First Website is Up and Running with Weebly

I know it's been quite a while since my last post, but I have a good reason.  I've spent the last few weeks working on launching my first website.  You can check it out at www.learnfreeclassroom.com.  This is a directory site listing free college courses, training materials, and learning resources available online.  I created this site on Weebly.  Weebly is a free web host with a great site builder interface.  To get started, go to Weebly.com and sign up for a free account.  Once you've signed up, creating your site is extremely easy.  Select a template for your site from the ones available. If you don't see something you like, and you know html and css, just pick something close to what you want, and you can go in later and modify the template by clicking the Edit HTML/CSS tab in the upper right corner while you're in the Design tab.  Once you have your template selected and modified, the rest is just drag and drop.  On the Elements tab, you can pick whatever elements you want on your page and drag them into place.  Once you have the elements in place, start adding your content.  It's really that easy.  You don't need to know anything about html or css, it's a very user friendly system.  To add additional pages, go to the Pages tab and select Add Page.  Then just repeat the process of dragging in elements and adding content.  You can also add a blog to your site in the same way you added a page.  At times the site builder feels a little glitchy.  I don't know if this is because of the interface in general, or if it just works better with certain configurations.  I switched back and forth between two different computers and different browsers.  I had the most trouble using Chrome on my Windows XP computer, I switched to Firefox, and that eliminated most of the problems.  I also had some issues using Firefox on my Ubuntu system, but it was not as bad as with Chrome.  Overall, the interface issues were just minor frustrations and I still think the site builder is an excellent tool that makes building a website super easy.  Also, one of the elements available in Weebly's site builder is a Google AdSense element.  To use this, you have to split the revenue with Weebly, but if your site is drawing enough traffic this setup will do until you can afford to pay for hosting.  When you create your site in Weebly, you can use a subdomain for free.  I went ahead and purchased my own domain name from GoDaddy and directed it to my Weebly site.  Weebly gives you the option to purchase your domain name through their site, which would be the easy way to go, but I've heard a lot of people say that you should not register your domain with the same company that is providing the hosting.  I don't know that this is really necessary, but I don't want to risk it.  So, if you have an idea for your first website, then head over to Weebly and get started.  The set-up only takes a few minutes, then it's just a matter of adding your content.  Thanks for reading and check back soon for more updates.

Resources from this Post:

Weebly
GoDaddy 

Update on My Progress

It's been a while since I've gotten a new post up, so I wanted to give a quick progress report.  I've been busy over at Squidoo for the past week.  If you don't know what Squidoo is, check out my previous post about it.  I've got five lenses up so far.  No income yet, but I am really enjoying the experience there.  My page views are starting to increase now, so hopefully, the money will start coming in soon.  I plan to continue to get lenses up every couple of days, but I will still be continuing to work on getting another site up as well.  I've signed up to a few affiliate sites so far, but I've got a few more to go before I share that experience.  I'm having a little trouble deciding on a topic for a new blog or website, but once I have one chosen, I will be testing out some of the free website hosts that I discussed before.  When I get to that point, I will share my experiences with each one.  That's all for today.  Keep checking back often to see how things are going.  Thanks for reading.

Use Squidoo to Get Content Online Fast

I know I said that my next post would be about joining affiliate programs, but I got side tracked.  I started looking for different ways to get content online.  During this search, I came across Squidoo.  Squidoo is a social networking site that lets you create content (called lenses) on any subject you want.  The best thing about Squidoo, is that they share the revenue with the creators of the lenses (called lensmasters).  Squidoo will split the money from advertisements on your lens 50/50.  There is no need for you to sign up for affiliate programs, and the ads are placed on your lens where they are most effective.  If you want to have control over the ads on your lens, Squidoo allows you to add modules from Amazon and specify the products that you want shown on your page.  You can also turn off some of the ads that are placed automatically, if you think they detract from your content.  And, if you are already using an affiliate program, you can always use your own links in your lens to help boost your income.  Signing up at Squidoo is simple.  Just fill out the basic information and get started.  The community is very supportive, and there are tons of great lenses that will teach you how to get started.  If you still need some help, login to SquidU, the community forums for Squidoo.  The lensmasters here will be happy to help you with any problems you are having.  Overall, Squidoo is an awesome site for putting your content online without having to set up your own website.  The money won't come in right away, you will still need to drive traffic to your lens.  Just create good content and be active in the community, and eventually, the money will come.  Now, obviously, if you have your own site, the earning potential will be higher because you get to keep 100% of the income, but Squidoo is a great place to get started for free.  The more lenses you create, the better your income potential will be.  I've got two lenses up already, and I plan on working on several more.  You can see my first two lenses at http://www.squidoo.com/free-website-hosts and http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-conduct-a-background-check-for-free.  I will be using Squidoo as a main resource in my plan for developing income online.  The income that I gain from my lenses will then be reinvested in the business, and will help me to grow and increase my streams of income.  I won't be using Squidoo exclusively, but I do plan on devoting a good amount of time to this source, because I believe that it is probably the easiest way to get started making money online.  So, if you are following along on this journey, get over to Squidoo and start making lenses!

Free Hosts for Your First Site

So now that you have decided on a topic for your first site, we need to get it published. There are any number of paid hosting sites that you could use, but we are trying to get our first site up for free. Once we start making some money, then we can go ahead and get a paid provider. If you'd like to go ahead and set up with a paid service, BlueHost and HostGator both seem to get consistently good reviews. I can't say which is better, as I've never used either, but they both seem to be good, reliable providers, and both are rated very high for their support of Drupal, which is an open source content management system that I intend to use for my websites. If you've never tried Drupal, I'm in the process of learning to use it, and I've got to say that it makes creating a high-quality website, complete with forums and ecommerce setups, extremely easy, even if you have no knowledge of HTML or CSS. I'll get into learning Drupal in future posts, but if you'd like to work ahead a little, the book I'm reading now is Beginning Drupal 7. If you can follow simple instructions, you can make a very profesional site by following along with this book. In fact, I am so impressed with Drupal that I already got a copy of Pro Drupal 7 Development so I can go straight into it when I finish the first book. But for now, let's focus on finding a free host.

I have used two free hosts in the past. The site you are reading now is hosted by Blogger. If you need to get a simple site up and running fast, you can't go wrong with Blogger. You give up a lot of control in site design, but the templates and ability to customize should be sufficient to give your site a unique look and feel. Blogger also does not place ads on your site, and it gives you the ability to place your own adds on your pages. Plus, the AdSense and Amazon gadgets make setting your blog up to make money, extremely easy. Blogger also allows you to use a subdomain for free, or to link the site to a domain that you have registered.  Since my goal is to not spend any money until the site is making money, I went with the free subdomain. Wordpress.com is another very popular free blogging platform, however, sites hosted on Wordpress.com are not permitted to post ads, and therefore, Wordpress is not useful for our purposes. Wordpress.com should not be confused with Wordpress.org, which provides the Wordpress blogging platform for use on your own hosted site, where you can use whatever ads and affiliate links that you would like.

Blogs are great for getting your site going quickly, without having to worry about any of the programming or design. If you know how to design and program your own sites, there are some options available for you as well. The only free provider that I have any experience with is 110MB.com. I created a site on 110mb several years ago and I have not had any problem with them as a host. The site that I created (you can see it here) has not been kept up to date, and I have never monitored the up-time, but every time I've gone to the site, it has been up and running. If you're hosting a huge ecommerce site with thousands of visitors every day, then the up time may be an issue (although a site that big would be over the available space and bandwidth allowed for free accounts anyway), but for the small information sites that we are starting with, I don't think it will be that big of a deal. The only downside of 110mb is that their free accounts don't allow you to use some of the better features that the paid service provides, most importantly, Drupal. The good thing is, that you can start with the free account and then upgrade to their paid service later if you are happy with them as a host. Check their site for a comparison of their Free VS. Premium services. Another thing that I like about 110mb is that they provide you with a free subdomain, and the .110mb.com subdomain is fairly unobtrusive compared to some other free site providers. If you're going to be using a free subdomain, I believe that the shorter and/or less obtrusive it is the better off you will be. I've seen some arguments that subdomains may hurt your site in terms of SEO. I can't say if that is true or not, but I will assume that it is. That just means that we will need to rely less on search engine rankings for our traffic and find other ways to drive readers to our sites. I'm starting to get a little off track here, so we will discuss SEO and driving traffic at another time.

Back to free web hosts. As I said, 110MB is the only free provider that I have used myself, so it's the only one that I can recommend based on personal experience. However, while doing research for this post, I came across several other sites that have caught my attention. When searching for a free host, I have two basic requirements: 1) The host cannot force its own ads on your site, and 2) The host must allow you to post your own ads and affiliate links on your site. A Google search for free website hosts gives millions of hits. Most of the free web hosts that I found share a few similar characteristics. They all give you a fairly small space and low bandwidth for your site. This is not necessarily that bad for our purposes, we only need a little space to get a small site up and running. Second, most of the free providers will allow you to use a free subdomain. As I said earlier, the shorter and less obtrusive, the better when using a subdomain. If you don't want a subdomain, and your willing to go ahead and shell out about $10, you can register your own domain and link it to your free host. The third thing I found about all of the free web hosts is that they all have a paid service that you can upgrade to. This is a benefit for our purposes. If you find a free host that you like, once your site starts to bring in some money, you can easily upgrade to the paid service without having to transfer all your files to a new host. Finally, the downfall of most free hosts is that they limit the features available on a free account. This means that on most free hosts, you will only be able to utilize basic HTML and CSS. The lack of PHP and MySQL on most of these sites, means that you won't be able to use CMSs like Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress.

While scouring the forums for information on free hosts, Weebly caught my attention. Of all the free web hosts that I found Weebly will be the first one that I try, once I'm ready to get another site up. I haven't signed up yet, so I can't say whether it's as good as it looks or not, but the feature list seems to be promising. The site promises an easy drag-and-drop website creator, which I am anxious to try and it says that they provide powerful blogging features, which leads me to believe they support MySQL and PHP. Whether or not they allow you to install your own scripts is yet to be seen, but I am still hopeful. While Weebly is the host that I will probably try first, I did find several others that looked fairly promising. These include Doteasy.com, Microsoft Office Live, and 000WebHost. All of these sites seem to have potential as starter sites, and I plan on trying them all as I get some sites running. As is to be expected, all of these hosts have both positive and negative comments in the forums, but these four hosts seem to lean more to the positive side. You will have to experiment for yourself to find the free host that is right for you, but these will give you a place to start. If you know of any other free hosts, or if you have personal experience with any of the hosts that I've listed, please share your experiences in the comments. Next time I will give some details on my experiences signing up for several affiliate programs. Thanks for reading!

Resources from this Post:


Free Web Hosts:
Blogger
110MB
Weebly
Doteasy.com
Microsoft Office Live
000WebHost

Paid Web Hosts:
BlueHost
HostGator

Useful Websites:
Drupal.org

Recommended Books:
  

Get a Site Up. Any Site Will Do.

Even the largest affiliate marketers had to start with a single site, so we need to get our first site started. You're reading my first site right now. In order to start a site, you need a topic. This has been a major stumbling block for me. I have many varied interests, but not enough experience to create a whole website on any one particular topic. So my solution was to create an informational site, where people can follow along and help each other to succeed in creating their own internet business, and, as I've said before, to keep me on track in my own goals. Now, this site will have ads on it, but I don't expect this site to be extremely profitable, mainly because the majority of the readers on this site will be learning the affiliate marketing business along with me, so they will understand what ad links are and will be less likely to follow these links. I know this has been true for me.

So, if I don't expect this site to be a money maker, then what's the point? Why waste the time and energy building this first site, instead of going strait for the profitable site? Well, there are several reasons that I have taken this route. Now, if you have a topic in mind that you would like to start with, then by all means start with that site. It will put you one step ahead of me in the process. However, if you're like me, and have no idea what you want to write about, then you need to start with something basic. Even if you just create a personal blog, to use as a journal of your daily activities or a site to share information with your family and friends, you need something published on the web. First of all, this will help you to practice your writing skills, before you open up to a wider audience. I know that my writing skills can probably use some work, and I need to practice organizing my thoughts, and getting them into posts in a logical order. The second reason to get a site up, is to help with finding topics for our web content that we will be creating. This is how I plan on finding topics to write about. As I said earlier, I don't know enough about any topic to start a website based on that topic, or if I do know enough about a topic, it hasn't occurred to me as a potential site yet. So, to find a topic, I want to see what types of items are available to promote from different affiliate networks. In order to see the products and campaigns that are available, I need to sign up to several affiliate networks. In order to sign up for a lot of these networks, you have to give them the url of your site. That's why we have to get a site up and running. Once we have accounts with several affiliate networks, we can promote their items on all our future content, but we need a place to start. The third reason that I chose to start with this site and topic is because I hope that some of my posts will elicit feedback from the readers to help me along the way. And the final reason for starting here is because it was free!

I'm getting a little long winded in this post, so I'll stop for now. Our next post will look at different options for getting your first site up and running for free. Thanks for reading!

The Plan

First things first. The first step to any successful business is to have a business plan. This is mine. It may not be as in-depth as it needs to be, but that will come later. I will be starting out by creating web content that I can monetize. This blog is the first content that I have created, but it will not be the only one. From the research I have done, I believe it will take many different pieces of content at many different sites to create any income at all. I will be attempting to make a profit from this blog, however, I will not be pushing it too hard here. This blog is more of a tool to keep me on track and to help others who want to follow along with starting their own online business. But, in the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that you will see ads on this site and if I'm talking about a topic, and I have an affiliate link for a relevant product or service, you can bet I will be using it. That is the point after all. I do, however, promise that I will not recommend any product or service in my posts if I haven't tried it and found it to be useful. In future posts I'll let you know what I'm doing to create content on other sites. Once I have a little income coming in, I will move on to the second step: Creating my own hosted website. I have not decided on a topic yet, but I am throwing around a few ideas. Since I am avoiding spending any money that I don't absolutely have to, I will be designing and creating the website myself. This means that before I reach this phase, I'm going to have to learn to design a website. I have a little bit of knowledge on web design, but not enough to make a high quality site, so I will be doing a lot of studying. Once I have a few successful websites running, I will move to the third step: My own online store. This, again, will take some time to build up to. I may start by selling locally sourced items on ebay, and then move in to drop-shipping and light wholesale. Hopefully, by the time I reach this point, I will have enough income to leave my job and start working for myself full-time.

So that's it in a nutshell. Now, I'm sure there are easier ways to do it, but this seems like a workable plan for the time being. The most important thing about the plan is that it is flexible. It will probably change many times as I progress along this journey. I have many other ideas that I may attempt along the way. If one works particularly well, I may change the entire plan. If you have a plan of your own, please share it in the comments section. If you have any suggestions for a different approach, then please share those also. Thanks for reading!

Welcome to Break Free. Let's get started!

Welcome to Break Free. This blog will follow my progress as I attempt to find ways to earn an income online and break free from my job. First a little about me:
I hate my job. That may be a little bit harsh. I don't really hate my job. I actually have a pretty good job right now. But I am tired of going to the same job day after day, being told what to do by someone else, and not being in control of my own success. I could get another job, but that would put me right back in the same place. I want to start my own business and be in control of whether it succeeds or not. The next problem is that I have no start-up capital. Zero, Zilch, Nothing. Yes I have a job, but I also have a family and bills to pay. At this point in my life, I can't take the risk of emptying my savings account to try something new. And even if I could, I don't think I would want to throw a lot of money at a new business venture. I think I can do it with nothing!

And that is the point of this blog. I'm starting here with no money invested, and I will attempt to try new ideas and grow as the resources become available. Are there easier and faster ways to start a business? Absolutely! But I want to start a business that is self-sustaining from the beginning. Will it work? Follow along and find out. This blog is just as much for me as it is for the readers. It is a chronicle of my progress and, hopefully, it will help to keep me on track and headed in the right direction. If you want to start your own business as well, then I invite you to follow along with me, and we will do it together. Share your experiences, successes and failures along the way and we will all be able to learn from each other! Will we be successful? Only time will tell...