You might be tempted to jump in and start creating your website without any planning.

But let me say from experience that planning your website will more than make up for the time and aggravation you’ll have if you don’t plan, especially if your intentions are to make money with your website.

I didn’t plan my websites at first either.  I just wanted to start creating and get my site ‘on the air‘ assuming everything would fall together on its own.

That’s exactly when you’ll look back and say “Why didn’t I plan?”

Planning your website will help you know your overall objectives and will save you a ton of time and aggravation as you move forward.

Here 6 planning tips to get you started…

Tip #1: Plan Your Monetization

How do you plan to make money online?  Will you be selling tangible goods or electronic information.  Will you promote other people’s items or services for a share of the profits as with affiliate marketing?  Will you make money advertising?  Will you consider donations?  etc.

It will be these kinds of objectives that will help you determine the type of website  you’ll create.

Tip #2 What Type of Website Will You Create?

For creating sites that you’ll be making money with, you’ll need to choose the best platform for your goals.

For example creating a blog or traditional html website works well if you’ll want to create an informational website and monetize the site using affiliate marketing, advertising or selling information products, but that may not be suitable for an e-commerce business.

An e-commerce website would require programming technology like shopping carts and merchant accounting software, things not s easy to obtain with a blog or many other html site builders.

For informational and interactive websites like blogs, knowing what your monetization goals are will help you determine things like whether or not you’ll have a 2 column website or 3 columns. For example, you’ll need to plan out where to put your advertisements, product promotions and opt-in boxes should you choose to use email marketing. 

ip #3 What Will You Deliver?

Keeping in tune with your monetization what types of information and products will you deliver?

Do some keyword research on the topic of your website to see what people are really looking for when it comes to your site’s topic.  For example, if your topic is ‘exotic Chinese cooking’, what things interest people when they’re on the web looking for  Chinese cooking?

Going to Google keyword tool, I can see that the topics with the most searches include:

• Chinese cooking  utensils
• Chinese cooking knives
• Chinese cooking lessons
• Chinese cooking free Low Calories recipes
• Chinese cookbooks

Those are the things  you’ll want to include in your site’s categories.  You can also get some great information by researching topic related forums and posing questions on sites like ask.com.

Tip #4 Pick Your Website Colors

Picking your website colors might seem easy enough, after all you’ll be inspired to use colors  you like that you think will stand out and create interest.

But keep in mind that color also has emotional and psychological meaning.  So just finding colors that you like or may be what you think will help you stand may not be enough.  You want a nice balance of colors that look well together, are colors that you like but also provide an emotional or psychological boost.

To demonstrate what I mean here’s a recent post I did called choosing y our website color palette.  You’ll also get some ideas of where to find good color combination ideas.

Tip#5 Choose Your Domain name

Finding the perfect domain name is what everyone wants but getting too hung up on just the perfect name can be a show stopper for some.   Choosing a domain name that is easy to remember, describes your website and one that is available can be tricky.

Start by using your site’s main keywords in the domain and keep it as short as possible.  Also don’t box yourself in.  For example, walkingshoes.com is a great domain name but what if you want to expand to running shoes at some point.

Tip #6  Find Your Brand

What are you about?   What’s your personality?  What’s voice do you want to use?   Do you want to be the “cool” site.  Do  you want to be folksy? Are  you humorous?   Are you about being simple and down to earth? Are  you energetic?

Your brand will be the emotional and psychological connection you create with your readers, so find your voice and keep it the theme of your site.

Tip#7  Your Content

Your content can make or break  your website, so you have to go into this with the intention of bringing quality, useful content to your readers.

So before getting started plan the kind of content you’ll be offering for example, here are some ideas:

• Post ‘How to’ information
• Solicit and add Guest Posts from other industry experts
• Post some Q&A on some of the most popular questions that come up, again use your keyword research tool to help you with that.
• Post occasional Industry News
• Publish Useful resources and links

Do you have to create new content every day?  No, but you do want to keep your site current, interesting and useful.  That’s what keeps visitors and the search search engines returning to your site.

Final Thoughts

The little bit of effort it takes to do this planning in the beginning is worth it to the success of  your business.

Your site will probably take on a slightly different look and feel before it’s all over, but that’s OK, as long as you know what your goals are and plan accordingly, you’re a lot more likely to stay in tune with your objectives.

We love inspiring blogs and bloggers, so today I’m sharing a few of my favorites. 

Why are these ladies my favorite?  Because they are genuine, never hypy, they’re not afraid to spill their secrets, and you can’t help but learn from them.

But most of all, they love what they do and they’re successful, and that’s what’s inspiring.

Have a look and you’ll see what I mean…

Lynn Terry of Clicknewz.com

Lynn’s blog is a wealth of genuine help for getting started online. I was lucky enough to finally meet up with Lynn at the NAMS workshop in Atlanta last year.  If you need ideas, motivation, even help with staying on track and accountability, Lynn’s Clicknewz forum is an awesome place to start.

Kristi Hines of Kikolani.com

Kristi is an online marketing consultant, freelance writer, professional blogger and social media enthusiast and I get tons of advice from her blog on great tools  for blogging, socializing and for how to actually get things done.

Michelle of MichelleMacphearson.com

Confused about SEO and social media?  You won’t be after listening to Michelle.  Michelle is super social media and SEO savvy.  Her personal insight, expert training and warm smile make her blog a pleasure to visit for keeping up with social media and making it work for your online business.

 
Susanne Meyers of Affiliatetreasurechest.com

Susanne is an inspiration story for any aspiring affiliate marketer.  Starting small with her Hillbillyhousewife website,  Susanne has become the internet business owner we’d all love to be.  Susanne shares what works for her, as well as her experiences and technical know-how on her affiliate treasure chest site.

 
Nicole Dean of Nicoleonthenet.com

Content is Nicole’s specialty.  She creates it, she publishes it and she helps you excel with it. Nicole also has tons of great business advice that we can all use.  She’s just a natural at it and of course just a all around fun person to know

Next weekend I’m off to the NAMS event in Atlanta where Lynn, Susanne and Nicole are regulars, so it’s an exciting time for me to be even more inspired by their enthusiasm, success stories and wisdom.

If you love having a great time relaxing and learning at an affordable event, consider joining us at the NAMS the live event.  At the very least get signed up for the NAMS monthly membership and get everything you need to start and grow a successful internet home business.

Until Next time,

When you join an affiliate program, the affiliate links they give you are typically long and ugly.  In fact they scream affiliate link.

These ugly links make visitors hesitant to make the click, and frankly, some people just don’t want to click on or make a purchase through a third party link.    That’s lost revenue for you.

The best way around using these long ugly affiliate links is to cloak them or redirect them, and I’m going to show you in 3 easy steps how to cloak affiliate links yourself.

3 Steps to Cloak your Affiliate Link:

Step 1:  Create an html page on your website and insert the following code:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0;URL=insert affiliate link”>
</head>
<body bgcolor=”#ffffff”>
<p></p>
</body>
</html>

Insert your affiliate link (complete with http://) where it says ‘insert affiliate link’.

Step 2:  Save the file and name it something relevant to your product, for example if the product you are promoting is a bluewidget, you might name the file bluewidget.html

You can also create the .html file using your file manager on your host.

Step 3:  When your .html file has been created and saved, you are ready to use it as a redirect.

Here’s what your new affiliate link will look like:

http://www.yoursite.com/bluewidget.html

Now when a visitor to your website clicks your affiliate link, the code in the redirect file will redirect the user’s browser to the page with the URL of your affiliate link.  Of course all of that happens behind the scenes.  The only thing your users will see is the actual page you want them to see.

Congratulations! You’ve just created a cloak for your affiliate link.

If you test and track the results I think you’ll discover that you’ll see more clicks and hopefully more profits

Got questions?  Just ask.

More on how to cloak affiliate links:

http://www.wolf-howl.com/affiliate-marketing/cloaking-affiliate-links/

http://www.stevescottsite.com/cloak-affiliate-links

Have you ever gotten stuck  choosing what colors to use on your website?  And just how important is your website color palette anyway?

Experts believe that certain colors can have an impact on visitors to your site, so there is some Psychology at play there.

However it’s not likely that the colors you choose will make or break  the success of your site, but having said that, certain colors could possibly sway a visitors buying mood.

So when you’re planning your website, it can’t hurt to give some thought to the colors you’ll use and try to fit the colors of your site to the mood and flavor of  your site’s topic.

Here’s a quick run down of how the basic colors relate to mood, topics and emotions.

GREEN – Health, Nature and energy saving, and of course money.

RED –   Red is an impulsive, powerful color.  Often used in association with love, passion, romance.  Can also indicate energy, danger, excitement, action and adventure.

BLUE – Calmness and serenity. Blue indicates professionalism and is most preferred by men. Often signifies trustworthiness,  success. It also encourages productivity.  It’s also been known to suppress the appetite.

ORANGE –  Orange incites creativity. It can be aggressive and is used in celebration and excitement.  Orange can also stimulate appetite.  Also a good color for emphasizing a call to action.

PURPLE -  Calming. Used in fantasy.  Often implies royalty, passion,  luxury and wisdom.  Often seen when marketing anti-aging products.   Purple extends a sense of spirituality and encourages creativity.

WHITE – Encourages mental clarity.  Promotes simple and fresh.  Implies happiness, brightness and peace.  Used to describe clean.  Encourages order and being clutter free.

YELLOW –Youth, playfulness and fun.  Mentally stimulating and encourages communication.

PINK – A Feminine fashion color.  Also used for romance.  Often associated with infants and youth.   Pink is a very soothing color and often used to calm aggressions.

BLACK – Decisive, mysterious, unwavering. Can stimulate a sense of possibility or potential.

BROWN – Gives off a feeling of stability and wholesomeness.  Is used in connection with the earth and being natural.  Gives a sense of being orderly.

GRAY – Associated with maturity, security, reliability.  Also associated with loss or depression.

Another thing you can do is take take a look at other websites and examine the colors they’ve chosen.   How do the colors affect your emotions, attitude and decisions about the website?

A few tips for when Using  color on your website

- Be sure to use a high contrast between a page’s background and the text color.

- Pick 3 colors for your website and use them consistently throughout your site.

- Use Contrasting colors when attracting attention.

Resources for help choosing your website color palette:

- Help for choosing complementary color combinations:  http://www.colorcombos.com/

- Hex color codes and coordination guide:  http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/design/color_combinations.php3

- Color palette generator is a cool tool if you have an image and need to know the best colors to complement it.

http://jrm.cc/color-palette-generator/?image=rec%2Fgrass-tile.jpg&steps=3

How did  you decide on the colors for your website?

OK, you have a niche topic idea and you want to start your own blog, but you’re just not sure how to get started blogging or even how to make money blogging, so you keep telling yourself you just need a little more time to read, think and analyze. 

STOP!

Right now, instead of analyzing, researching and filling your head with more ‘what ifs’ and ‘how tos’, it’s time to stop analyzing and just start doing.

I know folks that have spent the last year or more analyzing to the point of not really knowing where to start.  They call it “analysis paralysis” and it’s just plain silly. The real danger there is that it could go on indefinitely if you let it.

After all, blogging is something you know that you want to start doing, so what’s stopping you? 

You’re scared.  

We’re all scared when starting something new that requires our time, money and effort, but doing is a great way to overcome your fears, and believe me, as you get started, many of the questions you have will get answered and your fears will turn into confidence.

So what are you really afraid of?

Is it the money?  You can create a blog, get a domain name and a hosting service, all for less than $20.  Really.

Are you afraid of the technology?  This is not rocket science, in fact here’s a how to create a WordPress Blog step-by-step post I wrote that can have your blog created in just a few hours.  Just follow the easy directions and have the confidence that you can do this.  I’m also here to answer your questions if you need help.

Are you afraid of the time commitment?  Yes, creating and maintaining a blog will take some time but what worthwhile venture doesn’t take time and commitment?

Besides, we’re talking a few hours a day or less.  How do you spend your time now?  If you’re wasting it in front of the TV or dong things that are not worthwhile to your financial future, this is a great way to fill that time, and it could be fun!

Are you afraid you won’t be successful?  That’s Stinkin’ Thinkin‘  What happens to you, your successes, your failures and everything else in life, are all a direct result of your thoughts.  If you don’t believe that, then you probably haven’t read, ‘Think and Grow Rich‘.   With one simple but powerful concept, how you think and where you focus your thoughts, you can do just about anything.    I loved the book, it was life changing for me.

The Best Recipe for How To Get Started Blogging

To put it simply, have the desire, believe you can do it, believe you deserve the success and imagine actually being successful.   Then stop analyzing and just start doing.  The rest will fall in place, you’ll see

Your thoughts?

From my experience, the easiest way to make money with a website is through advertising. It’s how I can take a targeted niche website and turn it into making several hundred dollars a month.

I currently do that with a few of my niche sites and I don’t even promote them, I also don’t get a ton of traffic to the sites either.

Now a few hundred dollars a month doesn’t sound like much, but use this strategy to create several websites and that’s a significant chunk of change every month

But before you take off and run with that, there are a few things that will make a difference in the amount of money you make with an advertising site.

• The niche topic of the site
• The amount of traffic the site gets
• The amount and quality of the content on the site
• How you place your ads and what the ads contain

Creating your website, adding content and getting traffic to your website will be the most critical parts to making the most money.  But I’m not into making things any harder than they need to be,  so at the very least, creating my website has to be easy.  That’s why I use Xsitepro for this type of online business.

I personally love the Xsitepro software and have used it for many years for several of my own sites.  Just take a look at my Xsitepro 2 Review to see why I say that.

One of the things that makes Xsitepro unique, among a ton of other things, is that it comes with advertising wizards that make adding advertising Super easy and effective.

The Xsitepro Adsense feature for instance, makes adding a wide variety of different-sized Google AdSense ads as easy as right-clicking your mouse and selecting your choice menu option…

Of course Xsitepro offers other advertising options including adding Amazon ads, Clickbank  products and adding a PayPal product.

Depending on the topic of your site it is well worth considering the Amazon Ads feature…

What’s even better is that the more popular your site gets, you could also start to see  individual advertisers coming to you with money in hand to post ads on your site.

Here’s a plan of attack for setting up your Advertising Website:

1. Create your niche site using Xsitepro.  If you need niche ideas here’s a free guide I put together that will help:

http://www.homenotion.com/pdfs/nichefinder.pdf

Xsitepro does not come with a hosting service or domain name, you’ll need to get those things before going live with your site, but Xsitepro helps you with all of this and if you get stuck, they have a super forum where the experts are always available to help.

2. Create a professional header for your website.  Grab the  Free Xheaderpro tool.  You’ll get 500 free website headers to choose from.  And in case  you don’t find anything you like, there’s also a free header creation tool that lets you create your own header.  By the way, you can grab the  Xheaderpro headers whether you use Xsitepro or not, it’s free for anyone to use.

3. Start adding content.   Xsitepro makes it easy to add content, so in just a few minutes a day you can add content that will start helping you get noticed.

The best content to add is always your own, but if you need help, you can buy PLR content to make the job a little easier.  Just make sure you add a few of your own ideas to the content to make it unique and interesting.

4. Start promoting your site.   Create a twitter id and  Facebook Wall for your site along with an RSS feed.

Every time you add new content,  shoot it out to Facebook and Twitter.  Your RSS feed will help syndicate your content and keeps others informed of any new content you add.  Here’s how to set  up an RSS feed.

With just 20-30 minutes a day over the course of a month, you should start seeing traffic and clicks on your ads.

Oh …and another great feature of Xsitepro is they have an optimization engine for optimizing your site pages for greater search engine exposure.  That will help you a lot in terms of increasing traffic to your website.

To me, creating an advertising site is by far the easiest way to make money with a website, and using Xsitepro is the easiest way to get set up and maintain your site.   There’s really no excuse to get started

No, Jesus wasn’t an internet marketer, obviously, but I’m a BIG  fan, and the more I study the life of Jesus, what he taught us and how he lived his life, there’s a lot Jesus can teach us about internet marketing.

To start, Jesus had all the qualities and characteristics of a brilliant marketer, and ironically, those qualities are the very same things we are taught today with respect to becoming better internet marketers and effective business owners.

Let’s see what they are…

Be a teacher.  Jesus was probably the best teacher that ever lived.  That’s because he lived his faith, understood it and studied it almost to a fault.

What that tells us is that we need to practice what we teach.  Isn’t that what we as marketers are called to do?  We learn by doing and by failing.  Not everything you do will be successful, but your failures can be shared too, just like your successes can be shared.  We all have something to learn from someone who does and knows what they are talking about.

Our ministry as internet marketers is to teach our visitors and customers things that will help them.  It’s how we build trust and loyalty.

We can also teach in a variety of ways.  For example, affiliate marketers can boost their affiliate marketing commissions by teaching and helping  others to make the buying decision.  We can also benefit by teaching our customers how to use our products and how our products or services can benefit them.

Any time you can teach someone something, it builds their trust and faith in you.

Be a story teller.  Telling your story or any story is a powerful way to get people to listen.

Jesus never said,  “This is what you need to do, so just do it.“   He demonstrated the concept by telling a story that drove his message home in a way his audience could understand.

In a similar way, I could tell you that writing articles is what you should be doing to promote your business online, but the message and it’s effectiveness is much better understood if I can tell you my article writing success story.  If you don’t have a story, go out and create one.

The story of your experience is how to demonstrate what you are teaching.  It’s what makes people listen.

Speak and teach with authority. People listened to Jesus.  Why?  Because he spoke with authority, meaning he spoke with confidence.

Part of speaking and teaching with authority is thinking the part and believing in what you are saying.  Be certain in your tone and avoid using works like maybe, ‘kind of’ or perhaps.

Not always an easy task but having confidence is a mindset and it takes practice.   I still have to practice it every day

Just remember whatever you teach, teach with authority.  Be confident in what you are teaching and others will have confidence in you.

Cultivate a following. Jesus didn’t have Twitter and Facebook 2000 years ago but he knew a thing or two of the value of gathering followers and he knew how to get them.

Anyone that listened to Jesus and understood what he was teaching was happy to follow him.  That’s because he spoke with authority , but  he also listened to them, talked with them, showed he cared about them and spoke to them often.   In fact he spoke to them several times a day.   He also mentioned other important figures in his time and in history that helped reinforce his message and he shared many pearls of wisdom.

Creating your own following can be done the same way, connect with others often, mention colleagues or other niche experts that can help reinforce your message and offer wise thoughts that will help encourage and motivate.

Help others first before promoting yourself.  Jesus was compassionate and caring. Often times he helped others first by healing the sick and feeding the hungry before he set out to preach or try to convince the multitudes of his message.

We’re also called to do the same.  Give others your best first before trying to get something from them.   People will listen to you and follow you if you can help them first before thinking of yourself.

Jesus had a message and he had a mission which was to teach us how to live, how to love and be compassionate, and he accomplished all those things by coming to the aid of others first.

So What has Jesus Taught us About Internet Marketing?

Jesus didn’t have anything to sell but his message and his message is still with us today. I think that’s a powerful sentiment.

Jesus may not have been an internet marketer but I think he would have made a darn good one.  I also think it’s interesting how the very things we are taught to do today with regard to internet marketing strategies come from a man that did the very same things over 2000 years ago.

Your thoughts?

Ever wonder what the differences between social networking and social booking are?  The terms get intermixed, which gets confusing.

Here’s the differences between the two and when you might want to use them.

Social networking Sites provide more of an interaction between its members.  For example, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ all allow you to find friends, family, acquaintances, business connections and connect with them socially using messages, pictures or video.

If you’re in business on the web or have a website, social networking has become vital to helping you establish credibility, getting your business noticed and helping the search engines determine your popularity.

Social bookmarking Sites on the other hand are sites for storing, organizing and managing all your favorite links and websites.

But some of these social sites offer both bookmarking and networking features.  Here are some social sites that can be used for both purposes.

Twitter

The Social Networking Features of Twitter are:

• Following Twitter users
• Seeing Status updates for those you follow
• Messaging through @replies
• Private messaging

Although Twitter is more for social networking and sharing, it does offer a bookmarking feature:   You can save your favorite tweets in your ‘Favorites’ by clicking on the Favorites star.

More Sites that Offer Social Networking and Social Bookmarking

Facebook

Facebook also has social networking and bookmarking features as well.  Social Networking Features include:

•  Posting messages
• Messaging on walls
• Adding Facebook members as friends
• Private messaging through Facebook email
• Connect through applications
• Join groups and fan pages

Most of us wouldn’t think of Facebook as a social bookmarking site, and it’s really not designed for that, but you could bookmark a link by commenting  in your status and adding the URL there. Then flag it for ‘only me’ instead of Public.

However with so many other great bookmarking tools, I don’t recommend using Facebook for book marking.

Del.icio.us

The Delicious  Social Networking features include adding Delicious members to your network.  Delicious, however is better designed as a social bookmarking site and is probably one of the best when it comes to bookmarking. You can use Delicious to bookmarks using reviews and tags.

You can bookmark posts with descriptive tags.  Socially you can connect with others by sharing  your content using their email service.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is gaining in popularity as a social networking site as it connects you with interested contacts and lets you exchange ideas, knowledge, websites, posts  and opportunities.  In fact LinkedIn is used quite a bit for increasing visibility when looking for someone to hire or looking for a job. In my opinion,  LinkedIn is much better at social networking.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon has a good mix of social networking and social bookmarking.

The Social networking features of StumbleUpon include connecting with StumbleUpon’s members.  StumbleUpon lets you connect with members you may already have on Facebook.  You an also connect with other members through their email service or their private messaging.

StumbleUpon also has a social bookmarking feature that lets you save bookmarks with tags and reviews.

You can use StumbleUpon purely for social bookmarking by stumbling your interests with the thumbs up icon which will save your sites to your likes.

Social Networking and Social Bookmarking Take Away…

Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Google Bookmarks  are favorites for Social bookmarking.

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn are favorites for Social Networking.

I personally struggle with bookmarking. I haven’t found a really great bookmarking site that I like, probably because I haven’t taken the time to really work at getting set up without confusing myself

Share with us your favorite Social Networking sites, and have you found a social bookmarking site that works well for you?