Is it really better to have a website?

You are wrong... and right.

The main reason to have a website is NOT to create a zillion idiotic articles hoping for a flood of traffic!

You need a website to brand your business.
You need your OWN website because on the "free" websites you don't own it: they own it and they can delete it.

Even one single squeeze page on your own domain and hosting = a website. A one-page website. (actually, it has to have one or two more: thankyou and download)

What you described that's a crazy business "model" (?) trying to get 'free' traffic instead of buying traffic with PPC, ads, affiliates etc.

You seem to not making the dictinction between having a website and trying to get free traffic...

A great way to get a website off the ground quickly, is to add all the basic things, like sitemap, privacy, etc, and then set about making your website look stunning. Spend some real time sorting out the navigation, and sidebars etc, and pay attention to color schemes.

After you are satisfied write 2 pieces of really great content, and i mean put your heart and soul into them.

Once you have done that, start BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP with other bloggers in your niche. Join facebook groups with bloggers in your niche and get talking. Dont go straight in with "hey can i guest post plox". Introduce yourself, offer feedback on others websites, leave a few genuine comments on there blogs.

Then start asking if anyone would like a peice of content written for them as a guest post. You would be suprised how easy it is to get some great guest post backlinks just by building friendships.

Dont look for backlinks for SEO purposes. Focus on getting the TRAFFIC, and with time, you will acquire backlinks easily as well as bringing in traffic.

Kuurt, I think you have an erroneous understanding of what internet marketing is about. First, as Istvan said, you need a brand, even if it's your name, but people gotta have something to relate to when they buy. Also, having a successful website is all about quality content. There is a LOT of writing when it comes to internet marketing, that just goes with the territory.

Now, if that's not your thing, you can outsource it, but that's going to cost you money. If you're not into building a website, you can get someone else to build it for you, but that's going to cost you money. If writing is not your thing, then outsourcing is going to be you thing. If you don't trust outsourcers, then writing is going to have to become your thing.

There are all these myths out there that you can become rich in internet marketing overnight, while sitting at the beach or something. You can have income coming in while on vacation, provided that you have set up a business of successful websites and products that sell on autopilot, AFTER you've promoted them, after you've acquired customers, after you've created a list and after you've acquired affiliates to sell for you. Your website continues to do the selling. Your copy continues to do the selling. Others continue to sell for you.

But if you want to make money in internet marketing, until you get to a certain point, it's going to take a lot of your time to set up your business. But that's true of any business. Don't believe the myths that people get rich overnight, without ever having a product. That's not to say you can't make some money overnight. But making some money now and then and having a sustainable business that's going to come through for your time and time are two different things, and again is not going to happen until you build the business. And that's going to take time. Quite a bit of time actually.

Also, what products are you going to sell? One of the first rules of internet marketing is sell information products. You're going to have to write those. Or create videos, or audios. But you're going to have to create products. And that's going to take time.

So, not trying to be didactic or trying to dissuade from internet marketing. Just saying, if you want to make money in internet marketing for the long haul, it's going to take time. But that's the same in any business.

That is exactly the solution!

Forget all that web site building stuff. Focus on building a list. No web site needed.

I seem to be getting a mix of responses. I figured there would people saying it's not a good idea to go without a website, after all that's what most of us have been taught. But, that doesn't mean there isn't another way. And who's to say it isn't a better way. I believe the creator of Inbox blueprint said he is making millions with his method, and I don't think it requires a website. Just a squeeze page and thank you page, and an email/newsletter series.

Sure building a website can help you build your "brand". But, I'm talking about affiliate marketing here, not creating my own product. Why would you need a brand for that? Besides, if you wanted to you can distinguish your emails with your brand logo just as easily as you could your website.

Kuurt,

We are still talking about two different things!

For your - wrong - perception a "website" is equal with loads of content given away 'for free'; i.e. a kind of authority-type site that has a lot of content and hopes to attract natural traffic from search engines.
Well, that's only ONE KIND of website... and if think that is the only way to have a website - you are wrong.

There are many different type of sites, from minisites (selling on product) to affiliate sites (with lots of aff links) to review sites to photoblog sites and on and on...

You are obsessed with one type of site and don't want to admit many other web presences are also called websites! Any web presence is a web site.

You have to figure out what kind of online business you want to build and select the type of the website/presence accordingly. Don't over-complicate it

Those first steps you outlined in your OP are perfectly legitime business model.. at least they are a good starting point. Because after learning how to drive traffic to your squeeze page and having a big list - there you are facing the big question: WTF to sell these people (a.k.a. how should I monetize my huge list?) since I didn't plan to make any salespage website or product website or any other offer...

Stop thinking about your content, that's not business. Start thinking about your sales funnel: lead generation > front sale > upsell > downsell > more sale... continuity programs etc etc

EDIT: we posted in the same time, so a few points became irrelevant...

I thought it was clear that I was talking about affiliate marketing. That's why I was talking about that kind of a website. But, regardless, even though there are different kinds of sites out there all of them have content be it articles, blogs or whatever. Even a minisite has product reviews.

And I'm just wondering if it would be a better idea to do away with all of that content (in the case of a site where you're going to promote affiliate products). And just create a squeeze page, and promote related affiliate products to your list. Instead of creating all that good free content for your site, you can now use it as part of your email series - thereby cutting down the work load.

Don't need to create your own sales page for this since you'd be promoting someone else's products.

Another very important reason you need to have your own website is...

CONTROL.

The last thing you want is to have your business taken away from you because someone decided that your content was not acceptable...

Or for whatever reason.

John

No, not asking for permission savidge, just wondering if it would be better to do it without a website as oppose to doing it with a website. I'm not really sure which way would be best.

Yes I know you have control with your own website, but you would also have control without a website, with only a list.

Kuurt, plenty of people do exactly what you propose. As long as your email sequence earns more than you spend, you can make a go of it and can do very, very well.

About half of my business focuses on email marketing, but I also do very well earning directly from my sites. I enjoy building up sites so I do it.

Just be sure to choose a niche that works well with email marketing. There are many that do so it shouldn't be a problem. Some website concepts don't work well with email marketing but earn well directly from a site. But like you say, it's a lot of work to build up a successful website.

It took me a while to get the hang of email marketing. Conceptually it's simple. But to make it profitable is not as easy as you might think. It takes really good content and a planned out sequence starting with your free incentive to attract subscribers. Plan it out and then test.

Content is important at the same time you have to explore low comp markets. I made a huge mistake choosing the make money online niche it took me literally years to rank my blogs on the search engines. If I was to do it all over again I would find a lower comp market.... Google trends and google keyword tool are vital to your seo success... You could blog everyday over and over and over again but if there are thousands of people posting basically the same stuff it's next to impossible to get your blog posts ranked unless you have a pr7 blog lol. Witch is very rare .... Except john chow lol.

Kuurt,

You're right that you don't always need anything more than a page to collect email addresses, and some sort of thank you page.

But with such a thin site, where are you getting the tons of email addresses you need for this list you're emailing offers to?

either you build a site with content, that gets people engaged and entices them to sign up for your offer, or you pay for things like solo ads, renting or buying lists regularly to ensure you have fresh new subscribers every month.

having a website with more than 1-2 pages will allow you to promote your page in various places (social media) to get the traffic you need to get signups.

with a 1 page squeeze...you'd better get tons of direct advertising to your page and offer something really good for your readers to get their addresses.

jgant, it's nice to hear that lots of other people are doing this and it's working for them. I didn't realize so many were - it's the first time I ever heard of this method. I'm thinking it might be best to do it this way for niches I'm not as passionate about.

savidge4, I think I get the point you were making. If you have a brand and more of a web presence - pages, articles, posts, then people will perceive you as more of an expert or authority in your niche. And because of that they will be more likely to opt into your list. As opposed to someone who's just driving paid traffic to a squeeze page. People would probably be less likely to subscribe to that list because they don't know anything about that person. In that case you would have to do two things: 1. Give them a really good reason to want to opt into your list, like a free mini-course.
2. make sure you answer the question that they came for and keep them reeled in, least they go else where.
I'm thinking that creating an authority site like what you're talking about might be the way to go for the niches I'm more passionate about.

John, I wasn't thinking about no 100 - 1000 page website. I'm lazy, I would never do that much work. No, I was just thinking more like a 15 - 30 page site. I heard that Google likes authority sites and penalizes sites with like 5 page or less. At least, that's what I heard anyway. I probably wouldn't even consider a site an authority site if it didn't have at least 15 pages worth of content. That's not to say that you couldn't be an expert with less than 15 pages, it would just be less convincing.

jezter6, I was thinking about using paid traffic to get subscribers with this method. Paid traffic is something I know I want to learn how to do anyway, since most of the top paid affiliate marketers do it. If you can turn a dollar in two dollars than it's just a matter of scaling up. With paid traffic you don't have to build backlinks and wait until you're ranking for keywords. You don't have to worry about google and all of it's algorithm changes. Once you know what you're doing you can get traffic right away.

I'm think there are some good things about both methods of affiliate marketing that I was talking about - having a website and not having a website. Maybe it should just depend on how passionate I am about the topic/niche. It's going to be a lot easier to create content for the ones I am passionate about than the ones I'm not.

If you want to be taken seriously by your customers I suggest you put up your own website asap.

Hi,
Most definitely!! The reason you should go with a website is to build a list. When you do that, you will have a buying audience. You can still send paid traffic to a blog, but, you have to make sure what you are selling are quality products. Without quality, you won't gain a good reputation.
Good luck in deciding what you are going to do.
P.S. If you go the website route be sure to use WordPress.org. Don't use a free site because the content you work hard to put on your blog could disappear overnight and you don't own it. NO JOKE!!
Do some research and find out what you need to know before deciding.
Geri

A website offers many advantages, including the ones posted above. But, it's going to take some research, planning, patience and some perserverance to get things going. Also you get to learn a lot of things you wouldn't otherwise learn. But most of all, try and keep an open mind, because things have a tendency to change.

Ask yourselves what the alternative to having a website is online. YouTube channel? social media profile? This is not exactly a difficult puzzle to solve, there are relatively few things that you can even own online. The website is your home base, one of the few things which you truly own with little to no restriction.

I'm mainly an email marketer. Having said that, I've created probably close to 1.5k to 2k pages of content over the past two years that could have easily been put on a website, where they would brand me and get traffic. With a little work on my part, I could have easily added another 100k to my business. Big mistake. I'm not making that mistake any more.

If creating a website and content is too much hassle then you've already got the wrong mindset for making money online.

You can't do things by half.

Your potential customers want someone who goes the extra mile, delivers real value, goes above and beyond, pumps out epic content that helps them over and and over again.

They don't just want emails with a few sentences and an affiliate link thrown in for good measure.

I know you didn't say you'd be doing that but that is what 99% of people actually do or plan to do. Just chuck up a squeeze page, give away a free ebook they knocked up in 5 minutes, then send emails with affiliate links in every day.

Then they get surprised when it's not working. The reason it doesn't work as in most cases there's no value there for the end user.

Also having a website isn't just about getting search traffic. I don't actively build links to any of my blogs at the present time yet I still get plenty of traffic - from blogs, forums., social media, Reddit, videos, my email list and dozens of other places.

I do also get a decent bit of search traffic on most of them but without actively chasing it. Relying on search engine traffic isn't wise IMO as it can be taken away from you at any time but when you get it as a bonus it's great.

Problem with this method of saving your good content for once they have subscribed is that the sort of people you WANT to subscribe to your list, i.e. the ones who open emails, read them, click links, take action and buy usually won't hand over their email address to someone without having seen real value upfront.

Sure you can give away a good ebook but people are wary about squeeze pages and free ebooks as most are low quality. So they'll chuck in an email they never check just to get the book. Many don't even read the book - just gathers digital dust on their hard drive.

Then as they never see your emails they don't bother to open them.

The ones that do see them usually don't open them either as they only signed up to get the book they didn't really want further emails from you. So they just delete, mark as spam or unsubscribe.

When you give tons of value upfront on your website THEN ask people to opt in for more of the same they opt in because they want more emails from you so when you send something they open it, read it and quite often take action.

They don't delete it, report as spam or unsubscribe as they willingly opted in for more emails. They actually want to read your emails.

In my experience cold traffic to squeeze pages, forced opt ins, bribes (free ebooks etc) ALWAYS result in low open and click rates.

When sending cold traffic to a site full of good content then getting opt ins produces much smaller lists but they are much more active, they open, they click, they take action and these lists outperform the bigger ones every time.

Don't do things by half. Do them properly and you'll see results.

Great advice here given already.

One thing that I'd also like to add, is in addition to creating a website, create various other methods for attracting clients/leads/visitors/clicks etc.

- Create a YT video
- Create a social presence
- Create Web 2.0s
- Etc.