitors.

For example, Schlitz Beer became a top contender after they marketed their product as “pure,” and described the exact method of making it pure. Other beer makers used pretty much the same process to ensure a pure product. However, since they never used it as a selling point – and thus consumers didn’t know about it – Schlitz won out by being the first.

A similar example is Folger’s “mountain grown” coffee. Nearly all coffee is grown in mountainous regions. However, Folger’s was the first coffee product to tout it as their unique selling proposition.

In both cases, if another coffee or beer maker had come along and tried to say their coffee was “mountain grown” or their beer was “pure,” they would look like copycats.

Even if you’re creating information products, you can still differentiate your product based on how it was created. For example, if you get a group of experts to create the product for you, that’s unique! And indeed, we’ll talk about how you can get others to write and market your product for you later on in this report.

Another way to differentiate yourself is to become the “first” in your category (or you can also become the biggest, fastest, best, smallest, etc in your category). If you can’t think of a category, then you can make one up. You see, people like to do business with companies that are “first” or “best” in a field, as it tends to convey experience and trust.

Let’s go back to the example of the dog training market. Let’s suppose you sold information products about how to train border collies. If you lived in the U.S., you couldn’t call yourself the “World’s Best” or “United State’s Best” collie trainer (at least not until you’ve spent some time building up your reputation).

However, you could do some research and see if perhaps you are the best in your area. Perhaps you could be the “South West’s premiere border collie trainer,” or “Arizona’s premiere border collie trainer.”

Perhaps you are the first in your town, in which case you could market yourself locally as, “Anytown’s first border collie trainer!”

Online you can do the same thing. For example, can you create a book that’s the first to talk about a specific topic in great depth? Or perhaps it’s the biggest book to date on this particular subject (e.g., “The World’s biggest book on border collie training”).

Another way to differentiate your product or business is by pointing out something unique about you. Do you have an interesting story? For example, if you’re selling business information, perhaps you have a unique “rags to riches” story that says, “if I can do it, you can too.” Or perhaps you beat cancer or you’re blind or you run a dog shelter despite having severe allergies. If these things help you differentiate yourself from your competitors in a positive way, perhaps by conveying a benefit, then they can be turned into unique selling propositions.

Note: start with the end in mind! You may not want to use a USP that’s based around your personal life, as that means your personal identity is wrapped up in your business. Doing so makes it harder to sell your business. More about that in the next chapter.

I’ve given you several examples of ways you can differentiate your products, business and even yourself from your competitors. Please know that this list is not exhaustive, but rather it serves to get you thinking about how you’re different from others.

Just remember this: your customers are always going to ask, “why should I buy from you?” You need to be able to give them a good reason. Your unique selling proposition should clearly and succinctly give them a good reason to buy from you.

Getting Set Up to Do Business Online

So far you’ve chosen and researched a niche market, and figured out what sort of product to sell them based on their problems, wants and needs. You’ve discovered the different ways to make money online with your market (e.g., creating your own product, becoming an affiliate, or selling ad space). You’ve also thought about how to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

At this point you’ve likely come to the conclusion that you can best serve your market by creating and selling an information product. That means you’ll need to start making decisions about whether to create your products and site yourself, or outsource the task.

In the next chapter we’ll talk about whether to create an ebook yourself or outsource the task. In this chapter when we refer to outsourcing, we’ll be looking solely at the ins and outs of building your site (e.g., web design).

Before we jump into this, let me say one thing: as you start building your site as well as building your business, you should begin with the end in mind.

Although you may start out putting long hours in to get your business off the ground, you don’t want to do that forever, right? That means you should consider ways to automate your site and make it more of a “hands off” operation.

For example, you may use tools (like a good payment processor that delivers the product) so that your sales and delivery process is automated. Or you may outsource certain tasks like customer service and product creation.

Do take into consideration that some day you may want to sell your business. As such, your identity shouldn’t be completely wrapped around the business, as it makes it all that much harder to sell. You also want your business to grow even when your absent – both so that you can take time off later on, but also so that it continues to thrive even if you sell it or you pass away.

With these things in mind, let’s jump into the “nuts and bolts” of building an information-product website and business

Choosing a Domain Name

One of the first things you’ll need to do is choose a domain name (e.g., domain.com), which is your address on the web.

Registering a domain name is not the same as registering a business name (which is related to creating a legal entity for legal and tax purposes). That means that your domain name can be your business name, but it doesn’t have to be.

And you don’t even necessarily have to have just one domain name – you can use several for different purposes, and just forward your secondary domain names to your main domain name. Or you could even use different domain names for different products.

For now, however, we’ll assume that you need to choose one domain name for the product and website you have in mind. You can worry about other websites and domains later on.

The first thing you’ll need to consider is whether you want to get a .com, .net, org, .info or other name with a different extension. You may be tempted to grab something other than a .com name, because the .com name you want is already taken, but the name is available with other extensions.

Don’t bother.

The reason is because right now most people think of domain names as .com names. If you tell someone that your domain name is “mycrazylittledomainname.net,” they’ll probably remember “my crazy little domain name,” but they’ll forget it’s a .net and assume it’s a .com domain.

Take toll free telephone numbers as an example. If you tell someone you have a toll free number, they’ll likely automatically assume that it’s a number that starts with “1-800.” However, that might not be the case, as pre-fixes like “1-866” are also toll free.

Same with domain names. If you tell someone you have a domain name, they’ll assume it’s a .com. As such, you can make it easier for people to remember if you DO choose a .com name.

Besides, if the .com name is already taken, then there’s a chance you could run into legal issues by taking the same name with a different extension. Legal issues aside, you’d probably have customers mixing your site up with the similar name.

Avoid that hassle by getting a .com name …and then secure the .net and .org versions too, just to be on the safe side (if your site takes off and someone else gets the .net version of your name, you’re going to kick yourself later on!).

The next thing you’ll need to take into consideration is how memorable the name is. If someone sees or hears the name once, will they be able to remember it a few hours from now when they want to visit your site? Does the name make sense and is it related to your product and/or business? Or if the name is “made up” (like Google or eBay), do you have a plan in place to brand this name?

Another thing you’ll need to consider is how the name sounds when it is said out loud. There’s a good chance you’ll say your name out loud at some point, whether it’s on a teleconference, during a radio interview, or even just to a neighbor at the neighborhood block party. Is it easy to say?

For example, let’s suppose your domain name is “dogtraining4u.com.” If you said that name out loud, you would need to say something like: “dog training …the number 4 …the letter u …dot com.”

That’s sort of clunky, isn’t it? And what’s the probability someone will actually remember it? Not very likely.

Also be weary of using homophones in your domain name. Homophones are words that are pronounced alike, but spelled differently (and have different meanings). For example, to, too, and two are homophones.

If you use homophone words in your domain name, you’ll likely always need to explain (and spell) which word you’re talking about.

For example, consider a domain name like iglassesdirect.com. Putting an “i" in front of a domain name is somewhat common (as the I refers to the Internet). However, when you put it in front of the word “glasses,” many people will assume the name is “eyeglassesdirect.com.” Thus if you say the name out loud, there will be some confusion unless you make it clear that it’s the letter “i.”

Next up: should you use hyphens in your name or not? Some people say yes, do to SEO (search engine optimization) reasons. We’ll talk about that in the next paragraph.

Others say “no,” because it makes the name a bit awkward to say out loud (since you have to let people know that you’re referring to an actual hyphen, and not the word “hyphen.” I’m inclined to agree with those who say to skip domain names with hyphens.

A final consideration is what sort of name you should choose for search engine optimization purposes. For example, some people feel that your domain name should reflect the top keywords that people in your niche will use to find you through a search engine. Since some search engines take into consideration the domain name when ranking sites, this can help you.

If the name makes sense and it’s one you would use anyway even if it didn’t help in the least, then go ahead and use the name. However, I wouldn’t suggest choosing a name just based on a getting a small edge in the search engine rankings. If you needed that small of an edge, you would likely be a search engine optimization expert working in a very competitive niche: and in that case, you would already know the answer to, “should I use my keywords in my domain name?”

In other words, if you have to ask, then you probably don’t need to use your keywords in your domain name. Just stick to choosing a name that’s easy to say and easy to remember.

Registering a Domain Name

Hopefully you have at least a few possible domain names in mind. If the domain name is somewhat common, there’s a good chance that it’s already taken. As such, be sure to have some backups ready.

Note that some domain name registrars also give you suggested related names. Even if the name you want is available, be sure to look at their suggested names, as you might be surprised to find one you like even better.

Sometimes you might find that a name is unavailable for registration, but when you visit the site you find the name is for sale. It could be for sale anywhere from a few dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Should you buy it?

That depends on you. If the name is the ONLY name that fits your business, and if the price if right, you may consider buying for a higher price (hundreds or even thousands of dollars).

However, what truly makes many names valuable is what the owner does with them. As such, the domain name itself might not “make or break” your site – rather it’s your marketing that will make or break you. In that case, chances are you can find a domain name that you like equally as well that will work just fine.

Now back to registering a domain name rather than trying to buy one that’s already registered…

In order to register a domain name, you need to go to a domain registrar like NameCheap.com. Ideally you’ll want a domain name at one company while you host the site through another company. Sure, some companies will be happy to do both for you – but should anything ever happen to the company, you want to make sure they don’t have full control over your domain name by being both the registrar and the host.

Another thing you may want to take into consideration is auto-renewal of the domain name, and email notifications. This means that you want a host like NameCheap.com that emails you to inform you your renewal date is nearing, and then lets you renew automatically using a credit card on file. You’ll kick yourself if your registrar lets your domain name renewal date slip by without a word from them… and you lose the name!

The actual registration of the domain name is fairly simple. Go to NameCheap.com and enter your domain name in the search box. After you submit this name, you’ll either be told the name is already taken (in which case you start going down your list of preferred names), or you’re told it’s available. In that case, you can register it – and most likely the .net and .org extensions will be available in addition to the traditional .com.

At this point all you have to do is follow the screen prompts to register and pay for your name for one year, two years, or more. One year should cost less than $10.

Note: be absolutely sure that you register the correct contact information. In the event of a problem, if the registrar can’t reach you, you may lose control of the domain name. Further, if you put in false information, your domain name registration may be cancelled.

That’s all you have to do to register your domain name. After you choose a host, you’ll need to revisit your domain name account to change some information. But we’ll talk about that in the next section…

Hosting Your Site

You have the domain name. Now in order to actually have a website appear when someone types in your domain name, you need to purchase webhosting service. Your web host will provide space for your website (e.g., the pages, pictures, audios, videos, scripts and other files needed in order to make your site work).

If you type in “web hosting services” into your favorite search engines, you’re likely to be overwhelmed by the choices. You’ll see hosts that really run the gamut in price – from as little as a couple bucks per month, to many hundreds of dollars for dedicated servers (this is when your site is the only thing using the resources on a particular server).

You’ll also see huge features lists, which may confuse you if you’re unfamiliar with the terms. All you really need to check is that you have a decent amount of disk space, a decent amount of bandwith (this is how much traffic you have and what size files they download), enough emails per account, multiple domain names and subdomain names per account, and features that allow you to run scripts such as PHP and MySql. You’ll also want to make sure the host has good customer service, and that your account is serviceable with a control panel.

If you’re not familiar with any of the terms above, don’t worry. Most people will do just fine getting a “Baby Croc” or larger account from HostGator.com. This webhosting will more than meet your needs, unless you are running an extraordinary site: for example, if you plan on having a YouTube style site with thousands of people downloading thousands of large files (videos) per day. In that case you may need a site with more bandwith and more resources.

For 99.9% of web entrepreneurs, however, HostGator.com will more than meet your needs. If you have any concerns, talk to HostGator customer service to see if they have the features and resources needed to run your proposed site.

Changing Name Servers

Once you’ve signed up for a webhosting account through HostGator.com, they’ll send you an introductory email that includes information about how to change your domain name servers.

This means that you need to do into your NameCheap.com domain account, click on name servers, and change the two name servers to those listed in your introductory email. If you have any questions regarding exactly how to do this, HostGator has more information and even some videos that takes you step-by-step through the process.

Web Design: Outsource or Do it Yourself?

Now that you have your domain name and hosting lined up, it’s time to get your website designed and online.

Before you do this, you should sketch out a rough idea on paper. And in order to do this, you need to know what you want visitors to do when they visit your site. Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter? Do you want them to buy something from you? Knowing what you want visitors to do will help you design the site for maximum effectiveness.

Design is really composed of two parts: making the site aesthetically pleasing, and making it functional. Sometimes you can have a pretty site that’s completely unusable, or you can have a user-friendly site that’s not all that “pretty.”

You should strive for usability first, in the sense that your visitors do what you want them to do when they hit your site. Aesthetics are important, but that should be a secondary goal that bows down to functionality and a good conversion rate (i.e., the number of people who opt-in to your list or buy something relative to the number of people overall who visit your site).

As you mull over how to design your site, you’ll come up against the question: should you outsource this task, or do it yourself?

This of course depends entirely on you and your budget. For example, some people have more time than money, so they choose to learn how to do it themselves – and once the business is making a profit, they hire someone to redesign the site.

Another option is to buy a template for relatively inexpensively, and then “tweak” the template yourself to create the site, or hire a designer to tweak it (which is less expensive than hiring someone to do it from scratch).

Those who have some capital to work with will likely choose to hire a designer at the outset so that it’s done professionally and done right the first time. Indeed, it’s a good idea to get in the habit of outsourcing tasks that are not related to your core competency skills. In other words, if you’re not a designer, than hire a professional to do it for you.

However, I would suggest that you do learn the very basics of how to make changes to a website and upload the new files to your site. The reason is because making a small change – such as changing the color of the background or correcting a typo – is the sort of thing that should take less than five minutes.

It doesn’t make sense to pay someone else to do this, and then wait around for hours or even days for them to get around to making the change on your site – especially when you could have done it yourself instantly. For those reasons it’s a good idea to learn the basics of html and how to upload a site (using FTP, or through your webhosts control panel). Once you learn how to do it, you’ll find it a fairly simple task.

Now let’s move on to choosing other services and tools you’ll need to run your site effectively…

Choosing an Autoresponder and List Manager

If you plan on building a mailing list (and you should), then you’re going to need an autoresponder and a mailing list manager. Most companies providing these two things combine them, so if you want an autoresponder, you’ll automatically get a list manager too.

So what exactly is the difference?

An autoresponder gives you the ability to load up a series of email messages and deliver them to subscribers at set intervals. For example, as soon as someone signs up to your mailing list, they’ll automatically get an introductory email from you. Then you can send them pre-written follow-up emails every few days, few weeks, or at whatever interval you choose.

For example, you can choose to deliver the first email message instantly, then have the second one delivered three days later, then have the third one delivered three days after that, and then each email after that delivered in weekly intervals.

Why would you do this?

Simple: to build a relationship with your subscribers. Experts suggest that it takes at least 7-12 contacts in order for a prospective customer to get to know and start to trust you. You can make these contacts automatically by delivering a series of emails to everyone who signs up. For example, you can offer a 10-part course delivered by email, with one part delivered weekly.

Bam, just like that you’re in contact with your subscribers for ten weeks …completed automated.

Of course sometimes you want to send a new email to everyone on your list, such as a regular newsletter, or perhaps an announcement about an upcoming product. This is where a “broadcast email” feature comes into play, which is part of your regular mailing list manager.

Your mailing list manager will also automatically take care of new subscriptions, change of email address, and people who want to unsubscribe.

There are two ways you can get an autoresponder/list manager on your site. One way is to purchase a script, install it on your site, and manage the list from your own domain name. The second way is to have a third party provide this service to you.

Hosting the list on your server means that you are solely responsible for deliverability issues. For example, if AOL blacklists your domain name, then you are responsible for getting off that blacklist and staying off that blacklist so that your customers will receive your emails.

The upside of course is that it’s cheaper, since usually you pay a one-time fee rather than a monthly fee. For those who don’t trust a third party, they may also feel safer keeping the list on their own site (just be sure that regardless of what solution you choose, that you always back up your list!).

The second solution you may choose is to have a reliable third-party service provider manage your list, such as Aweber.com. The major benefit is that it’s hands-off in terms of deliverability issues. Indeed, Aweber is constantly working to ensure that their client’s emails get delivered.

Ultimately the choice is up to you, depending on your technical skills, budget, and comfort level. However, I highly recommend that you give Aweber a try, as they make your list management completely stress-free.

Choosing a Payment Processor

If you’re selling your own product or products, then you’re going to need a way to accept credit cards and – if it’s a downloadable item – handle delivery. Well-known payment processors like Paypal.com and 2Checkout.com can do this for you. You can also get your own merchant account through your bank or other financial institution.

If you want affiliates to promote your product, then you’ll need a solution that not only accepts payment and handles delivery, but also tracks affiliate referrals.

For digital products, Clickbank.com is the most well-known and trusted third-party payment processor that also tracks affiliate referrals. Their fees are slightly higher than some payment processors. However, Clickbank handles everything, including cutting checks to your affiliates. In other words, for that fee you get a completely hands-off solution.

Since Clickbank is so well-known, your affiliates will feel safe signing up for your affiliate program through Clickbank. They know for sure they’ll get their affiliate commissions.

Another benefit of using Clickbank is that affiliates can find you through Clickbank’s market place. This is especially useful if your product has made it to the top of its category due to brisk sales.

The downside is that Clickbank doesn’t provide good affiliate tracking statistics like many other solutions. Also, you don’t know who your affiliates are until they’ve actually made a sale. Even then, you can’t mass email all your affiliates.

The upside is that they do provide tracking statistics so you and your affiliates know exactly how well your campaigns are doing. They also have a market place where potential affiliates may find you. And finally, in this case you know who your affiliates are, so you can email them at any time.

The downside is that you (the vendor) is solely responsible for paying your affiliates.

If you like the idea of using a script to run your affiliate program via Paypal (which doesn’t have it’s own built in affiliate management script), there are scripts that you can host on your own site (just run a search for “affiliate script,” or search at places like HotScripts.com).

The upside is that you get all the functionality that you do with Paydotcom.com, except that you don’t have to pay a fee every time you make a sale, since the script is hosted on your server. The downside is that some people may feel uncomfortable with you running the affiliate program, especially if you’re an “unknown” in your field.

Be sure that if you collect email addresses on these sites, that you maintain two separate mailing lists. That way you can send your subscribers back to the domain where they originally subscribed. Doing this ensures your affiliates get credit for their referrals.

Choosing a Blog Platform

Another tool you are likely to use on your website is a blog. Just like some of our other tools, you have the option of choosing a third-party service provider (like Google’s blogger.com) or a solution you host on your own site (like wordpress.com, typepad, movabletype or similar).

In this case I suggest that you host the blogging script on your own site. That way you fully maintain control of your own blog, and you don’t lose your blog due to false spam complaints (“splog”) or similar.

Indeed, Blogger.com’s bots sometimes flags a blog as spam, and if you don’t log into their site in a specified amount of time and request a human review, your blog may be deleted.

Your best bet is to use a well-known blogging platform like wordpress.com. If you chose a webhost like HostGator that uses cpanel to manage your hosting account, then generally you can install Word Press with just a couple clicks of your mouse.

Other Scripts and Tool

Speaking of cpanel, be sure to check out there other tools and scripts available to you with just a couple clicks. For example, you can have a discussion forum up and running in minutes on your site using the installations included with cpanel.

The other tool you may need is the ability to convert word documents and other files into PDF files (which is a cross platform reader, meaning it can be read on both Macs and PC’s).

Check your computer, as you might already have the ability to “print as PDF.” If not, you may consider using the free openoffice.com solution. This package is both a word processor and a PDF converter.

Open Office is what I recommend. However, if for some reason you are unhappy with this solution, then you may also consider PDF995, which prints most any files as a PDF file.

How to Create Your Information Product

In the midst of getting your site set up and ready for you to blog, take orders, and sign up newsletter subscribers, you also (obviously) need to create your product. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll assume that you’ll be creating a downloadable report (AKA “ebook”).

Naturally of course there are other ways to create information products. For example, you could create a regular hard copy report or book, print copies, and ship it out yourself. Or you could use a “print on demand” company like Lulu.com to accept payment, print, and ship orders.

We prefer downloadable products, at least when you’re getting your business of the ground. That way you never have to handle orders, and you don’t have any expenses related to keeping inventory on hand, printing, etc.

Ebooks aren’t the only downloadable information products, however.

You could also create an “audio book,” where a print book is read and offered as a downloadable mp3 file. You can even interview an expert in your niche and turn this interview into a product. Indeed, you can offer your product both as an audio file (mp3) and as a transcript (pdf file).

Another downloadable product you can offer is software. If you’re not a programmer, you can visit sites like elance.com and outsource the task of creating a piece of software.

In this section we’re going to talk about how to quickly and easily create a written report.

There are three main ways you can create a writ