Internet Marketing For Newbies

Here is a little worksheet I use to help keep me organized. I’ll put it in the download area but you could probably put it together yourself faster then it would take to download.

What this does is keep track of all my sites, reminds me what type of site it is i.e. blog,affiliate,BANS. It also tell me the last time I worked on the site (added some type of content) and keeps a running count of the number of sites I have.

The labels are in red and from left to right No. is the total running number of domains it also correlates with my index in my 3 ring binder for each domain. Next is My Sites which is the hyper link name for the domain, this way I can jump to the site from the worksheet if I want to check something out. Last Worked On, now this column tells me the last time I worked on the site. What I usually do is print out this sheet and hand write in the dates in this column. And the final column is the type of site. You would think you would remember this but trust me, when you get past 30 sites you have to stop and think about it a little.

You could also add other columns like start date (when you went online with the site) domain expiration date, if you bought a used domain you might want to have an age column. I have all these but I have them in a different worksheet but you could put them here.

I have two different hosting companies. The hosting company that this blog is on, I would NOT recommend to anyone, the other hosting company, Host Gator, I can not save enough good things about, but I’ll try.

Hosting companies are not all equal. This blog is on xxx (if you are on my newsletter list, you’ll know which company it is) and has NO cPanel. Just about everything I want to do I have to submit a request for. Many of my WordPress plugins do not work here.Now when I call they do respond fairly quickly and I can almost always get someone on the support phone.

Contrast this with Host Gator. Host Gator has a cPanel which puts ME in total control of what happens on my site. WordPress goes in seamlessly and all the WP plugins I’ve tried so far have worked. I pay one flat fee ($9.99) and I get UNLIMITED domains on this account.

Now if you only have one domain then you could get away with the $4.95 plan. But if your reading this then your interested in IM so you be looking at 30 to 100 more or less domains per year, all depending on how you focused your business. For $9.95 you can get the baby account which will handle all these domains for this one low price.

I was on the phone with tech support for Host Gator today because I was having problems with two of my domains. When I typed in http://www.MyDomain.com it would change to http://MyDomain.com (no www). This worked fine until I tried to get Google to see my sitemaps. Google wanted to see the www, otherwise it gives error messages (404) because it could not find the page.

Tech support was fast at answering the phone and solved the problem quickly. It turned out the problem was in WordPress. In the setting tab it listed the domain without the www so all I needed to do was type in the www and Google was happy.

Bottom line, Host Gator was designed with Internet Marketers in mind and I highly recommend you use them for your hosting company. Host Gator has several hosting planes, but this is the one I would recommend. Once you get larger you might want to upgrade. Check out Host Gator here for all the details on their plans. I’ll gust list a few things here for Baby account.

1. 300 gb Disk Space
2. 3,000 gb Bandwidth
3. Unlimited Domains Allowed
4. Unlimited Databases
5. PHP5
6. So much more - Just go to their website for complete information

Check it out now. You won’t be sorry.

I mention in the "How To Build A Niche Store " post that I was trying out a new plugin. Smart Ad. Well, it didn’t work. The hosting company that this domain is on has a lot of issues with WordPress plugins. I installed a different plugin called adsense deluxe and it seem to be working here although it doesn’t have a lot of the features smart ad has. (I’ll be posting SOON on Hosting Companies)

In our last post, "Convert Most WordPress Themes To Work With BANS ", I mentioned it was great timing, and it is. As we get ready to build our WP-BANS site, Mark from The Niche Store Builder blog site, is running a week long series on how to convert WP themes to work with our BANS sites. What this means to you is that instead of picking from a few WP-BANS themes, you’ll now will be able to pick any WordPress theme that you like and convert it over for your use. We’ll continue with our posts on How To Build A Niche Store Site after Mark’s series of posts on converting themes are completed.

OK, what I’d like you to do now is go over to Convert Most WordPress Themes To Work With BAN S, and follow along. Bookmark each of the posts/videos so that you can go back to them to refresh your memory as you convert themes. Also, I would urge you to sign up for Marks RRS feed as some most of the information he gives out can not be found anywhere else.

I have some great news to go along with the great timing. Mark, from “The Niche Store Builder” website, is doing a one week series on how to convert most WordPress themes to work with BANS. He has converted quite a few already and has some themes for sale if you just want to get up and running without learning how to convert them yourself. If you would prefer to buy a converted theme, click here to see the available themes. However, if like me you want to learn how to do this yourself, then click on “Converting WordPress Templates to work with BANS” and join us at the Niche Store Builder blog.

I’ve have several of Marks themes and I can tell you from personal experience that Mark has the ability to convey information so that you will understand it! Mark uses both text and video most of the time so no mater how you learn best, you’ll be covered. I would urge you to subscribe to his RSS feed, you will learn a lot about BANS and where it’s heading.