I have no regrets about my overall journey online because I believe any mistakes I’ve made have taught me great lessons. However I want to discuss some things I would do differently if I had the opportunity to start over again.
Using Free Web Hosts
I told my “free web hosting story” in a recent YouTube video. In a nutshell, I used free hosting some 11 years ago and the company decided to start charging. Anyone who did not want to pay their ridiculous monthly fees lost their site.
Fortunately it wasn’t a huge loss for me because I had already moved to paid hosting for my main site and those free sites were just sitting out there collecting Internet dust. But it taught me a huge lesson about the price of free… especially when it comes to web hosting.
Of course, there are many more reasons not to use a free host, especially if you are starting a business. However, my story is quite common when it comes to free web hosting space. Many of the companies simply cannot afford to remain free due to their own server costs.
Learn CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
When I was still at my 9 to 5 job some years ago, a coworker kept telling me about all the wonderful benefits of CSS. I remember it going in one ear and out the other. After all, I was just getting the hang of HTML and didn’t need anything else confusing me at the moment. 🙂
Now that I understand what CSS can do and I see how much time it has saved me, I wish I would have learned it much sooner. There is nothing more rewarding than being able to change your entire design in minutes by updating one file.
I recently completed a mini facelift of 2 Create a Website and it took me all of 15 minutes to update all 140+ pages. Heck, it took me longer to decide on the colors I wanted to use than it did to actually update the entire site. 😉
Being familiar with CSS will also help you greatly if you have a blog. Blog templates are typically designed using CSS so having this knowledge will be a great benefit for you. This is especially true for Blogger users. There aren’t as many templates available for Blogger as there are WordPress so I find a lot of Blogger blogs with the same design.
The best way to learn CSS is to visit a site that teaches the basics like W3Schools or HTMLDog.com. Knowing the fundamentals will help with syntax and will also help you troubleshoot should you run into problems.
You can also learn the lazy way (as some call it) and download a template that already has a stylesheet attached and study the stylesheet to see how the coding actually affects the page. FreeCSSTemplates.org is one of my favorite free template sites.
This is the way I learned, but I frequently find myself going to sites like W3Schools if I need to troubleshoot something. Let’s face it. If you want to get the most out of CSS, you really should learn the fundamentals.
The Internet Marketing/How to Make Money Niche
I always tell people, “If you are not making money yourself, you should never create a site on how to make money or market online.” Not to mention the “how-to-make-money” niche is so heavily saturated.
This advice often confuses people because 2 Create a Website focuses on Internet marketing and making money, yet it is successful. But what a lot of people don’t know is I had a site before that which primarily focused on Internet Marketing and it failed.
The problem was I was not making much money at the time so my site was filled with paraphrased, common facts that you could find anywhere. My content was not fresh. Not to mention, I didn’t do any research and had no idea how competitive the niche was.
When you first start out trying to make money, it’s very tempting to build a site about how to make money and talk about what you’ve learned thus far. However, if you are not making much it’s very hard to build credibility and it’s equally as hard to put out fresh content because you cannot rely on your own experiences.
I believe 2 Create a Website has been able to compete in this saturated niche because I can now use my own success stories and personal experiences to inspire my content and people understand that I am actually walking the walk and not just talking the talk.
I Didn’t Own Most Products I Recommended
I either own or have owned/used most of the products/services I recommend on my sites, but I haven’t always done so. I remember when Site Build It! first launched 9 years ago, I blasted ads and articles all over my site because I was so excited about the $75 residual affiliate commission.
As my site’s traffic grew, I continued to get more and more questions about the product and most of them I couldn’t answer because I didn’t own it. I started to feel a bit uncomfortable because I was raving about the product as if I really owned it.
If you want people to respect you and your recommendations, you really have to be familiar with what you’re promoting. Not only will you feel more genuine, but you’ll find it will boost your affiliate commissions. Anyone can say a product is “great”, but a solid review that contains your own personal experience with the product will get you more mileage.
Also, don’t be afraid to talk about the negative points of a product. It actually adds to your credibility and shows you’re not afraid of giving people all the facts. Will it turn away a few potential customers? Maybe, but the credibility you’ll gain will improve your site’s overall earnings in the long-run. I cannot say enough about the importance of credibility.
Multiple Websites/Blogs
When I first started out, I tried to maintain multiple websites when I hadn’t found success with any of them. The problem with starting out with too many sites is that your energy is spread too thin and you cannot focus.
If you’re doing something wrong that is preventing you from succeeding with one site, you’re probably making that same mistake on the others. So if you haven’t figured out how to succeed with one site, no point in starting others until you discover how to build traffic and make money.
Yes, I have multiple sites now, but I have discovered what works for me so I use that same formula for my additional sites. And if the sites are related, I use the existing site to promote the other (i.e. 2PlanAWebSite.com and 2CreateAWebSite.com).
Don’t overwhelm yourself. Focus on one website or blog at a time if you’re just getting started.
What About You?
What have you learned since you started marketing online? I’d love to know what you would do differently if you had the chance to begin again. C’mon… don’t be shy. 😉
I am still in the beginning stages of my blogging journey, but I’ve already had to pay a price. I first started out blogging on Blogger. After a few months I was really starting to feel as though I was getting the hang of blogging. I was building backlinks and getting a decent amount of traffic. Only to wake up one day to find out that my blog had been deleted. All of my hard work gone.
When I first considered blogging I did lots of research. Your sites would pop in my searches and I frequently watched your Youtube videos. I always heard you say if you’re serious about making money online don’t use free web hosting. I really wish that I would have listened. However, doing the time that I was with Blogger I was able to learn a lot.
Your most telling comment was right at the end:
“Don’t overwhelm yourself. Focus on one website or blog at a time if you’re just getting started.”
Except I’d say at all times, not just when you are getting started.
oh yea i forgot to say … the within link plugin is great .. do you have great plugin that would be great for a news site?
I’d passion to agree flush with that too!
Hi Lisa, is a free webhost like yola, weebly, and freewebs good? I mean it has been there for ages. Also, I need your opinion about bluevoda(http://www.bluevoda.com), it’s not free but it’s really good. Plus, you could be an affiliate too!(commision can be up to $70 per sale).:):)
P.S. I’m not some agent promoting something, I’m just asking.
Great Stuff Lisa,
Not sure I agree with you 100%, I only say that because I really think that you could enter the Internet Marketing Arena having not arrived yet as along as you didn’t play the fake it till you make it roll.
Now I wouldn’t say you come out here and discuss your theories as fact or try and market your services to people as a consultant without being able to back it up with fact.
I believe if you’re educated not college, but you have some training under your belt and you are at least doing the things you talk about then you may have a viable audience.
Here’s why…
Most any class you buy for any amount of money online has forgotten all the little steps that they do every day as naturally as breathing.
Or worse they’re selling you just a piece of the pie and it’s not the piece where they profit from. “Profit” being the key word. Sure they make a lot in sales, but who cares how much you sell.
So if you were doing some type of affiliate with a blog you could report your findings on a regular basis
as long as you were completely honest about all the details.
Although you have hit the nail on the head with people out there promoting their SEO consulting business with this really nicely done site, well visually nice… Then find out they have no traffic rank no page rank and just registered their domain last week. (Especially Tweeple people) If you catch my drift… Wink Wink
This world is all about research, testing, and taking action on a consistent basis.
I’ve done 2 product launches this year I think they both failed miserably, however one made money and the other didn’t.
What did I learn?
You can send people to a $1 trail with forced continuity for $77 a month and provide 9 additional up sells and down sells and up the average sale by 200% And of course get paid every month. However, $77 is too much money to expect 70% quit after 14 days. Now the flip side is 40% of them that took the $1 trail spent $397 minimum.
The other offer was to a market where they’re only looking for a certain brand and will not waiver from that brand no matter what you say about them.
My best advice to the world and I tell everyone this is to learn to SELL first. Yep, scary but true…
I started out selling in person and got pretty good at it, but hated it.
Then went into selling on the phone and delivering in person, that was a little better, but still sucked.
That progressed into developing a leads online and selling a training program off the phone where some one else did the training. Now if you can stand it there’s a lot of money in that world.
I did very well there, and still get offers today from various people to sell their info product and typically a marketing program for anything from carpet cleaners to real estate investors. It’s not my first love, but the money is good.
Of course that lead to All kinds of things online some good some bad and some just OK.
3 things to take from this…
1. Complete honesty is ALWAYS the best policy to the extent of having their $2000 and giving it back because you know they are giving you their last nickel and won’t be able to put food on the table next month. They will come back to you when they can afford it and pay you and will be lifetime clients no matter what you’re up to.
2. Learn to sell, become an expert in salesmanship then take that into the copy writing world.
Every blog post is an opportunity to sell something and make it look like you aren’t trying to sell anything. The problem is most people don’t know the first thing about salesmanship.
3. Lastly, but not leastly: It’s the journey that’s important not the destination.
Enjoy
Dave
.-= Dave Moore´s last blog … Sexy Website Branding On Twitter =-.
Hi Lisa,
THis is my first comment to your blog.
I’ve been reading your blog since last week. It is really a good blog. I wish I met your blog earlier so that I can eliminate so many things that didnt work for my internet business.
You have a good sharing and it is very sincere.
Keep it up.
Almost all your post have the power to ask your reader to read until the end.
Good Sharing!
WanZ
.-= WanZ´s last blog … Selamat Hari Bapa! =-.
Yes, that’s all good, but where do I start. What was the first thing you did and where did you go from there?
My mistake is and continues to be that I change new internet programs more often than I change my socks.
This isn’t good for the budget, and IM’s love me and keep sending me so much email.
So I must have 30 websites, but now I’ve gotten into domains that are strong on SEO. They’re made of good keyword phrases that are searched highly and with low competition.
So now I don’t want to do anything wrong with my ‘good’ domains, that I did with my quirky domains.
The passion to earn a living continues to allude me. But I have now gotten a super chance and I need some help.
So I expect Ill drain my finances trying to find it.
I have to agree with Josef Benjamin above. The MMO niche might have a lot of competitors but there is still plenty of room for more people to follow that route. We are daily seeing thousands of people coming online and trying to find ways to make money. All you need to know about MMO is more than they know (which for the most part is nothing) in order to teach them something.
I agree that you can’t teach what you do know know but that is true for all niches and not especially MMO.
If you know how to install a WP blog and slap on some Adsense code you can still find thousands of people that would like to have that information and if you can get in front of them you can teach them how to do it (and have them pay for it if you want).
BUT…. In order to be able to follow down that route you will need to have that passion for Making Money. If you’re not passionate about it you’ll not keep going long enough to carve your space in the market and you’ll need to do that to make money from it.
Just my 2 cents. 😉
Great post! I’ve definitely fallen into the third trap, and possibly doing the first again right now… hopefully google doesn’t decide to start charging us for those blogger blogs!
Hi guys,
I started my blog a while ago..it has been 2 months already. To be honest with I did not think it would be that hard. I thought that my biggest problem would be with the design of the blog and everything, but this is nothing comparing to trying to drive traffic to your blog/site, especially when it is almost brain new and does not have a lot of content.
However I love writing although I am really bad at it (since English is not my first language) but I am trying really hard.
Actually it is a lot of fun that I get to experience new things, it is just sometimes frustrating when something messes up and you do not know how to fix it. Like a week or two ago I was trying to change smth within my theme in the php file and then I could not access neither my dashboard nor my web blog from anywhere for 2 days. It totally disappeared. These things can really frustrate you, trust me. However, I wanted to ask if anyone knows where the option in the wordpress blog is from where you can control how many posts under a specific category you can have. With this I mean that if I go to my main url I can see my newest blog post and one more below it. However when I go to a specific category, for example EXERCISES, there I can see only 2 posts as well..even though that category can have another 10 posts. It is always like this, if on my main url for example is illustrated only 1 post, then under the category is 1as well.
If anyone can give me any clues I would highly appreciate it.
i love the topic
Hi Lisa,
Great info …. thanks for sharing. I am new to website building and need to know if SBI would be a good choice if I needed:
1) A space (blog?) to write content rich articles allowing the reader to comment on each article. The articles would then be archived by category. I would like to send an email to subscribers each time a new article is posted.
2) Search capability for each page.
3) A way to book appointments for web delivered services. 45 minute time slots with black out periods and payment by credit card or paypal.
Also a generic question: Is the name of the website important with regards to getting results from search engines or do the tools provide the best key words for the titles of the articles and/or the content. Sorry for the simpleton questions.
Thanks!!!!
I am looking at using SBI and was wondering how many different websites could be built. If anyone could give me any information in this area I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
So very true Justin. Great points.
Lisa,
Excellent points…particularly about avoiding the “How to Make Money” niche on your very first website.
In fact, most of today’s best internet marketing gurus didn’t launch their careers in internet marketing. They began with websites relating to various topics such as travel, electronics, and computer technology (such as yourself).
Only after these super affiliates found success in their respective fields were they able to develop successive “How to Make Money on the Internet” businesses.
As you mentioned, new internet marketers should avoid the money-making concept and opt instead for a niche that they are very knowledgeable (and passionate) about. Profit from your love of video games, children, coffee, exercise, etc. Invest time building a targeted web community, and along the way, you’ll learn the various technical aspects related to making money on the web.
Not only that, but once you do decide to consult others on “How to Make Money Online”, you can actually reference a website that you’ve monetized…this builds credibility.
Thanks for sparking this discussion Lisa!
NEW READER!
I’ve been reading up on your site for a couple of weeks and have followed much of your advise and the advise of others in your field.
You must wish there were sites like yours when you first started out – what a great (and free)resource! Although this is a great resource the internet is a much larger place now than it was then and more difficult to succeed if your just starting (like me).
I just launched my first blog (or even site) ever! Word press is a bit of a stinker to get you head around at first but I’m really enjoying the process now.
My blog is based on my area of expertise but my only problem is whether or not to reveal my identity. I feel it could have a damaging impact on my full time career. I currently dance around it on my site now.
I would of worked more efficiently during the day. Projects that took me weeks, I should have done in days. Stick with one thing then move to the next project. Do you date Black Hats?
Wow, yet another sweet post.
the make money online niche personally, to me, is NOT overly saturated.
I believe it’s all a matter of perception. As the make money online niche is but “1” niche out of hundreds. It may seem saturated because our focus and attention is on it, but someone in the health field could say the same thing. We might think there aren’t many football players in the NFL, but to a college student looking to get drafted, it’s too crowded to compete.
But your right, if more marketers actually started MARKETING in stead of talking about it, they would start to see results. And from their you would have your experience.
-Josef Benjamin–
Don’t ya just love me 🙂
I also need to really learn CSS. Besides a few color changes, I can’t really make major changes to my blog without hiring someone. That is something I really need to get more involved in.
I think the biggest mistake I initially made was not understanding the value of branding and how branding works. I get it now…
Hi Lisa, I feel like we’ve traveled down the same road. This is one of the reasons I follow your sites and blogs. I feel like the only difference between you and I is that I’m maybe 4 or 5 years behind you on my road to success. I started my online journey around 2001 with one of those co-opt marketing programs and of course failed. Then I dabbled with forums and trying to build a social site from a free CMS. That was crazy. So yes, I have a list of “if I had it to do all over again.” LOL
For one, I’d stop looking for the cheapest or free ways to get something done. More often than not this usually bit me in the you know what down the road.
My last 9 to 5 was going to pay for me to go to school to learn web design. Every time I think about it I could just pimp slap myself for not taking them up on that opportunity now. Don’t ask me what I was smoking at that period of my life.
Here’s another good one. I’m a graphic designer, and I spent most of my career focusing on print design. I was so busy with print that I all but ignored the need to keep up with graphic design for the web. Over the past 3 years I’ve been making up lost ground but I wouldn’t have to grind so hard if I would have seen the bigger picture back in the day.
I could go on and on but this is your blog not mine. 😉
OMG it’s as if you were reading my mind. I did a lot of what you mention here. I don’t know why everyone seems to think it’s a good idea to start a site about “how to make money” or build a business online. I guess it’s because we don’t dig deep enough in terms of thinking of a topic. I used to have a “how to make money” blog on Adsense and it failed because of the many reasons you talk about.
I also chose a bad domain name and wish I could do that over again. My domain is difficult to read and it doesn’t really have any of my major keywords. So I would spend more time picking a better domain.