1. List Your Keywords

The first thing you want to do is come up with a list of terms or phrases that describe the online business you have in mind. Think of phrases people might input into a search engine when searching for your product or service. Once you have a list, then you can perhaps pair some of them or add prefixes or suffixes to get good ideas.

Something you should probably do, that many people overlook, is a little keyword research when you choose your domain name. You want to have key phrases that get enough searches on the engines, but you don’t want to have to compete with millions of other sites ranking for your key words.

2. Create An Expectation

When someone hears your domain name for the first time, they should easily and accurately guess what will be found at your website. Think “www.cheapdogfood.com” Try to stay away from strange names and spellings. This will also help make your domain name easier to remember, which is important. And always avoid trademarked names at all costs.

3. Keep It Simple

People need to be able to remember your domain name and type it into their address bar. Try to get the shortest domain name possible that is still relevant to your site and that’s memorable.

If your domain name is hard to type correctly due to the use of strange spellings, multiple hyphens or numbers, you will lose a good number of potential customers. Also, hyphens and numbers make it much harder to give your domain name verbally.

4. .com, .org, .net?

You might hear many different opinions on this subject, that is, what extension to use on a domain name. I won’t go into this too much, but I do have a few opinions.

Keep in mind that .com is the first extension many people try when searching for a website. Some browsers will search for the .com extension if none is typed in.

Just be sure to promote your website with the full domain name, especially if you choose an extension other than .com.

5. Use A Domain Selection Tool

After you have some good domain names in mind, you will need to know whether they are still available or not. Many domain registrars (godaddy) have an ajax based tool that can determine the availability of the domain name. Or try sites like instantdomainsearch.com or domdig.com. You can find the name you want and use the registrar of your choice.

Final Word

The thoughtful selection of a good, relevant domain name should be one of the first steps in creating your online presence. A well chosen domain name helps with name recognition, search engine position, advertising and more. It is important but shouldn’t be hard to find a winner. Just remember to keep these simple tips in mind when deciding.

Wishing you online success,

When I first started out trying to make money online, I wasn’t sure where to begin. One of the first things that sounded interesting was filling out legitimate surveys for cash. I didn’t want to pay someone a bunch of money, so I had to do the research for myself. I wanted to find cash paying survey companies that would offer lots of surveys and would not fill my inbox with junk. This is much harder than it sounds, because there are hundreds of sites that don’t deliver on what they promise.

So, after months of signing up with many survey sites and filtering out the marketing fluff, I started to find legitimate companies paying cash for answering surveys. It really was frustrating to get so many emails and try to separate what was going to make money from the scams.

I finally figured out what really worked and started to get lots of cash paying surveys. I have also been included in focus groups and forums that pay very well too. But, you need to know where to look for the right paid cash surveys.

The Only Companies That Really Pay

I have decided to share this hard to find information for free with 500 people. After the test period, I plan to start charging a fee. Right now, all that is needed is a valid email address in order to receive your free membership and eveything you will need to get started. Take legitimate surveys for cash now.

Wishing you online success,

You can create your own blog for free, and use paid hosting, or use one of the free blog platforms that provides the hosting for you under a subdomain. Keep your blog updated often with new content in order to get the best results. You can get a good free blog from these two reliable sources online.

Blogger.com

To create your own blog with minimal effort, try blogger.com. This may sound daunting at first, but it is actually quite easy. The procedure takes little time to get your new blog ready to go. A good blog can attract a multitude of followers, and many of them will be interested in visiting your affiliate links or advertisements that can be featured throughout.

Go to blogger.com and click on “create your account now”. Input your name as you would like it to appear, and choose your blog title. Research for a good keyword for the title and content. You can also choose the first part of the url - www.”youdecide”.blogspot.com. Submit this information, then select a template for your blog. Now, on to the fun part!

The next screen is the blogger dashboard where you can manage your blog. Now, you begin posting to your blog whenever you like. There are plenty of features on these blogs, so you can upload images etc. Use well researched keywords in your posts and post titles. Tell people about your blog and invite them to post comments. Post relevant comments on other blogs related to your topic.

Wordpress

Another free platform can use to create your own blog can be found at wordpress.com. If you would like to host the blog with your own domain name, you can download the software and installation instructions at wordpress.org. Wordpress blogs feature hundreds of plug-ins and “widgets” that allow you to customise everything to your liking.

Free Website Builder

Some of you may prefer to create a traditional website in order to offer sales pages or provide more dynamic and interactive content. Hiring someone to do this for you can cost a bundle. To get started for free with minimal hassle, you might choose to try My Free Website Builder. No expensive webmaster required. You can choose your own template, or easily design a great site from the ground up.

Hosting

If you want your own unique domain name and full control over your site, you will need to purchase a hosting plan for your pages, and a domain name (i.e. www.yoursite.com) in order to get it online. You probably should research for a good niche keyword in your target market and base your domain name on this. Also, be sure to register it before you get hosting. Use a reputable domain registry service to register your domain name.

A hosting provider maintains the online computers (servers) that store and transmit your website to anyone on the Internet. It is important to choose a reliable host that offers plenty of storage and bandwidth so your site won’t run slow or go offline frequently.

You can get good, reliable hosting for as little as $4.95 a month.
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Up-time is among the highest in the business and live agents are available 24 hrs. a day to help you if needed. I use Hostgator and I’ve never had any problems. Be sure to look at all the packages they have. I believe the $7.95/Mo. plan offers unlimited domains for the same price.

Final Word

Considering all the powerful platforms available online today, it is easier than ever to create your own blog. When you decide to enter the blogosphere, be sure to utilize all the latest resources to help you start out with minimal cost and effort. Blogging can be a fun and lucrative way to earn extra income from home.

Wishing you online success,

Headers/Banners

It can be hard to get a good looking header for your site without spending some cash. But there is a new site called Instant Banner Creator, that can get you well on your way to making your own professional looking header or banner ad. It is free to join the site and there is a one time offer to upgrade for more templates. I made the image above in about three minutes.

You can create a complete header or get a pre-made template and add more images to it at puresilvabannermaker.com. Unfortunately, this site adds a small watermark to the corner of your images, unless you pay a small fee.

There is a site I really like for creating headers from scratch. You can upload your own background images and choose from hundreds of fonts for your design. The site is called bannersketch.com. This one is free too.

Image Effects

I started with just this small sample above to show you the general idea of some effects that can be done to an image. Much more impressive and dramatic effects can be achieved with a better stock photo.

Shadow Drop

Sometimes images on a site can look too flat and seem unreal. A good way to overcome this problem is with a drop shadow effect. You can make them for free at dropshadow.net This effect seems to make the image stand out more.

Reflection

Another way to help improve the look of your website images is with the reflection effect. Once again, you can find it for free at reflectionmaker.com.

Round Corners

If an image has square corners and is a dark color on a light background, it can look out of place. To soften the edges, you can use a dithering effect, or round the corners of the image. You can do the round cornering easily and for free at roundpic.com this site is good because you don’t need to embed a javascript code in your site to display the round corners.

Flash Animation

I came across this site and I couldn’t believe all the cool flash effects I could make including animations, movies, decorations and more. The site is a little hard to figure out at first, but it is really powerful and worth learning the methods of creating your own flash images. Go to effectgenerator.com and check it out.

Final Word

I did all these effects in just a couple minutes, with a small, poor quality image, but if you take some time to use these resources to their full potential, you will soon have a great looking site with top-quality graphics. Be sure to get your free membership to The Luxury Lifestyle for all the insider information you need to make money online.

Wishing you online success,

Content is King

You might have heard the phrase “content is king”. Well, this is no myth, the search engines love to index fresh content. But, your unique content can also help you in some other ways. Most marketers have heard of article marketing, this is submitting your own articles to directories like ezinearticles.com an goarticles.com that post the articles on their site and also allow others to republish them. The benefit for you is, your author’s box must be published along with your articles. The author’s box contains your name and a link to your website. A well written article can find it’s way to hundreds of sites, with your link attached.

Your article can be reworked to help you build links from other types of sites too. You can present the content of the article in video form and submit it to all of the video site like youtube. There is a free service at www.tubemogul.com that will submit your video to over 20 sites. Create an MP3 from the audio, and submit it to sites like www.podcastingnews.com. You could even make the article into a PowerPoint type presentation and then upload it to www.slideshare.net. I’m sure you can think of some other ways to use your content as well.

Don’t stop there, you can spin the article into several different versions in order to use it on even more sites. Try the tool at www.jetspinner.com, it can help you to easily rework your article into new versions. Then, you can post your new content on the sites like www.squidoo.com and www.hubpages.com with a link back to your site of course.

Guest blogging is yet another way to use unique content that you have written. Many bloggers welcome others to write for their blogs as long as that content is only used for them. Your guest blog post will have your name and website listed along with it. This can be a great way to build your following and credibility.

Get Out There

You can build even more links back to you site by visiting popular blogs related to your niche, and leaving quality comments on the posts you find there. Try to do this on blogs with the “dofollow” link attribute. You can do a search for blogs like this.

Don’t forget about forums either. Many forums will let you use a signature that includes your link in the post. When visiting forums, don’t be a “troll”, that is, only looking to drop your links. Be sure you have something to add to the discussion. Be polite, and helpful to become respected as an expert in your field.

Web 2.0 Properties

Finally, I am going to let you in on a strategy that many have not tried. You all know about the social networking sites like facebook and myspace. Many of these types of web 2.0 properties can be used for link building as well. When you create your profile, quite often you can post your link as well. There are hundreds of these 2.0 sites you can use. Many of them are not social networking sites, but you can still set up a profile and drop your link. Here are a few - www.mylot.com www.livejournal.com www.friendster.com. In “The Luxury Lifestyle” member’s area I give you a list of 40+ high ranking properties you can use for link building, and some strategies to improve your results.

There is work involved in all this of course, but keep at it, and the new found traffic to your websites will be worth it. Good luck and happy link building.

Wishing You Online Success,

If you spend a lot of time and money getting visitors to your websites, you want to make the most of your efforts. If you are not building a list, when a potential customer visits your site and does not make a purchase, you have lost this customer forever. If, however, you offer an incentive for them to join your list, you have an opportunity to reach them in the future. You can build a relationship with your potential customers, and have a built-in market for new products or ideas.

When you decide to start building your own opt-in list, there are a few proven methods that can help you succeed.

1. You need an opt-in form on your website (connected to your autoresponder) to make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your list. The easier it is for visitors to opt-in, the more people will do so. Locate the form on your website so it is easy to see, and make sure visitors know what they need to do to sign-up.

2. Offer an incentive for visitors to subscribe to your list. Give out relevant information, articles or updates to entice visitors to subscribe. Free courses, software, or other freebies are also in high demand. A contest, quiz or giveaway can also be used effectively.

3. You can try offering a free trial of your product or service. If people like the sample, they will be inclined to buy your full product. Set up your autoresponder to give instructions on how to obtain the free trial. Be sure to follow-up with customers to close the sale.

4. Of course, you must promote your website to reach as many visitors as possible and get the most exposure. Getting traffic to a website is one of the biggest challenges in marketing. Try to master several techniques for traffic generation including search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, blogging and social networking.

5. While building your list, remember that each contact is also a real person. Avoid flooding people with constant emails. You don’t want to become an annoyance to your subscribers. Be sure to offer good content in addition to new offers you may present. Give out new information, special offers and helpful tips.

The benefits of having a large opt-in list are undeniable. The sooner you start, the better off you will be in the long run. Follow these guidelines, and use your creativity to start collecting your own opt-ins. Soon you’ll find out why “the money is in the list”.

Wishing You Online Success,

As a marketer, having a list of keywords and keyword phrases related to your product “niche” is important. Because of the vast array of potential keywords in each market, smart marketers will spend a good amount of effort on keyword research.

It is easy to pick keywords that get a lot of searches each day, but the competition is very fierce. There will be millions of search results for “music downloads” for example. It would be very hard to get your website at the top of the listing. You need to try ranking for more specific terms that have less competition. Perhaps instead of “music downloads” your site offers “popular folk music to download”. This keyword phrase will get less searches, but you have a much better chance of getting your page ranked near the top of the results.

It is better to be in the top ten for keywords that get a few hundred searches each day, than to be on page twelve for a phrase that gets thousands of searches a day. Most people don’t look past the second page, and usually they click on a link that is in the top five of the results. You want to be at the top of the page.

Even if you are in a competitive market, you can still get a lot of traffic from the search engines. People input very different things when searching for similar products. You can find hundreds of more obscure search terms and optimize your pages to rank for these. You will get a trickle of traffic from each one, adding up to a flood.

Every web page, article, blog post or lens should have well researched keywords used in them. You need to do your research, use keyword spies and suggestion tools to help you. Use a tracker to figure out how visitors are finding your pages. If you are doing PPC advertising, try to have large, well researched keyword lists that won’t cost you too much for each click you get.

Good keywords and search engine traffic go hand-in-hand. Don’t be satisfied with expensive, high competition keywords. Take the time to discover new phrases that will help you create the traffic you want. With so many searches being done each day, a good marketer will find a niche.

Wishing You Online Success,

There a several mistakes and pitfalls that await people who want to learn how to make money online. Most of these mistakes are made because a new marketer hasn’t learned what to avoid. I will uncover a few of these pitfalls, some of which can be outright scams.

5 Things To Avoid

“I Made $2341.93 The First Hour”

Many new marketers will be sucked-in by slick sales letters that promise overnight riches. While you can make a great deal of money online, it is not going to happen “instantly”. Don’t keep buying one thing after another promising you a “magic bullet” to online wealth. You can learn ways to automate your income and marketing, but first you need to learn the basics, and stick to a proven model. This is very important - you need knowledge, not overpriced hype.

“10,000 Hits”

Once you have your own website or affiliate link you are trying to promote, you will see and be tempted by websites promising thousands of hits to your site in a few days or weeks. While you may actually get these hits, most of the time it is from people who are not remotely interested in your product. Here’s what I mean - the hits were delivered in a pop-up on unrelated sites, or by expired domain traffic that is nearly worthless. Worst-case, the hits are made by a site visiting “robot” script. Save your money.

“Rank #1 On Google In A Week”

This sounds great, but there is a catch. You don’t get to pick the exact keywords you will rank for. You will tell them what you are marketing, and the keywords you rank for will be what is known as “long tail” keywords. Instead of number one position for “Golf Clubs”, you will see your site ranked for “Selecting The Best Golf Club For A Low Score”, or some other long tail string. You might be on top of the search engine when someone searches for that specific term, but you might only get one or two hits a month. You don’t need to pay someone for that.

“Search Engine Submission”

Don’t waste money on sites that promise to submit your site to 1000 search engines. There are only a few top search engines that get almost all of the visits when people want something. The top search engines all have what are known as “Spiders” or “Bots” that “Crawl” the Internet. These bots automatically search and find new websites on the internet. It might take a few weeks to find a new site, but it will be found. If you like, you can submit your site once manually to the major search engines, but it is not needed. Don’t pay anyone to do this for you.

“Make $500 An Hour With Surveys”

Online surveys can actually be a pretty good way to make money online if you like them, but what I have seen is websites charging large amounts to provide only lists of survey companies. Often, you buy-in to this, and all you get is a bunch of marketing fluff. All the major survey companies are free to join, and they won’t fill your inbox with junk. Good companies can be hard to separate from the baloney out there, however. In “The Luxury Lifestyle” member’s area, I provide a list of all the best paid survey companies I use myself. Or, you can try my latest Survey List. Thanks readers!

Wishing You Online Success,

There is nothing wrong with hard work, in fact, it is the main key to success. But, if you are like most people, you want to get the most results from all your hard work. You want to make the most money possible while still having time for the fun things in life. The best thing about internet affiliate marketing is that you can automate much of your work so the money keeps coming in, even while you are doing other things. To be successful as an affiliate marketer, there are some important guidelines you should follow.

1. Join an affiliate program that offers high commissions on your sales, and one that offers commissions on recurring monthly subscriptions. Be sure the program has plenty of promotional tools that you can “cut and paste” so you don’t have to spend all your time creating your own promotions.

2. Be sure to use all the promotional tools anywhere you can. Ads, banners, email promotions squeeze pages and reviews are some examples. You should start building your email list with a squeeze page and autoresponder.

3. Start driving traffic to your website, blog or squeeze page. Use article marketing, post to your own blog and others around the web, pay per click advertising, posting in forums, classified ads, link building, traffic exchanges, social networking, the list goes on and on. I will cover traffic generation more in future posts. Even if you don’t have hosting, there are ways to create free blogs, squeeze pages and website review pages.

4. Stick to the plan. Don’t jump from one program to the next, expecting instant riches. If you master traffic generation, you will make money. This is where most people go wrong when starting out online.

“The Luxury Lifestyle” affiliate program offers some of the highest commissions you will find anywhere, and more promotional tools than you can shake a stick at. Plus training and tactics that will put you on the fast track to making profits. The best part, is you can get your membership for free.

Wishing You Online Success,

Even if you only join the standard level, you can be sure I put a lot of work in to deliver the training, tools and tactics you need for success. The main benefit of the VIP level is getting “The Luxury Lifestyle Blueprint” with it’s Targeted Case Studies and increased commissions on new members you refer. Also, your VIP membership never has to be renewed. The top level, VIP Gold has the most tools and bonuses, but the best part is the monthly invitation-only training session in the VIP Gold online conference room. Top level members also get 5 Private Label Rights products each month to use or sell and keep all the profits. They also get the highest commissions I have seen anywhere.

You won’t find a bunch of filler or techno-babble, and you won’t feel overwhelmed with “information overload”. Every member has access to the help desk for any problems they may have, and this blog will be dedicated to disclosing everything I have learned about marketing, and all the new information I will undoubtedly uncover. I am genuinely interested in doing all I can to help members to succeed, and ending the misdirection and B******T that I found so common when I was starting out online.

Wishing You Online Success,