Beginner: Ready Made Websites vs. DIY

Hi, ZachRobinson and welcome

Very nice q. At the beginning I would study a lot, just 2 month, take some valuable course, read the book about affiliate marketing, read this forum . And that of course take action. There is nothing like get rich over night, you need study a lot, because there is a lot of scams!

This forum is about to provide a lot cheaper but more valuable wordpress theme, products, advise like anywhere else. But My recommendation is find someone who will care about you as customer and provide support!

What it is all about? Why people want buy from you not from the others?

It is about relationship, trust, credibility, being valuable to you visitors!

Your job is to care about them and give as much as you can valuable FREE things, and than human nature works very well on that. All will say thank you at beginning and than they will trust you and buy from you things easily.

Let me know if it was helpful please

Well, Verena sells PLR blogs. Themeforest sells themes. You either buy a PLR blog or a theme and build your own blog.

I bought one in the past... It ranked well but the theme didn't convert so I switched to artisteer customized it on my own and my conversions shot up

I'm assuming it's different for every person but from my experience they don't convert well.

Verena's site packages are built on Genesis Framework/Studiopress (from memory).

Essentially it is fully pre-configured WordPress site with PLR content (ie: content that isn't unique).

You can't sell the sites to anyone else and strictly speaking you don't own the theme.

The main advantage of buying a pre-configured site is the potential time it saves you as you don't need to buy a theme, install plugins, add images and content and find suitable affiliate products, CPA offers etc.

Blogs like that have their value but I would opt to write my own articles. This one will provide you with low-quality content I would think. Am I wrong in thinking this? Happy to be told otherwise. The theme itself you can find for free elsewhere (well, something similar). The bonus material might be worth it. I mean, it's only $25 for the whole thing so not a huge gamble. You know what you are getting as there is a demo site. You mention it 'has SEO' but the only thing it mentions is what most likely is a free SEO plugin pre-installed. You can find one to easily place into a free theme. No one is going to get to the site based on what is provided with that package - you will need to buy ranking services or do some work yourself.

I'm a beginner like you, except I've been at it with niche sites for a couple of months now and have a tiny bit of experience. Basically, my rookie mistakes. :-)

1. Bought an Adsense niche site thinking it might make money on its own. The classic 'set and forget!' niche site sales pitch. Truth is it probably won't if you're buying it at 10x or 20x, unless you know what you are doing in terms of keeping the rank or expanding the site into something bigger. HOWEVER, I was still happy I bought it as I saw a niche site for the first time. On-site SEO, keyword %, how many pages, what type of content, the theme, etc. This was amazing for learning and would recommend it. MikeFromMaine, Adsense Flippers, WSOtesters.com sell sites such as these. These are only for Adsense though.
2. Read too much. Pick one process and see how it goes. I took too long trying to read into all of these different monetization methods and it was too much. I barely took action the first month.
3. Ranking (or rather, traffic) is critical. Doesn't matter if you're doing CB, Amazon, Adsense... if people don't see the site it's useless. Try and learn about how you are going to get people on your site. You can then think about which theme converts, % on Adsense, etc.

I would just get a nice theme for free and start building content (after doing some research on a niche). You don't know what you're doing yet in terms of ranking the site or getting traffic, so why waste money on the theme at the very start? There are plenty of decent free themes. Places like Woo themes have some free ones to entice you to buy, as well as other places like Studio Press. Once you know what you're doing a bit more, you will realise what you are missing and need. You might eventually realise you need a nice theme for a gold niche (like the one being sold) and you might go back to that seller. Then you won't have to create graphics and you get some base content to start off with.

Sorry, rambled a bit there!

Hey Zach,

Congratulations on getting started!

If you're brand new, I wouldn't suggest buying a templated site from anyone, no matter how cheap it is. (For that matter, I wouldn't suggest buying from us, MikeFromMaine, or WSOTesters either) Yes, you'll have a theme, a site, some non-unique content...but it's not likely to put you on the path towards making money with niche sites unless you just get really lucky.

There are plenty of ways to skin the (make money online) cat...but I truly believe that one of the best ways to get started is through niche site creation. It does take quite a bit of work and the risk/reward is pretty low...but you're more likely to find early success and can build it up from there.

There are some great (free) resources to get you started with niche sites. Here are just a few:

The Challenge - Ed Dale
Niche Pursuits - Spencer
MikeFromMaine - Mike
WSO Testers - Josh / Trevor

You can check out our site as well as we have quite a bit to say on the issue of niche sites. Not just because it's ours, but I would highly suggest checking out our guide, "Building A Niche Site Empire". It's free...no opt-in required...and I honestly think it's great for getting started.

Niche sites start with keyword research. Get this wrong and you'll be spending quite a bit of time building out sites and spending efforts on sites that won't make you money. Two of the popular keyword research tools are Market Samurai and Long Tail Pro...but you can get started just by using the Google Keyword Tool.

Once you've gone through the process a few times consider buying some earning sites from us, Mike, or WSOTesters. You can then reverse engineer our process as a head-check and then continue to build out your sites the best way you know how.

Hope that helps!

Justin/Joe,

Cool to see you guys adding to the thread. Your work definitely inspired me in terms of getting started. Love the podcasts as well, you seem like nice guys (think the podcast has been very effective in terms of 'trust').

However, in terms of your point about buying a starter niche site - I disagree. Funny I am disagreeing and telling people to actually go ahead and buy one of your sites, even if starting out. ;-)

If I could go back I would still buy the niche site I got. It taught me a lot in terms of theme options, ad placement, plugins (even just knowing the selection of plugins used by niche site creators was worth a lot to me and I now use most of them as standard), on-site SEO (another important one) and just generally knowing what is 'good enough' to launch. Before I got the niche site I spent SO MUCH time trying to figure out the 'mystery' of what a niche site should look like and what it should contain. I spent way too long over-thinking the process.

For those reasons I think it's worth getting a niche site, provided you have the extra cash to buy an entry-level site. I would put this after hosting, domains, keyword research tools, and SEO tools/ebooks/WSOs. Of course having the tools to do everything yourself is ultimately most important. Nevertheless, buying a niche site gave me some nice lessons and impetus to do it myself. The confusion of countless WSOs almost freezes you. Once you see what's out there making money, you realise you can maybe do that yourself as well. My rookie 'error' was buying the site purely as an investment for Adsense - the other stuff made it worth the purchase.

By the way, definitely download the Niche Site Empire guide. :-)

You can profit from both. I would personally do a DIY site. More leverage and you will probably be familiar with the HTML editor/website software that you use to build the site.

If you want to learn more and savor the experience, then you can start from scratch. But if you want to start straight away then go for a PLR blog.

I say DIY site especially since you started out just because you can learn a lot more that way.

I got one of ready build websites myself and it ranked well but I have to customize it a lot so it don't look like all of the competitors

DIY is a skill that is needed more so on a tight budget. websites or at pleast HTML and WP is one of those things you need to sit down and study when it comes to IM. PLR bolgs are cool but know that you wont be the only person with it and many are too lazy to change the content on them anyways to make it unique. Once you get in a position where you can hire someone else to handle the designs fro you I say go for it but starting out that skill is priceless.

Hello everyone ! I am trying to outrank the website with really crappy look but the guy has 100 k unique visitor per month . I would say to the look of the website in any way can not be compared to importance of content . Focus on getting right content on your website( a lot of good unique content + LSI keywords) and this all thing might work out for you .
About the website , jest learn how to install wordpress from your hosting provider (hostagator ) and take from there , few weeks and you'll be able to make your own blogs for free .
Hope this helps . Good luck !

Trust me, I had 3 of those things, none work, they are a WASTE OF MONEY!!

1st off welcome to the IM world, great start with coming to WF and I am sure you will be successful.

Like many have said, A ready made site is simply put quicker to get started. it's like a franchise so to speak, many of the same template, same content.

Now I know Verena does very good work and I am sure you will be pleased. My suggest is this.

If you can have her or anyone set you up with a ready made website. Assuming you do not know design work or how to put a wordpress site together.

While that is going on, think of your product, services and content that you will place on your website. THIS is VERY important. it is not the site it self that will make you successful, its the content, product, service and you that will make you successful.

Having a site ready made, at 1st will get you to this goal a bit quicker. you will and must make it different.

Then once you feel comfortable with IMing and have a little more time and expertise under your belt, creating one on your own will make more sense. I spent more time, re-designing my website, changing headers, color etc, if I spent that much more time on my content and products, i would have made a faster, better, Smarter start.

Don't loose focus, take Action, the worse thing you can do it spend time reading and not taking action, creating & research your niche, service, products, learning how to earn and then putting these things into action will benefit you more in the long term.

Funny I just brought 2 IM products from the ugliest website in the world, lol I didn't really notice, simple because it was the information I needed at the price I wanted to pay.

Good Luck Buddy

A theme is a blank canvas. If you are buying a site of any type you need to do some due diligence to make sure you are getting the headstart you think you are.

There is a big difference between PLR blogs and plain Wordpress themes. PLR blogs come ready with content that you can either rewrite or just keep as is. Theme Forest sells WP themes that comes with no content so you would have to create all of your content from scratch.

Both choices can be beneficial you just have to figure out which choice best suits you and the project you are going to work on.

Hi!

I think that creating a nice looking website is the easy part (and the fun part!). The hard bit (for me anyway) is getting lots of fresh content, and hardest of all - getting good backlinks. These two things take up a lot of time and effort - especially if you have more than one site.

In this case, I think that you can get good value for money from "ready built" sites if they include any extras like content or link building.

Just my two cents :-)

If you buy a site that is already made...buy one with unique content.

@ZachRobinson,

If you want to create sites for marketing, then you should consider purchasing OptimizePress. I use it for several sites and I couldn't be more satisfied.

Can't give you any advice on Verena's service but I see that it's sold out already!

Good luck!