A Step-by-step Checklist For Starting And Building Your On-l

By Author: Willie Crawford
Total Articles: 15
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One of the things I've been asked for repeatedly is a
step-by-step, how-to checklist for starting an on-line
business. Here is one especially created for course
subscribers.

I spent 17 years flying C-130 cargo aircraft and learned
that some things had to be done step-by-step ... by the
checklist. That's how airplanes avoid landing with the
wheels up :-) This checklist should provide you with a
great start, and keep you from making a "gear up landing."

1. Decide what theme you want to build your business
around. Don't just throw up a site filled with links
and banners to affiliate products. It will be too
unfocused to attract much, if any, traffic. The traffic
it does attract generally won't buy anything because
the site will not give them a clear path to follow. A
website should guide a visitor to take the action that
you desire them to take. It should have only one main
action that you want them to take, and that should be
what your home page focuses on getting them to do.

I was taught, and now teach people, to look ...
... at their
hobbies, interests, past training and experiences when
looking for a topic to build a website around. If
you need some help brainstorming product ideas, I
highly recommend Jeff Smith's Ultimate Entrepreneur's
Success Package. It's all about coming up with ideas for
information products, and then turning those ideas into a
stream of information products. Jeff interviewed me
several years ago, and we've discussed product creation
at length several times since. Jeff can be found at:
http://williecrawford.com/jeffsmith/

2. Once you have chosen a product, choose a domain name
for the website you will be creating. This website will
be where you sell your product from, and also how you build
your mailing list to follow-up with prospects. The domain
name must be easy to remember and also indicate what the
site is about. This will help it rank better in the search
engines and help customers remember your url.

I recommend that you use a .com domain extension rather
than a .net, .org or, one of the lesser used extensions.
Most people, and many web browsers automatically "default"
to the .com extension. The only reason I can think of for a
business to use one of the other extensions is if the .com
you really wanted is owned and you can't buy it. That's why
you don't want to wait once you've decided upon a name.
Register it right away! The best second choice for a domain
name extension is .net

3. As you develop your product ideas and work on your
website, get feedback on your "masterpiece" from others
who've done the same thing. They will point out many of
the pitfalls to you and make suggestions for improvements.
I recommend that you join the Internet Marketing Warriors
for this. They have a members-only discussion forum that
is visited by thousand every day and they are the perfect
community. They (we) are there to help members build their
business, and to network with each other. I am a moderator
for this members-only forum. I've been a member since
1998 if I remember correctly :-)

Before you sign up though, read step 4.

Join the Warriors (network) at
http://williecrawford.com/warriors/

4. Register your domain name. When you register your
domain name, you want to make sure that you list yourself
as the administrative contact and everything else that
has to do with your website. The reason is that the admin
contact is the person who controls the website. When a
website is sold or any changes made to it's record, the
registrars will contact the admin contact for approval
before making the change. Without the approval of the
registered administrative contact, you can't make ownership
type changes to your domain!

Register your domain at a service I have set up for
you. It costs less than a third what many others will
charge you. Do this at:
http://williecrawford.com/domains/

The Warrior Pro Membership comes with a full-featured
hosting package that I highly recommend. It will cost you
$25 per month, and lets you do everything your website will
need to do. You will have enough disk space for thousands
of pages. When you sign up for the Warrior Membership
though, indicate in the domain registration form that you
will handle the registration yourself. You'd pay $30 to
register through the Warriors when you can do it through
me for from $8.75 per year (less than $8 per year when you
register the site for multiple years).

I did not recommend that you sign up for my web hosting,
for your first domain, because the Warrior membership is
such a value for your first few websites. As you register
new domains and build new websites, the hosting company I
work thought at: http://williecrawford.com/domains/
is a tremendous value. Just make sure you choose the
options offering CGI capability since this is essential
for your website to have any type of interactivity. CGI is
absolutely necessary for any type of business website.

You do have to re-register your domain name each year.
For convenience, my service allows you the option of
pre-registering for up to 10 consecutive years.
You will get an email notification well in advance of your
domain expiring from practically all registrars. If you
fail to renew your registration your domain name will
become available for others to purchase. You could have an
established site up and running, and somebody can literally
purchase the name of your site right out from under your
nose if you are not paying attention. Sadly this does
happen. The service at: http://williecrawford.com/domain/
sends you notices when your domain is approaching expiration
and then sends you several reminders.

Note: The 3006 word checklist was too long to include here
in it's entirety. Most email filters would block it. Read
the rest of the checklist at:
http://williecrawford.com/checklist.html
Sign up for the entire course there for free too!
About the Author Willie Crawford is a recognized internet marketing and product
creation authority. His Internet Marketing How To Workshop
revealed EXACTLY how 8 recognized internet authorities really
generate six figure incomes. Grab these incredibly honest
recordings at: http://internetmarketinghowtoworkshop.com