Now that you are ready to go out and get some links to your site, it is important that you follow these general rules. First, you need to decide what keywords you want to rank high for in the search engines. If you do not know yet, then you’d better start researching all of the keywords related to your site to see which ones will bring you the most traffic as well as the most relevant traffic. Read my post titled “Let’s Get Down To Business” for the tools you need to research your related keywords.

Once you have a list of all the keywords that you want to show up for on the search engines, you will want to make sure that when someone links to your site, they use some of the keywords you selected in the text of the link.  Remember from Part 1, search engines see a link from another site to yours as a vote. And whatever keywords they link to you with is a vote for your site for those keywords. So, if someone links to my blog with the keywords “Online Business Help,” that is a vote for my site for each of those keywords as well as for the whole phrase. Keep in mind also that a one way link is much better than a link exchange. Search engines know that if you’ve exchanged links, both sites have mutually agreed to vote for each other for those keywords. A one way link tells the search engines that a site voted for your site just because they thought your site was relevant to those keywords. Make sense?

In Part 1 I also talked about some links being more relevant than others. I’ll explain what I mean by “relevant.” If I get a link from an electonics site to my site with the words “Free Online Business Information,” that would not be as relevant as if I were able to get the same link on a site that is all about Online Business Information.  Also, if you are trying to get to the top of Google, you will want to pay attention to the page rank that Google has assigned to each website that you request a link from. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, then do a search on Google for “Google Toolbar.” You’ll find a link to Google’s download page that also explains what the toolbar is all about including pagerank. Once you have the toolbar installed, you’ll want to click on “Settings” then options, and then select the More tab at the top. Then under “Even More buttons, check pagerank and page info and then select OK. This will enable the pagerank bar showing you what pagerank Google has assigned to each webpage. So, when you go to get a link from a site, the higher the pagerank the better. Additionally, the higher the pagerank and the more relevant the site is to your site, the better the link will be.

Many times, when you request a link from another site, they will just use the name of your site as the text of the link(also known as anchor text). This can be very frustrating if the name of your site is something totally made up and has nothing to do with your site content(Amazon or Google for instance). So, it is really helpful if your domain name contains your most important keywords. On one of my sites, I sell primarily outdoor socks. So registered the domain name thesocksite.com. Now, even if someone doesn’t link to that site using the kewords I suggest and they just use the name of the site, I will still get a vote for my most important keyword “Sock.”  Stay tuned for Part 3. I will suggest some crafty was to get links from other relevant sites. 

I know that there are many of you out there who have spent money getting your website set up and now you cringe at the prices quoted to you by these companies that call or email you with promises of top ten results on the search engines for your main keywords.  Is there a cheaper alternative? Of coarse there is.  

 I realize that you’re on a fixed budget for your site. And as you may have already found, there is a lot of garbage out there on the internet relating to website marketing. When I say garbage, I’m talking about information that is incorrect.

Have you heard of the story about the monkey in the cage near an airport?:
Whenever an airplane would fly over, the monkey would go nuts banging around in his cage trying to scare the plane away. After the plane was gone, the monkey was sure that his actions are what made the plane leave. Well, much of the information out there is produced in a similar way. Webmasters will do something such as make a few changes to their site, and just because they start getting results, they think it is because of the changes they made, when in reality, it may have had nothing to do with whatever they did. It could have just been that Google or one of the other search engines just finished an update and so their site started showing up for more keywords.

I started out on the internet around 2000. It took me 3 years before I made any significant money on the internet. I had to learn everything by trial and error and I was much like that silly monkey near the airport. A couple years ago, I ran into a fellow that is now my marketing mentor. He’s been at this a lot longer than me. One day I found one of this fellows sites and I submitted my website to his directory. Shortly after I did that, he starts sending me these free automated emails with helpful website marketing tips. After trying a few, I was convinced this guy knew what he was talking about. So, when he came out with his marketing ebook, I was one of the first in line to buy it. It cost me $97 and it was the best $97 I have ever spent. I learned more in the 5 days it took me to read his ebook than I had in all my years marketing on the internet. He pretty much gives you a blueprint of how you should market your site along with tons of helpful tools and resources to help you do it. I’ve put a link to his site on my commercial site at http://outersports.com/page.html?id=23&chapter=0 . If you sign up for his free newsletter, he’ll give you plenty of helpful tips, but he never really gives you the meat of it all. He couldn’t or he would never be able to sell his ebook.

So. . . .  you can spend countless hours(or years) trying to figure it out by yourself, or you can take the fast track by reading his $97 ebook. The money you will make as a result of reading and implementing the infomation in it will more than pay for the $97 book. If you decide not to buy it, you are certainly welcome to email me for suggestions. I personally have  helped two of my brothers start highly profitable ecommerce sites now, and I don’t mind sharing what I’ve learned.Darron

I’ve had this blog up for a while now and I’ve had many people asking me about internet marketing. I’ll share some emails that I’ve been going back and forth with the past few weeks:

Question:
Darron: I’ve got a drop shipper, and my website should be complete in less than a week (via Yahoo Store Wizard).I’ll be selling housekeeping carts, moving carts, etc. WHO SHOULD I use to market my goods? I want to be listed in the search engines. I have seen quotes ranging from $99.00 dollars per MONTH. to $1500.00 to “consult” me on how to market my website? Can you help? I’m leary of the Pay Per Click tool (maybe because I don’t know much about it). Any recommendations on how to/who should market my website once it’s up? I’m on a very limited budget. Thank you so much for all your free help!!!!

Question:
Darron,Hello. Can you tell me how to “register” my site with Google?
I went to the Google ranking site. I couldn’t understand the results provided after I typed in my url. I’m lost. Now that my website is up and running, it doesn’t seem to show up anywhere. How can I register the site with Google?

This post is about an easy way to get started making money online that only requires time and a little writing skill. While it will take a little time to get your first paycheck, it requires no money at all. Here are the basics:

Getting Started:
You need to start a blog and you need to get visitors to your blog. You can use google’s blogger to set up a free blog. If you want to make money on a free blog, make sure your host will allow you to place ads on your site.

The foundation of starting a successful blog that is going to make you money is simple. You have to write about something that other people care about. You have to provide USEFUL, FREE content that is going to attract an audience. It should also be something that interests you or you probably won’t stick with it. My father just started a blog called, The Online Mechanic . He’s been in the auto repair industry for quite a while and with a little prompting has started his own blog posting auto repair info and answering visitors auto repair questions. He has already had a great response and he’s only been doing it for a short time. I mention his blog as an example of USEFUL FREE information.

Getting Traffic:
This is the next most important part of making money from any online business. You have to have visitors. Just starting a blog and posting to it isn’t going to get you many visitors. You have to let everyone know you’re out there. One of the best ways to do this is by visiting other blogs that are similar to yours and posting thoughful comments on them. Make sure that your comments have real and sincere meaning. Don’t just say stuff like “Hey, Great Blog.” That’s not going to get you anywhere. Personal experience or insight that will possibly add to the value of another bloggers post is the best type of comment that you can leave. It will get you noticed not only by the author of the blog, but also by all of the regular visitors to that blog.  You’ll also want to add links on your blog to the blogs the you comment on regularly. That way, you can personally find them each time and blog trackers such as technorati will let other bloggers know that you are linking to them. The outcome? The bloggers that you are interacting with will begin visiting your site to see what it’s all about. If they like what you blog about, then they will likely add a link to their blogroll to help their visitors find you. Now, there lots of other ways to get traffic to your blog, but the way I just described is the most cost effective(Free) and in the long run will generate loyal visitors to your blog without needing search engines.

Making Money:
Making money from this is simple if you have done the first two steps correctly. If your blog has valuable free content and lots of people coming to it then you have everything you need to start cashing in. The last step is to visit google.com and sign up for an adsense account. Google with then give you some code to install on you blog that will display ads that are related to the content on your site. When visitors click on the ads, you get paid. That’s all there is too it. You can ask me any questions that you have by posting a comment. Good Luck!

In the world of online business, getting traffic to your site can make or break you. You may have the best product, but if noone ever sees it, you can’t sell it. There is a lot of information out there about how to drive steady traffic to your website. I’ve already mentioned pay-per-click advertising using Overture as one method. The problem with paid advertising is that it doesn’t guarantee you any sales. The other option is to use a service like Commission Junction. I’ll talk more about CJ later, but it basically a way to have other websites drive traffic to your site, while only paying the sites driving traffic your way when you actually make a sale off of one of their leads.

Let’s step aside from all of that for now and talk about getting free traffic from search engines. I’ll start out by explaining a little bit about how a search engine determines who gets to show up at the top when a user does a search. Search engines are constantly “Crawling” through sites on the internet. “Crawling” is just a techi term to describe how search engine software or robots search through sites on the internet collecting data about each site it searches through. As the search engine crawls a site, it records important information about the site in a massive database that houses information about all of the sites it has crawled. Each site in the database is then evaluated based on the collected information and then compared to the other sites in the database. This evaluation and comparison determines what site gets to show up first for any given word (often called a keyword) or groups of words that someone enters into the search engine.

Well, one of the most important factors in determining what site will show up first for a keyword is how many other sites link to a particular site. The search engines essentially treat these incoming links as a vote for the site.

Now, here is where things can get a little more complicated. Not all incoming links are valued the same. To determine how valuable an incoming link is, search engines evaluate the site that the link is coming from. The search engine will determine how many sites are linking to that site. The search engines will also evaluate all of the sites that are linking to it to determine how valuable the links are. All of these links are traced back as far as the search engines are capable of tracing them in order to determine how valuable the links are that point to any given site. 

There are some other very important factors that search engines use to determine what site shows up first, but I’ll discuss them further in another post. Suffice it to say for now, that if you want your site to show up at the top of the search engines and thus capitalize on all of the free traffic that they provide, you have got to get other websites to link to your site. Before you run out and start trying to get links to your online business website, you’ll want to read Part 2. There are some important steps that you will want to take in order to get the very most out of the links to your site.

If you have set up your ecommerce site selling your own products or products that will be drop shipped and you are anxious to get your products out in front of  a targeted audience, you can try one of the pay per click advertiser networks out there. The largest and  farthest reaching program for small home internet businesses is provided by Google. When I launch a new website or product, I like to get immediate results to see what the consumer response is to the product I’m offering and the price I’m selling it for. Google adwords is a great way to find a happy medium for pricing a product. You can advertise your products for one price to start with and then adjust it to see if it sells better at the adjusted price. If it sells well at the price I’ve started it at, I can increase the price to the point that sales slow. This helps me know exactly how much I can make on each product. It does cost good money to do this, but in the long term, my internet based business makes up every penny in sales plus a lot more.

The reason that I suggest you use this method of advertising your home business products as  a starting point is because it can get expensive to use Google Adwords long term. You really have to be an expert Google Adwords marketer in order to use their advertising program as a permanent way to market your internet business. Take a look at my Google Adwords page on my free videos website for a text explanation and visual demo of how this program works

The above headline might seem pretty crazy, but it is possible to have a home based internet business even if you are totally new to the internet. This next tool that I’m going to tell you about is really not a tool. It is actually a way to have an experienced coder build a customized ecommerce website for your home based business and designed just for the products you will be selling. Yeah, a taped glasses, low hygene, experienced programmer fluent in all those strange programmer languages(sorry to all the coders that don’t fit this profile). The best part is how low cost you can have your ecommerce site created. You see, over 150 thousand experienced programmers can potentially bid on your ecommerce business project. There are some programmers out there that can whip out a site in no time because they’ve done many similar projects. It’s really nothing for them to customize a site for you at a low cost.

The site is called RentACoder. All you have to do is sign up and post your project description. Most of the sites that I’ve had created have ranged from $100 to $400. I have provided a fairly detailed online video that walks you through how to sign up and post a project on RentACoder. You can sign up for my free home internet business videos at ASiteLikeMine.com 

One thing that will help to keep your bidders prices low is to state that you want your custom internet business site set up using ZenCart, Agoracart, OsCommerce, or Cubecart. These are open source ecommerce software kits that provide a complete shopping cart system. Open source means that the software is free and that it can be customized. These free software kits make it very easy for a coder to set your site up.  If you don’t state this in your bid request, then coders will assume that you are not aware of this software and how easy it is to set up an ecommerce site with it. As a result, you’ll get much higher bids for your project.

One other thing that you’ll want to do is sign up for a hosting service. One that I use and recommend to many of my friends is called Lunar Pages  . Lunar Pages is the best and most cost effective website host out there. It only costs $6.25 a month and it comes with a free domain name. Your domain name is what people will type into their browser to reach your site such as “www.mywebbusiness.com.” Lunar Pages also makes it even easier for your coder to set up your site because their service includes automatic installation of any of the open source shopping cart services that I mentioned earlier.

Can you see how easy it is to get your own home based internet business started? There are so many resources out there now that make it possible for even the least knowlegeable web user.  Good luck.

This is another question that I’m commonly asked by future internet home business owners. Once you have selected a line of products to sell, you will need to find the right drop shipper. They key to finding the right drop shipper is not as difficult as it may seem. If the product that you intend to sell has a branded name, then the first place to start is to call the company that owns that brand. Often, the company will have a drop ship program, or they can refer you to one of their distributors that will drop ship the product for you. The Thomasnet Directory buisness directory is a great place to find contact information for different small to large businesses. Use your judgement here though. If you know that the company is a large corporation, like Nike, then you probably can’t expect to get much information directly from them. Large businesses try to stick to marketing through retail brick and mortar stores and they may frown on the idea of having their brand marketed outside of their restricted marketing program.  But, that doesn’t mean you can’t contact them and give it a try. I was able to talk Bibler tents(the owner of Black Diamond Climbing Gear) into allowing me to carry some of their product line even after they initially told me “no way.”If you don’t get anywhere with these two suggestions, then the next thing to do would be to do a search online for a drop shipper by trying some keywords similar to ”Nike drop shipper” on a search engine like Google. Mix up your searches to see what you can find. If that doesn’t work and you are determined to sell specific product, then you might want to try World Brands. The link I just gave you will allow you to search their directory of verified drop shippers. They will provide you with some basic information about the drop shipper and the types of products that they sell, but they won’t give you the contact info until you pay their $69.95 fee. But, once you pay their fee, you have access to all of the contact information for every business in their drop shipper directory.

Here’s one more suggestion for you. If you are dead set on a specific product, but the brand doesn’t really matter, then you’ll want to give this a try. Go into different local retail stores that you know carry the item that you want to sell. Look at the items and inspect them for information about the manufacturer.  Make note of that information and then go look it up online. I’ve found several of my best distributors this way. I was also able to find one on eBay. I did a search for the product that I wanted to sell and then went through each auction making note of the different brands or manufacturers that many of the auctions listed.  Auction sellers will often list the brand as a selling point of the item so this can be very helpful.

Now, one last word of advice about drop shippers. There are many businesses out there that claim to be drop shippers that are really just middlemen.  They will often charge you a monthly fee just to be a part of their program.  As a result, these companies only focus on signing up as many clients as they can so that they have a nice steady monthly profit rolling in. In addition, many of them inflate their so called “wholesale price” so that you end up paying way more than you should for their products. Wherever possible, cut out the middleman and go straight to the manufacturer or authorized distributor.  So, good luck with finding a drop shipper.  If you haven’t done so, you might want to go to my sister site and sign up for my free videos on starting your own internet based home business that helps to explain everything I discuss on this blog.

I started my first online business back in 2002.  As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I started my online business while I was working a full time job. My first child was also born in 2002. Working a full time job and spending time with family did not allow me a whole lot of free time to just up and start a business.  I had to be very careful how much money I spent too. I really couldn’t afford to dump thousands of dollars into inventory and other business expenses.  So, what I started out doing was getting stuff from a local freight salvage business and selling it at a substantial markup on eBay.  I did very well at this. I had a great system down. I would find something I thought was a valuable and way under priced. Then, I would call my wife and have here look it up on eBay to see what something like it sold for. That way, I was guaranteed to make money on each purchase. The only problem was, each time I went into the freight salvage warehouse, there were more and more people shopping there. People were catching on to this idea and I had to compete with the growing number of eBayers that were doing the same thing that I was doing.  My oasis was drying up fast. I had to find another source of products to sell.
Well, I had a friend who loved outdoor activities as much as I did (hiking, camping and climbing). A few months back, he had loaned me a catalog from a local distributor of outdoor gear. My idea was to get an account with this distributor and start selling their stuff on eBay for a profit. But, once they found out my intentions to sell on eBay, they wouldn’t let me sign up.  They didn’t want their client’s prices being driven down by eBayers.  I pressed them further and found out that they would allow me to set up an ecommerce website and sell their products from it. Once I sold something, the distributor would drop ship it for me. What a great home based business idea! I wouldn’t even have to invest in any inventory.
So now that I had a new internet home business idea, my next problem was the fact that I did not know how to set up and ecommerce website. I didn’t have any experience with it. I started searching all over the internet for someone that could make the site for me. They all wanted thousands of dollars to do my site. Then I found Bizhosting(I’ll include a link at the bottom of the post). At the time I set up my internet home business, Bizhosting was the best solution for setting up an ecommerce website with a shopping cart system for customers to purchase products from. All I had to do is add my product images, prices and descriptions and I was ready to sell. It wasn’t as easy as I just made it sound, but it was cost efficient. The only other thing that I needed was a merchant account. Up to this point, all I had been using to accept online payments was Paypal.
So, with that little story of how I started my work at home business, I’ll now give you many of the resources that I know of to help you start a home based business of your own selling products online.
These are the drop ship companies that I use:
Wynit - WYNIT is a leading national distributor of computer peripherals and consumer electronics, with specialties in digital imaging, outdoor electronics, photo identification/security products and video editing equipment and software.

Liberty Mountain - Outdoor Gear Drop Shipper. These guys want you to have a specific market or niche in order to sign up with them. They don’t sign up just anyone that wants an account.

Rothco – The world’s foremost supplier of military and outdoor clothing and accessories

Adventure 16 - Adventure 16 has a reputation as one of the best outdoor outfitters in the United States. Our dedication to providing Customers with the finest products, first hand and accurate information, and plenty of inspiration, has guided us since our origin in 1962 (I’m pretty sure these guys still drop ship. You may need to call them before filling out their application)

Vitabase – Health Vitamins Drop Shipper

Fitness Cash – Fitness Equipment Drop Shipper

Worldwide Brands – If you can’t find a drop shipper for the type of product you’d like to sell, this company can help. They have personally contacted thousands of companies in a huge range of markets to see which companies drop ship and then put together a directory of the companies that offer drop shipping. They also provide market research for all of the different product categories in their directory. These guys take all of the guesswork out of finding the right product and drop shipper

I started my site using Bizhosting.

Since I started my internet business, many more businesses have started providing different was to set up an ecommerce site. Here are a few of them:
I’ll show you how you can set up your internet business website and run it on just $6.95/month. Why $6.95? Because that is all that is costs to host your site through Lunar Pages. Now, there ARE plenty of hosting companies out there for you to choose from. And some of them might even cost less. So why do I recommend Lunar Pages? Because when my brother and I decided to part ways with our business ideas, he started his own eCommerce site with Lunar Pages and now he too is a work at home internet business owner and his income is quickly catching up with mine. Also, Lunar Pages is fully compatible with the FREE shopping cart systems that I outline below. In fact their automated system will load all of the files and images needed to operate your new eCommerce site. All you have to do is add your products and customize it any way you would like. I forgot to mention that you also get a free domain name when you sign up.

If you’re pretty sharp on the computer and you don’t have any trouble learning new applications, you can save yourself alot of CASH by using Zen Cart. Zen Cart is a completely FREE open source shopping cart system. Open source just means that you have access to all of the programming code of the software in case you want to alter the program. All you have to do is download the program files and then install it on your server. My brother uses this system for both of his websites: www.robbinsinternational.com and www.robbinssports.com and he loves it.

osCommerce is a similar FREE opensource shopping cart solution. I haven’t had much experience with osCommerce, but you can find examples of sites made with osCommerce here: http://shops.oscommerce.com/ 

This is my most favorite site in the world. With RentACoder, you can have very experienced coders bid on building your site or code other projects for you. Instead of dealing with creating and building your website or adding additional features to your home business website,  you can concentrate on the more important parts of your new internet business, like how you are going to get more customers to it. If you’re familiar with eBay, then Rent-A-Coder will be a easy. Just a little word of advice though. You may not always want to go with the cheapest bid you get. You need to ask for examples of each coders work before you choose one. Many of them will include links to examples of their own work with their bids. You should be able to get your whole site done for around $100-$400.

Would you rather have built-in, step-by-step wizards that help you design the look of your store, upload products, and set up shipping and sales tax information? If you already like to use eBay, you might want to look into ProStores. ProStores is owned by eBay. They are an internet business solution that enables small and medium sized businesses to sell products and services on the internet through a fully customized Web store.

They offer a wide range of functionality:

• Domain registration and hosting
• Shopping cart
• Secure, SSL-encrypted credit card processing
• Integration with eBay and PayPal
• Marketing and Merchandising Tools
• Product catalog

• If you are completely new to the web and you are anxious to get a site with products already on it that you can start driving customers to RIGHT NOW, then I would invite you to use cityMax. Although I don’t really recommend this approach, it is a the best way to go if you just want to get selling right away at the cheapest price. Once you sign up, you can choose to have products added directly to your site instantly. All you’ll have to do is get visitors to your site.

I can’t count the times that I have met a new person and at some point in speaking with them they have asked me what I do for a living. When I explain that I operate my own home businessselling stuff on the internet, the conversation usually turns into a question and answer session with me offering tips and suggestions on how to get started with a home based business on the internet.  So, since I’ve had so much practice in offering suggestions about starting an online home business, I’ll though I’d go ahead and put those suggestions in to words on this blog.

One of the first things that I always suggest to future entrepreneurs is to pick an area that they love or are interested in. This might sound like common sense. However, many people that want to start a home based business think that they need to sell what pays big bucks regardless of how interested they are in it.  I personally don’t recommend this approach.  In business, there are good days and there are bad days.  If you choose an area that you don’t enjoy,  then it is hard to stay motivated through the bad days and the likelihood of just quitting altogether is much higher.

The next thing that I highly recommend is to focus on a NICHE.  One of the definitions of niche is “A unique role of an organism in a community.” This pretty much fits the definition that I explain to people. You should find your unique role in the business community that you choose to be a part of.  Uniqueness is what helps a business to succeed.  It doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be different than the rest. And obviously different in a way that will make your business attractive to your customer base.  Finding your niche also makes it possible to market your product effectively. When I first started my online business, I tried to sell auto parts, computer accessories, sporting goods, and outdoor gear.  All from the same website.  Unless you are a complete marketing genius, this is not a good approach. I soon found that I could not effectively market so many different products. So I narrowed my product base to outdoor gear. Outdoor gear was still too broad. I left all of the outdoor gear products on my site, but I focused all of my marketing efforts on one specific area and it has had tremendous results. The area that I picked was “thermal underwear.” If you do a search on any major search engine for “thermal underwear”, you’ll find OuterSports.com on the first page. You’ll also find OuterSports on the first page for other phrases like “men’s thermal underwear.” Until I completely narrowed my focus and found my niche, I was never really able to make a noteable profit from my online business.

Now, before I wrap up this post, let me share a few tools with you that will help you research whatever ideas you have for your work at home internet business. When I say ideas, I’m really referring to keywords. Keywords are the words that people type into a search engine in order to find what they are looking for. If your site doesn’t have the right keywords relating to what you sell, then you won’t get the right customers visiting your site. Overture and Google provide free keyword research tools. These tools will give you an idea of how many times you keywords are searched for each month. This will help you determine how much demand there is for your product or service. They also list other keyword phrases that contain the keywords you entered. The Google tool goes a step further by giving you synonyms for your keywords so that you can find other relevant keywords that you hadn’t thought of. Once you have an idea of what you want to base your internet business on, you’ll want to use the paid keyword research tool Wordtracker. Wordtracker gives you the largest list of related keywords along with invaluable data and statistics on each keyword. Wordtracker has different plans to fit your budget. I use the one day plan for $7.96 so that I only have to pay to use it when I need to use it.

So, if you are thinking of starting an online homebased internet business, you’ll want to use these keyword research tools first so that you can get an idea of how much demand there is for you product or service.