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!