Want To Start A Home Business
Are you confused
about where to start?

Author: Barbara King,
Owner of Direct Sales Connection

Are you wishing that you could work from home, but a lot confused about just where to begin? I'm want to give you a little insight as to the best approach. There is so much information on this website and on the internet about home based businesses, that it can be a whole lot to absorb. You can choose a business opportunity that we offer on our search opportunities pages. Many of these come with ready made websites, and many offer support with marketing. But if you want something unique and have an idea of what you would like to do, you can create your own website. It will take time, determination and a lot of hard work if you choose this path. But it will also be rewarding, in that the website will be uniquely yours.

I've been online just under a year, but I have 35 years experience as a programmer/analyst, so I'll share with you some of what I've learned. I have some websites that I coded myself and they are very original.

• Site Concept: First you need to read Finding Your Niche. Start with something you know about or have a real passion about. Narrowing down to something you really love is going to make it easier for you write about and promote. From our home page, downlaod and read the SBI Action Guide. It is packed with information on building a website that works.
  So, jot down at least three topics that you might like to create a website around.
  Now, use the free trial of Wordtracker.com and research some of the keywords that you thing folks might type into their browser, if they were trying to find the service or products that you have related to each of these three topics you wrote down. This process is called brainstorming. Wordtracker tells you a lot about KEI and what all this means. In a nutshell, KEI is keyword analysis: How many times a particular keyword is searched for, in revelance to how many existing sites provide this service. Find keywords or pharses that have a high KEI and you've got something to start on. When you have found one of your topics that has the best KEI, you've got a site concept.
  
  
• Relevant Keywords: Now, using the same Wordtracker tool, research other keywords within this topic. Find a dozen or so keywords or phrases that are related, and jot them down. Each of these keywords are going to become a page within your website. Are you beginning to get the idea?? Put some of these keywords or phrases into your browser and see what comes up. These are going to be either your competition or your potential affiliate partners. Somewhere on a company's home page, you may see the word Affiliate or partner program. Click thru and read. A great many company's offer you a commission for creating links on your site that send traffic to their site. You will be paid on acutal sales for the most part, some do offer commission just on click thrus. Jot down the names of company's that you might want to become an affiliate with. These will generate some additional income.
  
  
• Monetizing: Where are you going to get products to sell. Are you creating your own prouducts or having them dropshipped. Or, is your site just for informational purposes only? Don't forget Google Adsense. When you have your site up and running and coded and free from any broken links, sign up with Google Adsense. It's a very good source of income for any webmaster.
  
  
• Determining a Domain Name: Think of a domain name that will be easy for people to remember that is related to your site concept. Don't make the mistake of using some cute name that has nothing to do with what the website is going to be about. The SBI action guide has a whole chapter about choosing the right domain name. Use Register.com to see if a domain name is available. Wait, don't sign up there, untill you have made a decision about your hosting. If you buy a domain name at one location and then buy hosting from another, you may end of paying for the domain name transfer.
  
  
• Determine Your Hosting Solution: SBI is about the greatest way for someone to be guaranteed to have a website that is going to work SBI Make your content PREsell! The quantum-leap book. I use SBI for one of my websites. They have forums and help and you don't have to have a lot of programming experience to use their page builder. They are about $299 a year which includes hosting.
  
  If you don't have that kind of money, there is still a couple of things you can do: Dynamic Website Builder is a program where you can build your own website without HTML knowledge for $19.99 per month. This program is packed with hosting, service, support, and webtemplates, just about all you would need to get your website up and running.
  
  The third alternative is to choose your webhosting service yourself. This avenue will be the least expensive overall, but you will need to know how to code in HTML. You can learn this easily enough. Check out a book from your local library about HTML, or try some online tutorials. One of my favorite websites for help with colors and coding examples, is HTML Goodies.com.
  
  Web hosting is cheaper if you can pay for the entire year(your domain name will be free). But if you want to pay quarterly, you can do that too, but overall it will cost you more.
  
  Ipowerweb has templates that you can use, but if you want something a little more unique you can buy $5.00 Web Templates
  
  I use Ipowerweb for most of my hosting. For one thing, some software scripts require a server that can handle them, and Ipowerweb can handle everything that I have wanted.
  
  
• Time to Create Your Site: Make your home page tell all about what the whole website is about and create a page for each of your keywords that you found earlier. Make a menu or links from every page to each of the other pages. Again the SBI action guide tells all about the way to design your site. You'll need a Links page and a SiteMap page. The links page will be used to exchange links with other related websites. Search engines rank your pages by several things, Content, how many incoming links to your site, and popularity(how many times people search for your site or click thru to your site.)
  
  
• Marketing: Getting a theme, and coding and getting your site up and running is just the start. The biggest challenge of all is marketing your site. You can do it by exchaging links, paid search engine ads, posting ads in forums and on networks. You'll have to be really creative about marketing your site. I've created several pages about marketing resources and businesss tools. Browse and read and determine what might work well for you. You can join Ryze.com and choose networks to join. Networking is basically just getting the word out about what you do, exchanging ideas about marketing, discussing coding techniques and problems and how to solve them.
  
  

I own and moderate Mom's Who Sell Ryze Network. You are welcome to come and join my network. This article was meant just to give you an idea of what being a webmaster is all about. I hope it has been helpful.

While I never have claimed to be an expert, I'd be happy to answer any questions for you.

Barbara King
Owner
DirectSalesConnection.com

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