Newbie Questions and Ezine Articles

I don't have a website, per se...I have a squeeze page that I'm going to use to build my list. So should i be starting a blogger or hosting another true to form website? And i'm not sure what backlinking is.

It matters only if/when something goes wrong.

If your host isn't also your registrar, then in the event of any accident/problem, if anything ever goes wrong with your hosting, you're in control, not them. And can avoid nightmares, disasters, long delays and entirely unexpected "ransom demands".

There's a large number of horror stories of hosting/registration/control disasters scattered about the forum, almost all of which could have been avoided by registering and hosting in two different places.

Brad expresses it very well, with several well-known examples, in this post.

It's one of those issues which so many people look at and think to themselves "Eew, well, those are all other people: it wouldn't ever happen to me". Until someone on one of their lists reports them, even with absolutely no justification at all, to their host for alleged "spamming" and their website disappears and the host (in accordance with its TOS which few people have ever read all the way through at the time they registered the domain) suddenly wants hundreds of dollars to release the domain so they can get it back online somewhere else.

The point is that "whether something goes wrong" may not be within your own control - it can be just one of those pretty random things that Winston Churchill called "events". :rolleyes:

It's a whole lot better than what many beginners try and do (i.e. not building a list!). However, you have perhaps not quite adequately addressed the fundamental question: "where is my traffic coming from?". Article directories will not be the answer to this.

Bear in mind that in a niche as competitive as this, your many competitors (and believe me: there really are "many") have websites as well, and you may be putting yourself at a great disadvantage by not having one. It also impacts on "the traffic question" because it isn't so easy to do SEO for a squeeze page (I don't say it isn't possible, but it isn't as easy).

Since you were planning to write articles anyway, I'd suggest that you post them on your own site (you'd want the traffic coming there, anyway - not going to an article directory where you'd lose most of it), and that'll help with SEO, too?

Afterthought for your consideration: the purpose of offering the free e-book is to get their email addresses and the purpose of supplying it (apart from sticking to your end of the bargain and establishing credibility and starting to build a relationship, of course) is to get them to open your subsequent emails. You may find that your "open-rate" can be in inverse proportion to the quantity of affiliate-links you've included in the free e-book. If you pack it with "promotional stuff" rather than just "offering value", you will lose some. Especially in that niche, in which many of your subscribers are already on many other people's lists (and those other people have websites). That doesn't necessarily make it the wrong thing to do, because it may be that most of the ones you lose were never going to buy anything from you anyway - one never knows this for sure - but it's something to be aware of.