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First, why do you need to write blog post offline?

Listed below are some of the reasons I could think of:

Image by Danard Vincente via Flickr

Being a beginner has many challenges and getting other people convinced to advertise on your site in one of them.

Your site has not got good traffic yet so nobody would be willing to pay and advertise on it. The thing is – every big sites started as a small one in the past. So how do they attract advertisers at a time when they were just a small player?

It has been nearly 2 years since I posted a question on Drupal.org forum about setting up my very first Drupal multisite.

All my Drupal web-sites are built on a single installation of Drupal codes. This is commonly known as multisite configuration. One major advantage is that there is only one set of codes to worry about whenever it comes to site maintenance such as program upgrade etc. Those running more than just a handful of sites will appreciate this facility.

Having said that, all my sites above are top level domains. I have tried without success in the past to create sub-domain sites using the same multisite configuration above.

After so many months have passed, I decided to tinker with the idea again. Don't they say never ever give up eh?

It wasn't that straight forward either. I played around with creating sub-domain, domain redirection, creating special folders etc but still not getting what I wanted i.e. getting a sub-domain running under Drupal multisite.

...Begin Where The Demand Is

We have been told about this time and again - identify your passion and build a market out of that.

Now, is this the correct way to create a business?

Let's discuss it for a second.

Who's going to buy our merchandise? We ourselves or other people. Obviously it is the market that we are targeting is the one.

So I have a question - would they be interested in something related to our passion or their own?

Again, clearly it's their interest that matters.

So the logic is - sell to the people what they wanted to buy, not what we wanted to sell. Period.

Of course your life as a marketer will be much easier if your passion matches the market's but never forget - offer them what they want!

So How To Identify The Demand?

In offline marketing, companies usually engaged survey or research firms to help them gauge the demand. This could mean a substantial amount of expenses.

I am going to show some resources where you can build websites from scratch but expect a considerably steep learning curve before jumping on.

But this will pay off nicely with the flexibility

you have in deciding the look and feel of your site way beyond out-of-the-can site builder systems.

The good news is that you don't have to start from ground zero as there are many systems that are ready to propel you from a good starting point. These systems are typically called Content Management System (CMS).

Drupal

This is my personal favorite for CMS. It is available free-of-charge from Drupal website:

So having a website up and running is just a very first step in intetnet marketing.

What you need next is for people to come visit the site and do some exploring and finally buying something from it.

"How to get people to come to my website?" is perhaps only second to the most asked question of "what to sell on internet?". 

In fact, this is more crucial than getting your site up. Imagine you setup a retail shop and no one ever step in to look around. There's hardly any sale can be made.

So having a great website is just an element for a succesful online business!

Getting visitors to come and take a look is another big tasks. Majority of traffic come from the sources as shown in this list:

Typically website contents are prepared locally on your computer. Therefore there's a need to trasfer those files onto the server at your web hosting site.

For this, there's a popular method using a program called FTP (file transfer protocol). Don't worry about it's name, all it does is to transfer whatever file you instructed it to move from your PC to the hosting server.

In some case you might also want to download files from the hosting server as during site backups.

Your files need to reside there so that your visitors can access them whenever they come to your site www.example.com.

Here is a list of commonly used ftp programs:

If you don't mind the challenge, building a website on your own is very satisfying. It's like building a house (virtual one).

(Note: If you prefer having your website built using mix-n-match approach, please see part 1 of this subject)

There a few steps involved as follows:

1. decide on a domain name of choice
2. check if the domain name is available
3. register domain name
4. obtain a web hosting service
5. prepare website content offline
6. upload website

1. Domain name

This is similar to obtaining an address to the premise of a physical business entity. A place where people can go to buy products or services.

Before you register for one, you need to find out if it is not taken yet by doing a simple research. A good site to go for this is:

www.nameboy.com

First, it's not at all difficult to own and build a website. Nothing compares to brick-and-mortar business environement because online business store can easily be built. 

So claim your virtual real estate (VRE) online by creating your very own website.

However, this is one of few places where I don't encourage using free services such as Freewebs, Geocities, Tripod, FortuneCity and many others.

Having urls that end with one of those will give "unprofessional" impression to your website visitors. Also the providers tend to stuff your web pages with ads that may not suit your site target visitors.

One other big minus is that you don't have the liberty to design a site as per your liking, in most cases.

If you simply want to play around with website creation, then try one of the "paid" services as most provide free trials as well. So whenever you decide to go ahead, there's no more learning curve to worry about.

I just had to let you know about the crazy release of Internet
Marketing Tutorials Video Madness 2.

http://www.videomadness2.com/index.php/305

Richard has gone out of his mind he is selling Version 2 of the IM
Video Tutorial Madness and the price started out at a nickel.

BUT, it goes up every time somebody buys.

I'm not going to keep you long because I want you to run on over there
right now and check it out before the price goes higher.

http://www.videomadness2.com/index.php/305

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Commisions you receive will be as per defined by each affiliate program that you signed up with originally. Affiliate Power Ads does not charge you anything.

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There are literally dozens of ways to make money online but, for most beginners, this variety itself is the problem. There are just too many different models to choose from and there is no solid game plan for working on any one of them.

Some marketers have their hands in two or three or four different business models. This is easily manageable with experience, but it can spell disaster for newbies.