Your Domain or Marketing Center

Having your own business on the Internet is just like any other business in the offline world. When you start a business in the "Offline World", you need a place to set up business. So, you either rent or purchase a business location. The same thing holds true for the Internet. You either have to rent or own your Internet space.

Renting your space on the Internet is not a good idea. By renting, I mean having a free hosting service on a site like Tripod. Your website address would look like this:
http://www.tripod/com/?/id?.index.html

People do not trust this kind of website address. They know it is free, that it is unstable and the person who has a website there could be up and gone tomorrow. Many scams exist on these free sites. People have nothing invested, so they can take your money and run to the next free site and start over again.

To create trust with your clientele you need to have your own piece of the Internet called a Domain. This is where you have purchased a business name and have it located (hosted) at a paid for, commercial hosting service. This is your Marketing Center. Your clients know you have invested in your business and you are less likely to rip them off.

Just like in the offline world you will need a marketing plan, inventory, an advertising budget for promotions, giveaways and services to attract people. If you haven't planned for this or you were mislead into thinking you can make serious money on the Internet without spending money, now is the time to reflect and see if this is really for you! Yes, you can start out with a little money, but as your income increases, plan on budgeting more of that income to be invested in your online business!

Why do you need a Marketing Center?

The reason you need your own Marketing Center is to create several avenues of income, all from one location.

Affiliate sites or pages that companies give you are just a tool to help you market one specific program or product. They are called a replicated site, meaning that all the affiliates have exactly the same information and wording on them including Meta Tags which we will talk about later. Because of this replicated feature you get lost in the search engines when you try to list them.

Many affiliate pages have characters in them such as a ? that some search engines like Lycos will not even accept. Most affiliate programs do not let you know these facts because if they did and you realized it isn't as simple to market on the internet as they would have you believe, you wouldn't join.

They get you to join a program by telling you how EASY it is. That you don't have to spend any money to be successful. They give you a generic, self replicated web page, a few marketing ideas and tools, a quick pat on the back, and a "GO GET'M TIGER!" Now you've failed again!

We will show you how to change this! You will now look, act and have all the information and tools to succeed as a professional on the Internet and earn the type of income you have been looking for!

Your Marketing Center

The first part of your Marketing Center Training will be choosing a "Domain" name and a hosting company. It will be from this Domain or website address that you will share your information and business opportunities with the world.

You will want to have keywords or a keyword phrase in your Domain name if you are using a hosting company that does not allow Sub-Domains. If your domain hosting company allows Sub-Domains, then choose any short name you desire.

For example, my domain is http://clayparker.net. If I was going to use a subdomain for a training site, it would look like this: http://webtraining.clayparker.net.

A keyword or phrase will be the words or phrases that people would type into a search engine to locate information about a particular subject or topic. By having these key words in your domain name the search engines will give you a higher placement or ranking. For example: A name such as www.free-money-business- marketing.com has 4 key words that relate to an Internet business website. The keywords are Free, Money, Business, and Marketing. These key words will also be used in the content of your main web page. By using keywords in your Domain name and then repeating them in the content of your web page, the search engines will give you a higher ranking or placement. So think about your Domain name carefully and use keywords that normal people would use in doing a search for the products or topics that your web page offers, if you can't have Sub-Domains. Remember the above was just an exaggerated example. Don't use it, your email address would be rediculously long!

There are several "hosting" companies you can use to purchase and host your Domain with. Of course we recommend ClayParker.Net Hosting. We've put all the bells and whistles you will need to develop your marketing center at fantastic prices. You won't find a better price for what we have to offer!

Plan of action for this section:

Web Page Design

Before we get started, if the following is a little above your head, we offer a Marketing Website that is pre-built. After it is up, some customization will be needed by you, but, not very much! (the reason for this is we still want you to learn. You don't want to have always depend on someone else to make adjustments to your site.)

Now that you have your Domain and Hosting service, it's time to find a web page design that you like and feel comfortable with.

Read this entire page before you start. You will want to set aside about 1 hour to complete this step if you are not experienced in HTML. (not including the time browsing templates for your Marketing Center.) Go to the restroom, grab a cup of coffee or water (no beer, we need to concentrate), turn your Genie Universal Office on to answer your calls, and lets get started!

Keep in mind when you design or choose a web look for your Marketing Center the pages need to load quickly. More business is lost from impatient guests not waiting for your page to load! The training you will learn herewill emphasize very few graphics. I like to keep pages clean and as image free as possible.

Choose a template from one of the sources below. If you choose a file that has been zipped and you do not have a program to unzip it you may download Win Zip free. When you unzip the file, you will find it easier to find and work with if you open it to your desktop rather than your "unzipped" folder in your C drive.

ClayParker.Net Template Site does charge $5.00 for a template and are very easy to work with. (Do not pick one of the Gels or a template with Map features if you are inexperienced with HTML and image editing.)

ClayParker.Net Templates
Additional Free Templates
Additional Free Templates
Additional Free Templates

HTML Editors

If you do not have an HTML editor, it is a good idea to have one. Even though we won't be using it in this training, you will use it in the future, as your skills improve and you become an HTML demon! Below, there are editors that work well and some are FREE!

1st Page 2000
Ace Free
Arachnophilia
NoteTab
Edit Plus
AOL Press

After you get your template and HTML editor, take some time and look everything over. To see the HTML file of the template that you downloaded, just click on the HTML page, click on "View" in your browser, then click on "Source". Your notepad will open showing you all the HTML (hyper text markup language) used to make the page. Compare the HTML codes to the actual page to see the parts you will be editing. If you downloaded a new HTML editor, take the time to just play with it. It's important to get familiar with everything you are going to use building your Marketing Center and future pages.

Grab a pen and piece of paper. Make a note of the order you want your "Hyperlinks" (a hyperlink is a word you click on in a webpage to take you to another webpage. It is also called an active link.) to appear on your Marketing Center webpages and what you are going to name each file.

For example: Your Home hyperlink will have the file name index.html, your Contact Us hyperlink may be email.html, your Linkpage hyperlink may be linkpage.html. Anyway, you have the idea now. Just make a note of everything you want including the file name, always using .html at the end. You will need these links, at a minimum:

After you have become familiar with your template, we now have to create some pages for future use. Open the folder that you downloaded the template zip file in, click on the index.html page icon, your browser will open with the template displayed. Now click "View" at the top of your browser, then click "Source". Your Notepad will open exposing the webpage HTML. Find the hyperlink HTML codes. Using the Hyperlink names and file names you created earlier, enter them in the proper area of the template. Be careful not to disturb any of the quotation marks or apostrophes that are in HTML codes. Here are a few examples of what your codes should look like after you have completed them:

<a href="index.html">Home</a>
<a href="email.html">Contact Us</a>
<a href="linkpage.html">Our Linkpage</a>

After you have made the changes, click on "File" at the top of your browser, then click "Save, then click "File" again, then "Exit". To see if you made the changes properly, click on the index.html icon in the folder. Your browser will open and your Hyperlinks should look like this:

Now we need to create some pages. Click the icon of the index.html file. Expose the HTML code again (you should know how to do this by now). After it is open, go to the top of your browser and click on "File", from the drop down menu choose "Save As" select the same location your downloaded file is in, type in the file name where provided, template.html Now click "Save". With the notepad still open click on "File" again, Click on "Save As" choose the same folder location and type in the name of your next file name email.html and click "Save". Do this until you have saved each file name of the links you are using. After you have done the last one, close your notepad. Look in the folder and you should have a new HTML page for each of your files plus a template if you need to have an extra page or make a mistake. We will customize these pages later and upload them to your hosting service.

Plan of action for this section: