Now That’s Good Coffee! The Sky Above, The Mud Below. December 14, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a comment
Montana Cowboy Coffee
I talk to you all the time and I want to tell you a little about me.
I have some history. I’m 60 years old and have been in sales and marketing in the bricks and mortar world for 37 years.
I was a pilot and flew all over the Western United States and sometimes I landed on a little road out in the middle of nowhere to adjust the plumbing.
Whenever I was traveling I considered it a high level honor to be among the aviators. What a group they are!
Before that I lived in Montana and swam the horses across the river.
Later, while they were in much better pasture, I made that coffee that is still the best there is!
Try it!
Aluminum camp pot full of water. Get it boiling. Over a small fire.
Toss ordinary Folger’s into it. Don’t bother measuring.
After 1-2 minutes pour the hot coffee full of grounds through a t shirt in to another pot. Toss the grounds on the ground!
Throw some sugar into it. Pour into metal camp cups.
Sit back and look at the horses and the river you’d swam across.
Damn, that’s good coffee.
And look at the big beautiful sky with those huge white cotton candy clouds that came every day in August. Just before the lightning. Man, I loved it.
I forgot to tell you about my dog! Oh well…next time. rw
Merry Christmas.
Riley West - An Oregon Pioneer making his way in the trade.
www.makinganinternetmarketer.com - Have fun!
Updated! Did You Know a $7 Report Can Earn You Real Money? December 13, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a comment
Only Seven Bucks, Man!
Hello again:
You probably already know a little about good, low cost reports.
If you come around here often you know I am big on products that will…
One. Teach you a valuable skill…and
Two..Are an actual product that you can then sell.
Honestly…what could be better. You know there’s no free lunch.
I picked up on this quite a while back. Think about it.
You spot an under $10 plr report that covers something you need to learn and/or looks like something that would be a natural to sell on your site.
You pay some measly amount…usually under ten bucks, and download it.
You learn a valuable way to make money.
And you are provided the product and everything you need to sell it. And now, you start selling that. You just have to get started and it will happen.
Man, that sounds easy and straight forward.
Except for one thing. It’s always something. Ask Roseanne Roseannadanna! (Google her)
Like…do you have a domain name yet, and hosting. If not - full stop - you can go nowhere.
Pick a domain name and register it immediately. Or quit.
And…do you have hosting? (a place to hang your web pages. Your offers.) Get some right now and get this dumb obstacle out of your way!
Like…are you familiar with FTP and uploading HTML files to your Domain Address at your Host? No? Really! Get FREE FTP software for MAC… learn it in one day and get this obstacle out of your way! Really!
Yep, those few little things are what makes it impossible for good qualified people to get ahead in this biz.
My suggestion? Get ‘er done! Open the gates to IM Heaven! Knock down the obstacles! Figure it out! It isn’t hard! It just looks that way at first. Get with it! Just do it!
It is absolutely necessary and all those guys out there trying to sell you a “plan” KNOW in their heart of hearts that you won’t go anywhere because you can’t handle the basics.
What are the basics? I was hoping you’d ask.
First pick Hostgator and get a domain name and a hosting plan.
Why do I say that? I’ve had several and these guys are great! Best customer support I EVER had! Reasonable pricing too! Just take my word for it…my word is good. I’ve been there.
As for FTP? Surprise! It’s FREE! Choose Cyberduck or Filezilla and just go!
At the time of this post there is trouble at these sites but I guess it will be fixed pretty soon.
With the above in place all you need now is an HTML web page to upload! I call that “hanging’ the page.
Do it back and forth a few times (with changes), so you learn how to correct typos! Typos happen!
You do know how to edit an HTML file by now…right? If not you can know all about it here….WEBSITE EDITOR HERE!
So, now that I’ve bugged you about the basic stuff you may not know, let me make up for it by showing you this…
HOW TO GET STARTED PUTTING MONEY INTO YOUR PAYPAL ACCOUNT!
Just click here, buy it, and get to work. You are close!
One more time…
1. For simplicity Get a .com Domain Name for About 15 bucks and the reason I use the Hosting Plan below is 1. They are reasonably priced. 2. Best support in the world, no exaggeration. 3. Unlimited Sites - One hosting fee!!! That’s Hostgator and that’s the one I use and recommend.
You can get going today for $25 total for your first month and 10/mo after that! Do it! That’s HOSTGATOR!
Hostgator Rates
Use this FREE Software to make your pages.
Use this Free FTP for Mac and FREE FTP for PC to upload and download pages to your server.
Get this done and I’ll show you how to put a FREE Wordpress Blog up and running in 5 minutes.
Then I’ll show you how to put HTML sales pages up for your offers. That’s free too!
After that you can experience the fun of posting blog content and making you first sale happen.
You do this…you’re in business. And you control it!
And you did it all for $25. Not bad…not bad at all.
Email me if you have problems or questions. riley@makinganinternetmarketer.com
We’ll get you going.
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
And Now, Today’s Highly Relevant Big Offer!! December 13, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , add a comment
Save money - Make Money
Hello again:
For those in a hurry…THE OFFER!
For those who would like to see the reasoning behind this…read on.
In Internet Marketing one of the most repeated dictims is “The money is in the list.”
So we try to get people signed up to our newsletter (series of emails containing good information on the list’s subject…this list concentrates on the Basics of Internet Marketing) so that we can do a lot better job with those that sign up.
As an Internet Marketer catering to other Internet Marketers (or folks who are looking into IM for any number of reasons…mostly financial) I have this perspective…
Visitors to my blog here are interested in Internet Marketing and many of them are new to the idea. Some visitors here are way past me in capability and I probably can’t help them. I should, and in some cases I have, asked them for help.
It’s an odd but pleasant surprise to see a well known Internet Marketer sign up or leave a comment, but it happens. I’m honored.
There I go again…digressing, swerving off the road. Bear with me…it’s worth it.
At the start of this post was talking about the list. I’m not going to go into deep detail about the list or list marketing. (email marketing) except one thing…How Do You Get Them to Sign Up?
Here is how it’s done currently. An opt-in form shows up a little after you hit the page. The opt-in form offers something relevant and valuable in exchange for the sign up. Some people sign up and some don’t.
It’s the ones that don’t sign up that are causing me a little angst.
Let me tell you why.
From my perspective, all visitors to my blog (center of my business) are welcome and it’s my job to try to help them. I like this job. I made it for myself.
A lot of you visitors can do it too. It is very important to me that I help you as much as I can or as much as you will let me.
Harking back to the idea that some of you sign up and some of you don’t is exactly what have been building up to.
In this world the visitors who sign up get “Ethically Bribed” with an ebook or two used as an inducement to sign up. But that’s not the only thing the subscriber gets that the non-subscribers don’t get.
There is the OTO. (IM acronym for One Time Offer!) It used to be the Thank You for signing up page that you would see after hitting submit.
These OTO offers range from big hype sales letters touting some relevant ebooks or software to truly unique products at truly huge discounts.
My OTO page is in the unique relevant products at huge discounts catagory - that’s the essence of my one time offer. You’ll see.
So I want YOU…the visitor who chose NOT to sign up to see the incredible offer too!
HERE IT IS! FOR THE NON-SUBSCRIBERS AS WELL..THE OTO - The One Time Offer!
Hint: This offer package is EXACTLY what I used to put together my Internet Marketing Business. The package includes 4 (four) products you can sell AND it includes 4 products you need to put together your own business.
Remember, all businesses start small and as the owner learns the business grows even more.
Thank You again,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade
What Can You Do When You Build a Site That Doesn’t work? December 12, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 4comments
This Doesn't Work!
Hello again:
I’ve had a couple of sites that didn’t make any money. But each time I felt I got closer. I don’t know why there can’t just be a place you can go to be told why your site isn’t working.
I like the idea of Instant Site Review.com/ I don’t think that kind of thing exists.
Now it does! This unassuming little article is that place. Or one of them.
Did you ever hear that idea of doing a website about something you just really like? Well, I’m crazy about Dachshunds, so I made a big elaborate site. Took me a long time.
Turns out wiener dog words are cheap so I flooded the site with a ten dollar a day budget and a few articles.
I had a signup rate of about 15%. The list really took off!
Let me tell you that a wiener dog site is easy to do! Wonderful pictures AND I made a page where anybody could send me pictures of their dogs and themselves and I would post them up right away. That got busy!
I had CPA offers and affiliate offers and adsense and ONLY adsense paid. It paid about three bucks a day and I had $10 per day in PPC.
People liked the site, but they wouldn’t buy. I didn’t get it.
I declared the whole thing to be a great learning experience and shut it sown. Maybe, if I’d stayed with it…but I had all five of the criteria below going pretty well and it didn’t work.
Call me impatient but I bagged it.
Look at these following points of discussion about the efficacy of websites. One of these might explain why your site isn’t making any money.
Low Traffic - If no one sees your sales page you are finished right there!
You have to actually recruit visitors to the site! My favorite method is Article Marketing.
Unless you are very competent, depending on the Search Engines to bring you traffic is unlikely to ever work, and, really, you need to be proactive.
The best ways to drive traffic to your offer (site) are PPC, Article Marketing, and Web 2.0 Social Networking.
I’m still old school.
PPC bums me out, most of the time. I made $70,000 with ppc in 2007. But, it wasn’t repeatable.
Currently I have a blog. It gets traffic. More each month! I’m working on it.
I use articles to send people to my blog where I have several offers on webpages linked from the blog.
Bad Site Design - If you have traffic to your site, the next thing to look at is how visitors perceive your site.
If it looks unprofessional, if it’s tough to navigate or is a little ugly… it’s unlikely that visitors will trust you. They just won’t give you their money.
Good webpage/salespage/website design is easily and cheaply available. You can even do it yourself. Read all about it!
Bloggers can look good through nicely designed Wordpress themes and templates.
If you aren’t a blogger, consider using website template services for ideas.
But, I gotta tell you, being able to build or at least modify your own HTML websites is an absolutely invaluable skill…especially at first. Learn about it a little…it’s actually easy after you expose yourself to it for a little while.
Bad Traffic = Untargeted Traffic - This is pretty straightforward but a lot of people get it wrong. Example, if you have a wiener dog site don’t use “dogs” as a keyword, Broad, Phrase, OR Exact. You’ll pay for tons of traffic and very little of it will be interested in Dachshunds.
Watch your links! If you can send traffic somewhere (a valuable skill) DON”T make the mistake of sending them to the wrong place accidently! OMG! Yes, I did that very thing.
Short Story - A couple of years back I remodeled my main website. I also changed the URL address to a better one… I thought. I made a little typo. Check your links… then double check your links!
Because of that little typo I sent $700 worth of PPC to the 404 Forbidden Zone! You should have seen my face when I discovered that!
When selling specific items, send your traffic directly to the most relevant page on your site that gives them what they were looking for.
Copy Problems - If you send traffic to a beautiful page that promotes a specific product and it isn’t working, you may want to consider your copy!
Does the copy have spelling and grammatical errors? The kiss of death! Throw yourself down the staircase, kid…you can’t spell! How smart can you be? I should take your advice? That’s how a lot of people judge you, or the image of you…by the words you use and the way you write. This includes spelling and grammer.
Rewrite your copy to the best of your ability and then find someone to edit it. (proofread)
Good copywriting is what makes sales happen. Sell the benefits and tell your prospect how a product will improve their life.
No E Mail Follow-Up marketing? What if you did it all right? If your prospect left your site without buying…it’s OK…If you have their name and email address. And if you follow up with an autoresponder series.
Way back, when I was learning sales and marketing from the leaders at that time…they had a mantra. it went like this…
“We studied the best salespeople in America and we found that the top producers closed the sale on average on the seventh closing attempt (read… An email to the prospect)…AND…when you take into consideration that many salespeople know two closes and only USE one…then you have some idea of why there are so many peons in this business.)”
The lesson is this…If you want above average results, attempt to sell AT LEAST SEVEN times! Otherwise…accept low returns.
And, you can use your autoresponder for this!
So, EACH of the items listed above is critical to your online business success.
Here’s the nugget. Get the website, salespage, web page…whatever you want to call it… really looking good. Now, send it a lot of targeted traffic. Articles are my favorite. PPC is my next choice.
Pay attention, bank the money and then…PAY ATTENTION AGAIN! You will learn and prosper!
Oh, by the way, reconsider your offering (product)…if it’s not so hot, all the stuff above will still leave you with no sales! Don’t try to sell baldness remedies to people who are looking to lose weight. You want Targeted Traffic!
So, now you have it! Do all the above AND make sure it’s a killer converting product!
Thank you again…Go forth and prosper…and pay attention…you’ll get it.
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: Would you like a free ebook on spelling and grammer? Couldn’t hurt.
The Evergreen Marketing Methods. December 10, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 7comments
Evergreen Means Always
Hello again!
Evergreen Marketing Methods? Yes.
This is a little like finding the treasure at the “X” on the map. I always wanted to do that. But knowing how to dig isn’t as important as knowing where to dig.
When discussing marketing and using the word “evergreen” we mean it in the sense that evergreen is timeless. It always works.
Hello fellow Internet Marketing Enthusiasts.
Unless you are a regular reader of this blog you probably haven’t run across me before. My name is Riley West and I now have a different career than I used to have.
I have spent 36 years years in advertising, direct marketing, sales, and putting together efficient (ie..makes money) ad campaigns for Brick and Mortar outfits. Mostly mine!
And now…well, I am in the arena of Internet Marketing. I retired a while back was bored in two weeks. I wanted to sell something. It’s what I do.
So I looked around and discovered the world of Internet Marketing. I liked what I saw. Mostly.
To me it looked exactly like the sales and marketing I had been studying, applying, and teaching in the furniture business for years.
Well, sort of exactly. If you don’t include the Internet itself, op-tin forms, and autoresponders, along with a few other tools of the internet marketers trade, it is very similar to traditional selling techniques.
The IM sales we are familiar are incredibly similar to the direct selling you have seen so many times. Anybody remember Ron “But Wait!” Popeil? Hint… The Veg-O-Matic.
Just as there are techniques and methods in offline business, there are also techniques and methods in Internet Marketing that you need to know if you want to make money online.
Like all business people, those who are ‘in the know’ use tricks of the trade that become second nature. You might think you know what these trade secrets are, and maybe you do, in theory, but putting them into practice is a different matter.
I spent years in the furniture business and I can tell you that there are methods of selling, moving, and displaying furniture that someone outside the business can’t imagine.
The special techniques and methods that are the essence of Internet Marketing are also the MAIN difference between people who make money online and people who don’t. Those that earn their living from the Internet easily and instinctively, incorporate these trade secrets, these ‘Evergreen Methods’, into everything they do.
I’ve read hundreds of books on selling and marketing and this book was different. It was written up in an old ebook that I had purchased the plr rights to quite a while back, like so many others gathering digital dust on my hard drive.
As I was rewriting the chapters to use on my blog I noticed certain techniques were included in EVERY SINGLE successful sales page I had studied or built myself.
Sales pages that hadn’t made much money were the ones that failed to include these methods. I quickly realized that I had stumbled on to something pretty exciting.
I’ll tell you what that “something very exciting” is… I have read, and in some cases, studied hundreds of pitch pages. I’ve written several now in use. I filled a file with them.
So that you’ll understand, I am a compulsive consumer of marketing ideas. I always have been. I read about it at lunch! Unless I’m with someone. My car is full of marketing books and also some of those books like “Think and Grow Rich”. Not to mention tapes and cd’s. I think this is fun.
Anyway, I went back and sorted the salespages, into two piles…Successful and Unsuccessful.
Sure enough, the ones I knew were successful had many of these techniques employed and (you know what’s next) the unsuccessful ones had failed to use ANY of these standard techniques and methods.
The successful ones don’t use all the techniques in this book all the time, but they do use SOME of them all the time. I’ve not added any padding or fluff here. To the contrary, I have pared it down to what I think are the basics.
I want to emphasise that these sales principles have been around for a LONG time. It’s just lately that they have been applied to the Internet Marketing arena. I have been personally using them for almost forty years.
This book will take you straight into the sales principles that I firmly believe can be a life, and income changing, read for you. It sure was for me. I remember the very day I first ingested this information and it changed my life for the better right away.
You’ll recognize some of these some of these secrets…because you’ll have seen them on sales pages before. Or even TV and catalogues. You might even feel that these are old, worn out techniques.
LISTEN CLOSELY – You couldn’t be more wrong! Human nature does NOT change.
These are the Evergreen Marketing Methods of the Masters.
We’ll have fun with this, see you next post,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
One of The Best Kept Secrets In Internet Marketing-PLR. December 8, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 3comments
Don't Tell!
Hello Folks:
A newcomer to Internet Marketing is looking for a way to sell something online.
They have visions of it being lucrative and, even easy.
Well, it is easy, if you know what you are doing.
I get asked this question from newcomers and it goes like this…”What’s the best way for me to make money online?” (MMO)
You see, there are actually many ways to MMO and that is actually a bit of a problem.
One of my answers is “The best way for you is the way you’ll stick with.”
An awful lot of newcomers do that thing where they bounce around trying to land on the right way.
After I did that for a month or so I knew I had to get some skills learned and some terminology down about Internet Marketing.
So I joined on of those Online Internet Marketing schools and dug in for a while. It really helped.
You see I “studied” Internet Marketing for at least a year before I took a shot at getting money INTO my paypal account!
Yes, I learned a LOT of tech stuff about the mechanics of website creation, blogs, article marketing, including autoresponders, HTML, Hosting, Domains, SEO, Adwords, keywords…it just goes on and on.
And I know a LOT about it! A whole year and I didn’t make a dime. I spent a lot of money, though. My wife insists it was over ten thousand dollars.
I can hardly believe it, but, my lovely wife is the tax preparer, bookkeeper, and money manager for a good size concern in our little town. My guess is she’s right.
I spent over a year examining Internet Marketing from every angle I could find. I found a lot of angles.
But I wasn’t making any money.!
I’ve been in business 35 years and one thing I can say for sure about retail selling or sales in general is this…
Provide Value!
That’s always been the mantra. Provide value. It makes sense. Otherwise the customer will just keep his money.
Well, here we are, you and I, right in the middle of this whole Make Money Online industry and we have newcomers asking…
“How Can I Make money Online?”
People are looking at this business for a lot of the same reasons you and I are looking at it. We want to make money. It’s that simple.
But, really, don’t you think that you should have done it, and succeeded at it, before you start telling others how to do it? Especially if you are asking for money for the information. The info has to work!
You may be able to argue that both ways but the fact is…
I have done it.
And, now, I can tell you how I did it. That’s kind of fun! Especially if I make a little money on the deal.
If you sell them a book on how to make money online, and especially if YOU HAVE DONE IT, it’s the perfect deal. Even more so if you wrote it!
You ought to be able to describe to them in detail exactly HOW you did it. And that’s value. Just what they’re looking for.
I get emails asking me how I’d make money if was brand new to the Internet Marketing Business. A year ago I was telling them do do what I did. Go to school.
Yes, there are Online Internet Marketing Schools! Does this surprise you? Maybe you ought to take a look.
One of the reasons I made money quickly with plr info ebooks was because, as I told you earlier, I studied Internet Marketing thoroughly for a year before I saw that PLR was the path for me.
That, mixed with an equal or better amount of original content.
So I had websites and blogs down. I had an autoresponder. I’d been around a while.
Get this, even when someone has a proven plan for making money online…still, there can be hurdles to cross.
Let’s say you now have a plr product, all revamped and revised, ready to go, you’re anxious to start and chomping at the bit. Good! You’ve got an honest ebook with valuable information.
How are you going to promote and sell this info product? Great question and we’ll get right into it in the next section of this report.
In this case, since we’re in the blog, the next section will jbe one of the next posts, a few days from now.
Once again, it’s been fun, please comment!
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
My Favorite Ebooks on Internet Marketing! December 3, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 5commentsHello again…Riley here:
There are a lot of Internet Marketers out there that will show you what they want you to buy, usually based on the products sales volume and commission structure.
I bought and absorbed a $2000 marketing course. I learned a LOT! I don’t recommend it for people who are looking for an easier, softer way into the world of Internet Marketing (IM).
Looking back, I think a person could get into this, including getting to the “make money” stage for less than $500 bucks and a LOT of homework!
But I have to tell you, that for me it was hard, costly, stressful, and, at times, I thought about just stopping. But then I realized that, if I stopped, I’d never get there. See that’s the secret. If you start down this road…don’t quit!
I’m in that old situation where if I’d known what I know now I would have been in the money a lot sooner.
I bought and read Butterfly Marketing and Google Cash and I qualify as an affiliate salesperson for those two very popular titles. But I won’t recommend them.
They aren’t presented in the personal, personable, casual way I want my information to be. I always was like that and won’t change. When I met these Marketing Mavens in England I was so taken by their style of instruction that I bought ALL of their books (about 20) and had them printed.
As soon as I started applying what they showed me, things started to happen for me. For example this blog was at their urging and it has kickstarted my sales like non other. If you would like the book of theirs that I purchased to start this blog, email me at riley@rwestdotcom.com and I will send you the very same book…FREE!
I’m certain they are the best and they might be for you too! So, for starters, here are four of their books I think no one should miss.
1. The Smart Marketers Handbook.
4. Licensed to Quit (Your job)
And finally, their very good and compehensive Kickstart Marketing Course.
Finally, If you have any questions about these recommendations.. pop me off an email to riley@rwestdotcom.com and I will answer as many as I can!
Thank you Again,
Here’s to Your Success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade
PS: There is one other very high quality info site and I can honestly say that I have benefited greatly from just their FREE INFORMATION. The free info you’ll get there is better than 95% of the “Paid For” Stuff.
You have less than nothing to lose and you have a lot to gain. Go here!
Listen, I have to tell you this…this link is to The Man who invented Internet Marketing and he is a very cool, down to earth guy, and that’s why I like him.
His name is Ken McCarthy and he is the real deal. Be on his list.
Go there….be unafraid.
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
Why Blogs are a Necessity For A Website’s Success. November 30, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 3commentsI didn’t like blogs when I first became aware of them. I considered them “sissy”. Sorry, I grew up in Montana…rode horses and stuff.
Now my blog is the hub around which circle my websites. Sort of looks like a wagon wheel…or a wagon train circled by Indians.
Blogs have been around for a long time. They started out, at first, as great personal journals for Internet users who wanted to share their daily lives with their family and friends.
Now, in 2008, they are commonly used as business tools as well as private diaries of sorts.
I use mine as a chronicle of my personal journey into and through Internet Marketing.
My blog is the story of how I came to be involved in Internet Marketing. How I started… what I learned… how I failed and how I won.
It all started in the Summer of 2007. It’s an ongoing story. Things are a lot different for me now compared to a few months ago.
A blog is basically a mini-website authors use to post information about a specific topic or product.
Some blogs share experiences of an author’s career path, like mine, while others provide up to date news concerning the topic their blog represents.
What Makes Blogs Such a Great Tool?
Blogs can provide so many opportunities for businesses to reap rewards that no business website should be without one. My websites wouldn’t be taking in any money if it wasn’t for the traffic I generate from my blog. (read that twice)
Here are some of the benefits a blog can provide an online business owner.
Blogs gather up Targeted Traffic !!
I knew Les Schwab. He was just about the biggest tire dealer in the world.
Well, I knew about him. We spoke a few times. I own a building right next to his so I’d see him now and then. He knew what Targeted Traffic was.
He said, “The people who read my ads have bald tires!” I never forgot it.
Back to blogs…
I don’t know what I’d do without my blog. I write the posts and actually enjoy that. I picked the topic of Internet Marketing coming from my start to now in the field.
Then I edit the posts and turn them into articles for distribution. I send my articles to an article submission service. They, in turn, hand submit variations of my article to hundreds of article distributors.
That little move sends lots of traffic to my blog and it’s growing! You may have arrived here courtesy of an article.
Blogs are search engine favorites. They provide new content on a regular basis, so search engines will find them more easily. Search engines love fresh content.
Blogs can also be linked with other like-minded blogs to allow for more click-through visitors.
That last sentence came up in research. Until then I didn’t know that and it gives me some ideas! (I always said that you will learn a LOT when you do research and write about it.)
Social bookmarking sites, social media sites and even message board forums love them as well. People send their friends to them when they see something they like.
There are more reasons a business owner should take advantage of a blog and I’ll get to them in the next post.
One last thing…Blogs are easy! Especially the way I did it.
I chose Wordpress because everybody said it was the best. After using it for some time now, I can’t say it’s the best because I haven’t tried anything else. And I’m not going to!
A wordpress installation onto your hosting company’s servers could be a daunting task that would stop a lot of people.
Unless you use an installation program called fantastico. I went to hostgator and they set me up with a domain name for $15 a year and hosting at $10 bucks a month. One sale will cover your whole month’s overhead.
I went to Hostgators cpanel and clicked on Fantastico. It installed my wordpress blog in a few minutes while I had a cup of coffee.
Minutes later I was typing in my first post and the next day the site stats showed that Google and Yahoo had already been there. That’s fast.
Since it’s darn near free why don’t you just go over to Hostgator and get your own Wordpress blog up and running.
I kid you not, it’s fun. Hostgator will just walk you through it.
Write your first post. At that point you will be starting to generate traffic. And you can point that traffic where you need it!
Thanks again folks,
Riley West - An Oregon Pioneer Making His Way in the Trade
Learn to Build and Publish a Webpage in One Hour or Less! From Scratch! November 23, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 2comments
MacBook Pro
Hello Folks:
If you could make a simple website with a decent offer on it and make a little money for doing it…would you?
Apparently a lot of prospective Internet Marketers are right at that point.
I don’t know why it’s such a formidable barrier. But that’s because I can do it. Easily.
But it was impossible for me less than a year ago.
How did I do it? I made the decision to go forward.
I had been studying Internet Marketing for quite a while and the whole time I was looking into it I was avoiding the website thing.
It seemed too complicated! Too technical. They talk in code!
I remember the day. It was a beautiful early summer day and I was in my van down by the river. No I wasn’t living in it.
I had my two little wiener dogs with me and a packed lunch, including dog treats.
I was also blessed with a MacBook Pro AND I had rigged up a high speed wireless antenna with a wire running the full length of the van that had a tendency to get caught on all sorts of stuff.
My van is a legendary mess but the stuff thats in it is all good stuff. Still, it does look like maybe a homeless soul dwells among the debris.
Anyway, I had everything I needed that day, except the ability to build a webpage, no matter how simple.
And I had come to that place in my heart of hearts where I knew I had to fish or cut bait.
I had a nice lunch, listened to the radio, watched people floating by on inner tubes, and played with the dachshunds a bit…all the while gathering up the determination this was going to take.
We got back into the van and I rotated my little computer table into position and got online…I was going to do it!
I wasn’t intimidated anymore, I was just going to do it. Get ‘er done.
So I found NVU and downloaded it onto my trusty Mac. It’s free software that has been in development for years by this group of people so altruistic that they are willing to work for the good of the people. FREE!
If you type NVU into Google it’ll come up number one. Wish my sites would do that.
So now I had it, right there in front of me. Nothing could stop me.
It took a while to boot, must be a big program, but soon there was a blank document with a tips box that I read and clicked off. I was good to go.
NVU isn’t intimidating. It looks like a word processor.
I had close by a special, not supplied by NVU, tutorial I had gotten somewhere. It looked a lot easier to follow than the instructions NVU provides, and it turns out it was!
First I saved the file as “firstattemptatwebsite” to the desktop so I wouldn’t lose it.
Second thing was, I had to look at the top of the blank document for a bit and notice all the little icons across the top.
No problem. Some of the icons were familiar but most of them were foreign to me. I decided not to let that bother me.
I moved the mouse arrow up to the “Table” icon. A box appeared on my formerly blank document, a little one, about an inch long. But it had those grabby things so I grabbed it and made a big box!
This is progress! I had a big, empty box! I moved the arrow up to the little icons for rendering text to be right, center,left, or fill space. I picked “center”
Voila! The box was centered. I decided to save this now because I didn’t want anything bad to happen and this was, after all, my first webpage! I chose to make the box light blue. Wow.
The box has a little blinking thing where you can do text. Wow, now I’m on text! What next?
I typed in “Riley’s First Webpage”. It was at the far left, centered vertically and was in small Times font. That would not do.
I “selected” that text and moved my mouse arrow up to the icons I had just used and chose “center”.
Nothing happened! I couldn’t believe it…something has gone wrong already.
The dogs are staring at me. Total elapsed time from start to here, about 5 minutes.
They don’t need to go out yet. I consult my tutorial. Aha!
I go up to the table icon and watch it drop down. It has two tabs. One for tables and one for cells. What’s a cell?
Anyway, in the “cell” box I find that I can move the selected text to center top and there it was, at the top in the center. I’ve come a long ways.
Not one to rest on past achievements I move my arrow to the upper right to “Headings”. I think it should be called “Headlines” but I’m not down there at NVU working for no wages.
I select Heading 1. My text gets big! It’s a headline! It’s black though and I want to change it to red even though I’m not at that part of the tutorial yet. So I do. It gets red. This is easy!
But somethings bothering me. The text is at top center but the tops of the letters are too close to the border of the box. It looks cramped.
So I go back up to the “table” pulldown and I discover “padding”. Padding? It is set at 2 pixels. Way too close! I change it to 10. Bam! The text moves down a little and looks a lot better.
I have a webpage! Sure it’s not fancy, but if it’s this easy so far it might stay easy all along. I’m a webmaster! Not much of one but a webmaster, nonetheless.
But it’s not up on the web! Oooh, FTP…I start to re-feel the intimidation vibes.
Thinking ahead I have already looked well into Cyberduck FTP and have it installed.
Another thing I have already is a domain and hosting package at Yahoo. They make it so easy.
My name is Riley West and I have been using rwest as a short version since high school which was way before the computer era.
So I register rwestdotcom.com….I thought it was clever. Whatever.
Next I save my first HTML webpage file and I fire up cyberduck FTP. I’m growing comfortable with all these foreign terms. I am preparing to upload and publish. More new terminology.
I had to go to Yahoo! and get my secret code words so that Cyberduck can claim it represents me and none other, and be allowed access. More new things.
Cyberduck is waiting. I tell it which file I want uploaded to rwestdotcom.com.
In the pulldown menu in the window for Cyberduck I select “upload” and “choose file”. I select firstattemptatwebpage.html and click upload.
About four seconds later it’s done and declared “successfully uploaded”. Man!
I have come so far in the last half an hour that it just blows me away! I’m excited.
But now…the real test…is my webpage on the web with hungry hoards looking at it?
As it turns out…no hoards. The only person in the world that knows it is there at this point is me. And I never changed it from that day on.
Let’s go there. Ok. I go to Yahoo and get into my website management area and go to “File Manager”. OMG there it is! I click on it. It comes up on the web!
It has an address. Actually it’s a URL. Uniform Resource Locator. Who knew?
My first website is at http://rwestdotcom.com/firstattemptatwebpage.html Paste this URL into any browser and you are there. Incredible, really.
Go there. Prepare to be impressed. The whole thing took about 30 minutes. Now I could do it in 5, including changing or correcting text, etc. Typos happen!
I’m a webmaster. It feels good.
Now, if you need to be able to do this, just do it. That’s how I did it.
I actually became capable of making money online that day down by the river with my dogs. It took less than an hour.
I followed this tutorial which you can download right here - FREE!
I have webpages now that are more complicated but the basics stay the same.
It is actually easy and I was afraid of it. Human nature I guess.
To recap…Go to Yahoo and get a domain name and hosting. The cheapest one.
Then download NVU and Cyberduck. They’re FREE!
Next, make your simple webpage and upload it! You’re in business. Welcome!
If you’d like that tutorial I used, guess what? It’s FREE! And it’s right here! But you might have to endure a little salesmanship. It comes with the territory.
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
Riley West
Traffic from Article Marketing. It Works! November 14, 2008
Posted by Riley West in : The Making of an Internet Marketer , 1 comment so farHello Again:
Boy…I have a good one for you here. This will serve notice that I am more fallible than average!
I closed down a site several months back. I just hadn’t done it right and there were many things about it that no longer pleased me so …down it went.
The site had been rather quiet for some time due to me actually getting tied up into a Google adwords campaign for several months. I made some good money, about 7 to 8 thousand dollars net per month for 10 months in combination with a furniture store in my hometown that I own but don’t work in.
Well, it’s Nov of 2008 and as you know there is a big retail slowdown going on, out there in the real world. So that campaign has become unprofitable but for ten months it took me away from my interest in that other site and, right or wrong, I let it languish. I had considered it a starter site for learning purposes so I didn’t mind the idea of letting it go and starting something a lot better now that I knew more.
And I did!
But I forgot something. In 2006-2007 I had written about 30 articles and posted them to the 10 top article distribution outfits including ezinearticles, go-articles, article alley and the sort.
So I had 30 articles, written by me but forgotten, on 10 sites for about 300 links back to a website I had taken down! I had traffic! Going nowhere. What a waste. It was hundreds per day. I had changed url’s and failed to think of all that lost traffic!
I’m now in the process of converting all these articles, and rewriting bits of each, to have a link to this site that actually is up and running.
I told you a while back (appx 2-3 weeks) that I was going to push on article marketing for a while and see if I could get enough traffic to get excited about.
So, as well as converting articles I already had all over the place I started up with that new article submission service that I told you about.
It’s called www.submityourarticle.com and, so far I really like it, especially now that I am past the learning curve.
Here’s how it works. You write an article targeted to keywords you want traffic for.
Then you take your article into their section called “article leverage” where you write a few variations of your title, your intro, some random individual sentences, alternate resource boxes and article leverage takes these well done (because you did them) changes and applies them randomly across some 2000 article sites. What an idea!
I haven’t seen a traffic increase yet but I am just finishing as I write. I would expect to see something soon.
I’ll keep you posted.
In order to keep in focus what this blogs intent is here is the Mission Statement.
This blog, The Making of an Internet Marketer, is here to inform visitors about sales by way of the internet and to make money for it’s owner (yours truly) while concentrating on the basics of Internet Marketing. The basics…hear that. I found that until I had a good grounding in the basics I just couldn’t move ahead. See the link at the bottom of the page and download “The basics”
Here’s a great website software tutorial -
Here’s a great Wordpress blog tutorial.
http://rwestdotcom.com/wordpressguru/WPsalespage.html
Here’s a great Article Marketing for Targeted Traffic Tutorial
So there you have it. Webpages, Blogs, and Traffic to them.
Old school still works and works well!
Here’s to your success,
Riley West - An Oregon pioneer making his way in the trade.
PS: get the FREE “Basics” PDF here. Enjoy. Read. Learn. Do.
