Tag Archives: hostgator

Want to try Affiliate Marketing but don’t Know How to Build a Website

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This past weekend a friend was at my house and was asking about what I was doing regarding Affiliate Marketing. I showed him a few of my sites and listed my recent commissions from one of my eBay affiliate sites. I had a very good commission on a guitar that someone had bought through the site. I don’t remember the exact amount, but it was probably about half of what many people make working a real job.

Although I had talked to my friend several times about getting into Internet Marketing, he was never really interested. This time though, after seeing that one sizable commission, he was all ears. As soon as I started talking about ‘setting up a site,’ he immediately gave up before he even started. He said, ‘I don’t know anything about setting up websites, don’t you have to be a programmer or something ?’

Obviously times have changed very much. If you had to be a programmer there would probably be a tiny fraction of sites that are presently up and running, and none of them would be mine.

I showed my frined how easy it is to install WordPress, and he was definitely impressed. I don’t have any statistics, but I would guess that the vast majority of the sites being set up regularly for marketing are WordPress installations. With nothing more than a shared hosting account, you can be up and running with more free software at your disposal than most people could probably ever afford to buy to get started.

The one issue that my friend brought up, which was a valid point, was the fact that the new WP installation looked horrible. It did too, it was the default theme that is used when you install WP. He said, ‘I guess you have to pay a programmer to make it look good ?’ I said, ‘nope.’

That’s when I popped open Artisteer and showed him the best software that I’ve purchsed recently. Just the included themes had him ‘ooooing and ahhhhing.’ When I showed him how easy it is to make the themes your own by customizing them, he was sold…literally.

Though I will probably live to regret it, I sold my friend a hosting account through HostGator, Artisteer through an affiliate link, and even XSitePro2 also.

When I showed him XSitePro2 he was again amazed at the power and ease of use that the software offers.

My point of this post is this – don’t let anything stop you if you’re wanting to get into Internet Marketing. I know very little about programming. I don’t even know much about marketing in general. There’s many things I didn’t know when I started a little over a year a go, and there’s many things I still don’t know now. There’s nearly an endless supply of information to help you in your marketing endeavor, usually free if you look hard enough.

I made my mind up I would stick with it until I was able to earn my living solely from marketing online. I’m not there yet, but I will be, and it will be this year.

Setting up websites shouldn’t even be something that you let slow you down, much less stop you. Whether you choose to use only WordPress, XSitePro2 or even just HTML sites, there’s software and information available to get you to the point of creating your own attractive, functional, impressive websites…use it.

Making Your WordPress Blog Look Like a Store

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Personally, I don’t really like just having a WordPress blog that looks like a WordPress blog with ads in every post, and in every inch of the sidebar(s). I know, I know, that’s what this one looks like now, but it’s going to be changed, hopefully soon. I’ve just been concentrating on other things lately.

Anyway, if you trying Affiliate Marketing, but you’re having a rough time setting up a shopping cart or store type of site, then just keep using WordPress, except a modified theme version.

WordPress is a great piece of work, the developers keep updates coming regularly, there’s tons of plugins for it, the search engines love blogs, and IT’S FREE!! What else could you want ?

For the measly cost of some good web hosting, I use both Bluehost and HostGator, the phpBay WordPress plugin, a domain name, some of your time and effort, and you can get a great looking WordPress store online very cheaply.

If you have a look at this guitar site that I put up, you’ll see how easy it is. I will say however regarding this site, it isn’t a flashy, graphic-filled, animated site, mainly because this was my first effort at modifying a WordPress (theme) this much.

I also wanted something simple, but functional. This site has served me pretty well considering I’ve added very little content to it. It has however, dropped to very little traffic because I didn’t keep adding fresh content to it.

After you modify a WP theme, add some ‘text widgets’ in the sidebar(s) as I’ve done, naming them of course to whatever is relative to your store. Then, instead of just writing and displaying posts like a standard blog, you can set up pages instead. Using the phpBay plugin to insert your auctions, and you’ve got a great little store set up with very little work, and not much money.

About the only HTML you’ll need to know is how to add (and display) the link to your page (where the auctions are).

It’s similar to the following:

<a href=”http://ThisIsMyDomain.com/widgets-auctions-page”>Buy My Widgets Here!</a>

Of course you’ll then have the link ‘Buy My Widgets Here!’ being displayed in the text widget of your sidebar.

If you look at ‘The-Guitar-Store‘, that’s exactly what I’ve done. All the items for sale are eBay auction listings. I do need to add a better header, a touch more graphics, and to do a few tweaks, but it wouldn’t take much to make that site very professional looking.

If I average the cost of the phpBay plugin, my hosting and domain registrations over a year, I’m paying probably less than .75 cents per day (figuring just 1 web host). It actually gets cheaper as I add more sites because BlueHost and HostGator allow unlimited domains on my hosting services, and the phpBay plugin can be used on as many sites as you feel like setting up.

I’ve paid for everything and then some already. The rest is pure profit for the first year!!

If anyone has any questions on how to set up a WordPress/phpBay auction site, just click the ‘Contact Us’ link on The Guitar Store site, or this blog.