Is a website the smart next step??? All I know is article marketing. lol

Why not start with a Wordpress blog/site as that is quite easy to learn and set up. You can then use your other skills - Article Marketing and keyword research - to set up a great site and promote it.

You could find a good Clickbank product, do some keyword research and find a good keyword phrase and then build a site around that keyword phrase. Then use your Article Marketing knowledge to promote your site and build backlinks.

Get a basic web hosting account and install a WordPress blog using Fantastico...

Set up pre-sell pages for your affiliate offers to include in your blog, and mix some original content into the mix...

Then use your article marketing to build links to your site and your individual offers...

If you want to learn more about the bigger world of Article Marketing, get my free ebook on the first link in my signature...

Carson, if you're trying to develop a web presence, then yes, a website is important. Your bios on your articles should be leading people to somewhere to learn more about you and who you are, and your expertise. I agree with Sheryl that Wordpress is definitely the way to go. And not wordpress.com as they frown on advertising - it's meant for personal use. What you need is a domain name (your name would be a good start), paid hosting and wordpress installed. If you need assistance with this, please feel free to contact me, I do this regularly for my own clients.

For an easier Drag-and-drop Web Builder, then check out Weebly.

It is free and will allow you to build 2 free sites per email (I think).
I used them to build my first affiliate site several years ago and it
is still bringing in sales.

I think you are going to have to get a web site up at some point. You can get a web site for under $4 a month.

Do you really think a squeeze page is the way to go Domenico? I don't. I have several websites up and get people subscribing to lists without necessarily making them go through a squeeze page first. Personally I get switched off by them and often don't bother going any further but I know that many have different ideas.

Carson would need to know why he's collecting addresses and what it is he's going to offer them in return for doing so. Otherwise simply having a site so people can learn more about him after reading his articles is a good thing to do. And he can introduce them to other things, affiliate links and so on without necessarily making people sign up first.

Yeah give it a go with blog software which is free. You want to find a nice domain and a hosting company that offers and one click install.

Trust me the whole process is so much easier than you would think. It took me until 2007 to get my first site off the ground because I thought it was going to be hard. I am kicking myself now that I didn't get started before!

Say you have article marketing skills? Good copywrite is half the battle at least. I agree with these suggestions on having a blog.

You can have both very easily and if can give good information with a good call to action why not try to create a website there is all kinds of information out there.

Yes, website is the smart and best thing to do. This is where you can widen up your marketing. Some piece of advice, go for a hosting company in getting a nice domain, there are many choices you can opt for.

There are two things that you should be doing from here on out. Grab yourself cheap hosting (you won't need a big package) and register a domain or two depending on how many products you are promoting. Try and get the keyword you are trying to rank for in the domain name, preferably a dot com, dot org, or dot net. Then use a free website builder like Html Kit or Nvu or something along those lines and at the very least put up a basic website. You can add more bells and whistles to it later. Fill it with keyword rich, original content. If you don't know how to do these things a simple search of this forum (or Google) will give you the answers.

The second thing you need to do is get an autoresponder and start capturing subscribers. Once you start pointing your articles at your website(s) you need to be offering them something for free like a valuable short report in exchange for their name and email. This way you will be able to market to them later. I know it sounds like a lot but break it up into one step at a time and you will be on your way.

blogger blog or a wordpress software are the best solutions for the new webmasters

I suggest you been by using WordPress or Blogger. This will get you familiar with the idea of owning/maintaining a website. When you are ready, you can then purchase a domain name and hosting to get more authority over your sites.

I agree. Website is important so better invest on it for your business. For starters, get a blog site as your page then if you’re ready to set a custom domain site, you can get a web host service and have it designed for better branding.

Making a website is easy thanks to Wordpress and fantastico deluxe :-)

If your host doesn't support Fantastico I'll be happy to install wordpress for you just drop me a line.

Ricky

From the sounds of it you have a lot more skills than most people do when they jump into building a website.
The truth is its not that hard to get a nice looking wordpress site up and running. From there you can "learn as you go" or pay someone to 'optimise it'.
With your skill set having everything focused in one place will give you more opportunities to branch out and build other sources of income.

One thing don't forget about keyword choice when picking a domain name.

Don't do that! The mods hate it...

As for your initial question - why not do a barter deal with somebody?
Write articles/do keyword research in exchange for setting up a web site/blog.

Of course, if you wish you can learn how to do it but it could be a fast shortcut if you work out a deal with somebody...

Being one of the many entrepreneurs, I understand your strong motivation to make money online. And since you open up this topic about which would be the next step to take, I would prefer suggest that you create/build website. You have advantage on doing so, since you already have the background on article marketing. It's good to start up with Wordpress and later have your or domain.

My advice: Make a simple site using wordpress, use your article marketing skills to drive traffic to it, and then set up affiliate products on it. There are multiple free guides on how to do both of these things.

I'd also start with Wordpress and a simple theme, and direct your article traffic to it. I'd also try to stick an opt-in form in there, and offer some powerful tips and/or a report in exchange for your visitors' email addresses. Since you seem to be very comfortable writing articles, creating compelling reports and short, punchy emails should come naturally to you.

Paul

Hi Carson.

A few things to look at here.

1) Yes you should ALWAYS have a web site anyway. If you want to market yourself, your products and or affiliate products, you should always have your own site and then link to other profiles like Facebook, Twitter etc.

2) If you are great at Article Writing and research, there are a few things you can do from here to make money:

a) You can offer your services on forums like this.

b) You can bid for business on Freelancer sites

c) You can build a network of content sites that bring in affiliate commissions & adsense revenue for you.

d) You can Create PLR Article Packs and sell them to limited membership. Be unique. There are Soooo many PLR content sites out there that all give away the same information each month. If you create quality well researched content, you can easily sell PLR article packs at say $20 per pack of 10. With just 50 sales per month, you are making a nice $1,000. More than you would make just writing for other people.

e) You can use your research and writing skills to make awesome bonuses to OTHER peoples products and just make money on affiliate income. When they buy via your link, they get your exclusive product for free.

f) You can build blog farms and then sell no follow links and or set up three way link exchanges

g) You can focus on local business and write about your region/area and get traffic that is targeted to certain business types. Then you can sell traffic links to local business for a monthly fee.

Just some food for thought, but the fact you have a skill that is high in demand (if your good), then go for it.

I wish you all the best.

Martin

Ya, thanks for your encouragement.

Do you happen to have an answer to my question?

Hosting is like your house. It gives you a place to put all your web files.

You want to buy a hosting package. It's very simple. Figure out your budget, and look up a few different hosts and decide where you want to house all your sites.

Many hosts today have one click install programs like fantastico or simplescripts. These programs will install wordpress for you with literally a click or two.

Here is what you will need to do.

Buy the hosting.

Change the nameservers at godaddy - these need to point to your new host.

Log into your new hosting account and look for the cpanel.

Make sure you addon the domain to your hosting account.

Then look for the one click install program, find wordpress, and install it on your domain.

You should then be able to log into the back end of your newly installed blog and post away.

Sooner or later you are going to need a site (think of it as a store front for your business and visitors coming in to shop) so you may as well start learning how to do it now.

As it has already been mentioned, you are better off starting with wordpress. Most reputable webhosting co's have some good tutorials that will get you started with the setup, nameserver redirect etc. If all else fails, just contact the Host's help desk and they should be able to point you to the right direction.

As far as a template goes, I would start with the default wordpress one and once your site is up, you can experiment with other layouts.

One last thing, BE SURE to backup your site on a regular basis. Hosting co's have backups, but you always want your own. You can do so by searching for a good wordpress backup plugin.

This has already been said but I want to re-emphasize it . . .

If you can write articles you can build WordPress Blogs.

You already have the others skills necesarry for a good blog being the keyword research, product research and writing.

Good news is you can use all those articles you've already written if you like :-D

Wordpress is basically a click and point affair, just find a theme you like and start posting your articles.

I recommend the following plug-ins:
1. all in one seo - name pretty much sums it up
2. Wp Tagger - automatically adds most relevant tags to your posts
3. Easy Privacy Policy - again the name says it all - easily creates privacy policy pages
4. Google Sitemaps - creates and submits your sitemaps
5. wp captcha - helps reduce spam comments

I also recommend looking for an autoresponder plugin that will add those who register or comment to your list automatically. I use one for aweber but I have seen them for other companies too.

Good Luck

Building website is the basic of IM. It is super easy to build one especially wordpress based websites. Once you have your own websites you can promote it like crazy via article marketing....or any other usual method.


Qamar