Free sites have two huge strikes against them. They’re treated with disdain by both the visitor and the engines.
Let’s talk about humans first. When I notice that a site’s URL is at a free hosting
service, I don’t bother clicking to visit. If I have a special reason, I might go -- but
I arrive at a free site with doubts. Most folks harbor the same kind of bias.
And what about the engines? Free sites don’t get treated with much respect by
the Search Engine spiders, and below zero respect by the directories like
Yahoo!.
Here’s what Danny Sullivan, the most well-known Search Engine guru on the
Net, once said about free hosts…
“...get your own site, under your own domain, rather
than doing it within Tripod.com or any place offering
"free" home pages. Sites offering free home pages are
often looked upon with suspicion by search engines,
because search engine spammers also make use of them.
It's like sharing a house with bad roommates. Move out,
get your own house, and you'll probably do better
with search engines.”
Even on the Net, there's no such thing as truly free. Think about it... a company
has to make money to survive. One way or another, hidden or not, the service
costs you. But the low credibility of free sites costs you way, way too much…
your time.
If engines don’t spider you, or if customers don’t respect the site, or if
advertising lures your customers away and hurts the sales-effectiveness of your
site, you’re wasting your time. And that’s way more valuable than less than $25
per month to host your own site. You must put a value on your time if you want
to succeed. All successful people will tell you that time is their most precious
commodity.
A non-free site with your own domain is a prerequisite to building credibility with
your readers and with the Search Engines. So find a good Web hosting service
and put up a real site. For the $25 or so per month, it’s worth it.
http://compare·sitesell·com/
Arrrgh! OK, one last question...
“Geez, Ken. You seem to be convincing folks not to market marketing
programs. Rather, they should build sites of passion, write about what
they know, and then marry that to profitable affiliate programs.
Doesn’t that leave you and SiteSell out in the dark?”
Answer… No, not really. I encourage 5 Pillar Affiliates not to erect Web
marketing sites. One thing the Net does not need is another Web marketing site!
But here’s a neat little twist for you to think about. You think that only
consumers search for “fashion model” or “fashion designer” or “fashion design”?
Nope! After all, investors are not the only ones who would search for “penny
stocks.”
When I was marketing my first product, PennyGold (a penny stock investing
software), I must have done thousands and thousands of searches on “penny
stocks”... all on the major engines.
Why did I do that? Because I wanted to see how PennyGold was doing on these
engines, and I wanted to see who was beating me! And in fact, that’s exactly
how I found lots of competitors!
Let’s say that when I was doing my searches for “penny stocks,” you had already
created a Theme-Based Content Site that was all about aggressive forms of
investing... “theaggressiveinvestor·com.”
After doing your DEMAND and SUPPLY research, let’s say, too, that you had
dedicated one of your site’s pages to “penny stocks.” You wrote it to provide
high-value content and to also appeal to the Search Engines (more on this in
DAY 7).
What would have happened? I surely would have found your page sooner or
later, likely several times, on one or more of the engines. Really, there’s no
magic involved. After all, you simply followed the basic principles of how to
please the Search Engines.
This is not rocket science. Nor is it spam -- you have simply created good
content that is of high-value to me, your potential visitor who was searching for
your info, and that the engines have ranked highly. So I would have found you
listed in the engines’ search results pages, no doubt about it.
You can do exactly the same thing. Except do it for a topic that you know and
love... like “fashion.”
If you write a wonderful page about “fashion design,” lots of merchants will find
your page. After reading your excellent content about fashion design, you lead
into a recommendation about SiteSell products, especially SBI!.
So not only does your “fashion-passion” site generate income for you by sending
fashion consumers to a select group of fashion merchants, you can also send
fashion merchants to SiteSell, creating an additional income stream!
For example, here’s how your “fashion design” page could do this...
First, you write your content. This content must deliver good “information value”
about fashion design. Since this is your area of expertise, that’s a snap. Your
content closes by leading to in-context text links (those caught using banners
will have a detention!) for small business owners and consumers...