How to Design an Awesome Webpage in 3 Easy Steps

Webpages are everywhere. They are blog posts (like this one) they are landing pages for corporate websites or squeeze pages for sales funnel.  Webpages are about cats, weddings, sports, hobbies or business.  A webpage is a single location on the internet and can show up for you in hundreds of different way. If you have something you want to offer an audience, a webpage is a great way to offer it... and I'm going to tell you how to design a webpage in three easy steps. 

Step One:  Solve a Problem.  

The best web pages start by identifying a specific problem and offer a solution.  In this case, I'm helping you (as the reader) build an awesome webpage, but other examples could be: 

• 
• Helping you enjoy a wedding or family vacation
• Helping you understand your dog's behavior
• Helping you learn algebra
• Helping you pass your SAT's
• Helping you self diagnose a freckle
• Helping you learn the latest legal rulings from the supreme court

Identify the problem by asking yourself, "Why am I writing?" 

An amazing website has a clear purpose.  Your website should solve a problem for your reader.  It's not just enough to provide information, you must explain why your information is important to your reader.  Sound too easy?  Well, there is a catch.  You need to build the trust of your reader by writing in an ethical way.  

According to "A Concise Guide to Technical Communications" written by Heather & Rogers Graves, ethics is about how you want to "frame" your topics. In this article I've lured you in with my promise to help you to build an amazing website.  Now, I have an ethical responsibility to deliver on that promise. 

Depending on your webpage topic, you may have varied ethical requirements, especially if your webpage is offering legal or medical advice.  

Graves & Graves explains that vague language and euphemisms designed to understate risk have led to "plain language" initiatives as a way to solve the problem of intentionally unclear language. 

Your webpage should easily spell out the problem you are solving in a clear and truthful manner.

Step Two: Know your audience.

The internet is a big place. Some reports say there are over 5 billion people online.  The great news is that you aren't writing for all 5 billion people.  You are writing for a much smaller piece of the internet pie.  

Your audience is specific.  If you are thinking right now, that your audience isn't... I invite you to revision who is sitting in front of their computer right now vising your webpage.   Think about who would have typed in just the right search words to connect with your topic. 

Now, whittle that audience down a little more by giving them a age bracket, geographic location, primary language, biological sex, income level, marital status, hobbies....   When you can picture the individual reading your webpage, you've got it!  You have your audience.  That is the person you are writing for, that is the person you are here to help. 

Ask yourself, "Who am I writing to?"

    

And, Believe it or not, your webpage has a genre.  Just like your favorite book, your webpage has a genre. The books you loved and the books you could live without, they clearly have a genre.  When you read action and adventure, you expect: Action/Adventure.  The genre of your webpage needs to fulfil the expectations of your audience. 

If you are writing about a business topic, you will be speaking to an audience that expects business language.  If you are writing for scientists they will expect their industry jargon. 

This is very important because words mean different things in different context, so make sure to appreciate the expectations of your audience in everything that you write on your webpage. 

Step Three: White Space & Design. 

According to Elementor (read more about it here) ""Whitespace (also known as negative space) is the empty space around the content and elements on a web page.It’s used to balance the page’s design, organize the content and elements, and improve the visual experience for the user."

The concept of "improving the visual experience for the user" is key.  An amazing website delivers an exceptional user experience and white space helps by leaving areas of simple space that allow your readers brain rest.  When you visit your favorite websites, you will notice that pages aren't packed with information, but rather the information flows.

The eye tracking studies that I could find were over 10 years old.  In the 2010 study published on Usability.gov there are some interesting results.  First, most readers don't read a full page of text, but rather read in an "F" pattern. 

Secondly, there is a different pattern of reading for users "searching" for something rather than browsing. The study goes on to explain that most users "don't see" banner ads and fancy fonts and colors do not always stand out. 

Additional Steps to Consider

You know by now (at the end of the blogpost) that the three easy steps to create an awesome webpage are describe what and how you should write.  Because you are writing a webpage, there will be other aspects you will want to consider to get your page "found" on by your audience.  Such as: 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): this includes keywords and phrases but in your page and on the back order of your website)

Backlinks: placing links to your webpage on other pages and websites

Sharing:  Social media sharing is always evolving and always a great idea of get your webpage in front of your audience.

Writing a Book? Look for Inspiration on Amazon

Whether you're just getting started or trying to find your writing voice, understanding what people are currently buying is a great way to jump start your success. 

Remember, writing books for Amazon, isn't a "get rich quick" scheme, but rather it's a long term residual income method.  

In this brief video I did in 2014, I'll show you how to found inspiration for your next book... I said inspiration, not COPY... there's a different. Knowing what is selling will make it easier for your book to come up in the search engines. 

Enjoy.

Perpetual Income 365 - Review

 The other day I was looking at different ways to make money online. I am (as you may know) a serial entrepreneur. Which means that I have tried nearly everything out there. 

I have come to find that there is no "one thing" that will help you make money online quickly,

but a series of things that will help you make money online. 

Today, I'm going to take a look at Perpetual Income 365 and see how it works:

Well... what Can I really say, it's a training class designed to help you setup and operate an online site that is designed to create online recurring income. 

PLUS there is free training. 

Here's what I did. I started this training and looked at the free training before I made my decision. I allowed them to send me lots of emails and each one had more and more value. 

If you think this is something you might be interested in, then CLICK HERE

30 DAY CHALLENGE TO MAKE MONEY WITH MY FREE BLOG - PREGAME

 About Me. I'm an online learning junkie. I love it. I love to learn new stuff, then write about it. There's a chance that I'll have affiliate links sprinkled throughout my post but that doesn't change the fact that I'm going to tell it like it is. Affiliate links are my bread and butter... As my mother always said, "You can't be the light of the world, if you can't pay your electric bill" and I'm taking the time to tell you this now, because I want you to REALLY pay attention to this review. Like me, don't like me... like that I have affiliate links in my post... don't like it... put that aside for a minute and just read. Because this post might chance your life.

My Personal 30 day Challenge

This morning I decided to do a 30 day challenge to monetize my free blog. I will be posting my challenge on my three platforms: weebly, wix and blogger. It will be interesting to me to see which one receives the most traction.

I know from experience that it's easier to follow a program then it is try to "recreate the wheel", so I went looking for an old educational platform I had previously used from Clickbank called Clickbank University.

I found that was no longer available but they now offer SPARK, which is an educational and community platform. AND, as I expected, they have a 30 day challenge - step by step guide.

This research and finding a program that fits my niche is what I call pre-game. I am a fan of "just starting it." So, this post isn't "day one" as much as it is my pre-game. I am getting lined up for day one to start tomorrow.

The Overview

"Spark is ClickBank’s education platform that offers courses, tools and community to help you grow your affiliate marketing business." ClickBank is an affiliate marketing network. It is like a shopping mall for affiliate marketing opportunities. There is everything from weight loss, to marketing strategies. "Spark" is a paid platform for learning how to monetize your blog, website or social media.

Note: As I mentioned, Spark was preceded by ClickBank University. I was a member of clickbank university about 7 years ago and I found a lot of value in that platform. It also included an easy way to create products to sell on Clickbank. I'm curious to see if Spark will have the same opportunity.

The Product

Spark - ClickBank Affiliate Marketing Educational Platform

$47.00 a month

First month 50% discount

My Thoughts

My first reaction is that this landing page is the "classic squeeze" page. It has the color contrasts to emphasize the "money" words. Words like:

• Fast paycheck
• 5X more likely
• Clickbank Sale
• Enroll Risk Free

The reasons someone would want to take the class. The Call to Action (or CTA) is at the top of the screen, and there are two more classic "encouragers" the discount and the urgency of limitation.

Most people won't get past this top section of the page before they "enroll risk free" for $23.50. It is on the registration screen, that you learn the 50% discount is only for the first month.

If you encounter a "squeeze page" like this it's always a good idea to do a little research. Of course, you'll need to look further than the fake reviews. (those are the reviews designed to get you to click on their affiliate links and purchase the product or something else similar).

WHY is it so important to notice these elements on this landing page?

Paying attention to why you want to click on a website, will help you with your website design.

In fact, if you haven't already, you should start a "SWIPE FILE". When you see an ad on social media or a landing page on your phone or computer that you find compelling for any reason, you should take a screen capture, and save it to a folder you call "swipe files".

You can use your swipe files as templates for design or content inspiration. NEVER COPY someone elses words or graphics, but look at the colors they use, how the words are spaced, maybe they use bullets, maybe they use symbols... consider your swipe files as TEMPLATES.

TOMORROW is DAY ONE!

message me for questions: info@online-entrepreneur.net

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What is Affiliate Marketing and How do you Find it?

 

 

Are you new to Affiliate Marketing?  Are you getting started exploring ways to make residual income online and want to kick the tires before committing to any investment?  

I have great news for you, it is possible.  Yes, it is entirely possible for you to start your affiliate marketing journey for free.  And, it’s easy.  In this article I will review (3) popular “always free” website offers.

Before I get started, I want to make sure we are all starting at the same level of understanding about what a “website” is.  The easiest way to understand a website is to liken it to your home.  Your home isn’t just your house or apartment, it has property, and it has an address.  Websites are like that too.  

If your website is like your home, the place where you invite people to meet you, then hosting plan is like the property the house is built on and the URL (or Domain) is like the street address.

Website = Your Home on the Internet
Hosting Plan = Your Property on the Internet (that’s where you build your home)
URL/Domain = Your Address on the Internet (where people go to find your home)

Now imagine that you house was free.  Imagine someone said, “I’m going to let you live here for free!”  If you’re

like me, you’d wonder… What’s the catch?  The truth is that free websites may not cost money, but there are other ways that the hosting provider makes money from your website by placing advertisements on your site.  They are also constantly trying to upsell and upgrade your free account.  They are like a restrictive HOA. For instance, in some cases you can create an ecommerce website selling digital products, but they won’t allow you to collect the payments online without upgrading.  Or, more importantly for you, my budding online entrepreneur, some free hosting plans do not allow affiliate HTML links.

So, what is a free website? It is more accurate to say, “Free Hosting & Domain” and not Free Website, because building your website can be free, but you’d have to buy the property and your unique domain.  With the free website plans, you are assigned a piece of their existing property and you can pick a domain on that property.  Continuing with the real estate analogy, it’s like renting an apartment.  When you rent an apartment, your address is the physical street address, and the apartment number sets your space apart from everyone else. When you have a free website, your domain name will include the original hosting company plus what you choose.

Finally, before you start to build your home on the internet, you need to have an idea of the style.  In other words, are you building your own apartment, a ranch style home, or a grocery store?  You can not build a multisite (apartment building) on any free account however you can create a static style site or a site with a lot of offers and movement (ecommerce / blogging).

My recommendation for Affiliate Marketing is a Blogging Style / eCommerce hybrid.  Start with blogging, it’s easy low pressure and perfect for affiliate links.  Once you become comfortable with how to create your posts you can look for opportunities to sell digital products using ecommerce tools.

Top Three Free Websites for Affiliate Marketing

WIX – Free Plan

The Wix free plan setup frequently suggests and defaults to “paid” versions at every step. To keep your hosting and website free, you pay attention to your selections.  Especially when selecting your plan and domain.  Once the site was created it was easy to create a blog post and insert the Affiliate Link.  However the Free Domain through wix is very convoluted and uses your login name as part of the domain. (website address).  For instance, I setup my free test account with login name: wendaone65 and here is the result: https://wendaone65.wixsite.com/affiliatemarketing.  Imagine putting that on your business cards.

Another huge downside to Wix is the lack of organic community. Because Wix is first a website and then a blogging platform, it is not designed with community in mind.  You’ll learn more about that later.  But imagine if you lived in an apartment building… the difference between having club house where everyone can mingle and not having that club house.  True not everyone will go to the club house, but some people will.  With Wix, there is no “club house” you need to drive all of your traffic to your site.

Pros	Cons
·         Good Site Speed	·         Long Convoluted URL / Domain
·         Free Hosted secure site	·         Templates are not interchangeable
·         Allows HMTL Affiliate Links in Posts	·         Site is not transferrable
·         Variety of Website Themes	·         Wix Branding and Ads on Free plans ·         No organic community / traffic

Weebly – Free Plan

 

The first thing I noticed with the Weebly free plan is the lovely short URL.  When you select your Domain, you selection is placed in front of “weebly.com” (my test: https://affiliatemarketingonabudget.weebly.com/).  I found the initial setup easy to follow except for the actual domain selection. However, once that is complete the rest was easy.  The biggest CON for Weebly is that the websites are not really designed for the blogger. The blogging tools are limited and the photo editing is nearly nonexistent.  However it has an easy to understand “drag and drop” method for updating posts and pages and is fast and responsive. 

Pros	Cons
·         Good Site Speed	·         Limited Blogging Tools
·         Free Hosted secure site	·         Poor Photo Editing Tools
·         Allows HMTL Affiliate Links in Posts	·         Tech support is not free
·         Nice Short URL / Domain	·         Weebly Branding on all pages
·         Site is transferable	·         No organic community / traffic

 

Google Blogger  - Free Plan

 

 Google Blogger gets two chubby thumbs up from me.  But first, the downside.  The themes and templates for the Google Blogger platform are very outdated and the WYSIWYG editor is at times frustrating. (WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get) That means that everything was a little bit harder.  There was no drag and drop editing and mostly “done for you” website.  In my opinion, the bonus for your learning curve and time investment is a more community-oriented blog experience that integrates with Google Adsense a popular way to monetize your site.

Pros	Cons
·         Good Site Speed	·         Poor WYSIWYG editor
·         Free Hosted secure site	·         Themes are outdated
·         Allows HMTL Affiliate Links in Posts	·         Little to No Technical Support
·         Nice Short URL / Domain
·         Site is transferable
·         Organic/Community Traffic
·         Easy Google Product Integration
·         Branding: Powered by Blogger in footer
·         A Gazillion Blogging Tools

 

In conclusion while I found Weebly the easiest of the free sites to use, it was clear to me that the blogging tools would quickly become a problem as the goal of an affiliate marketing website is to constantly be adding valuable content designed to drive traffic to your products or services you’ve written about in your blog post.  This is where Google Blogger really shines with easy blogging integrations like Youtube, Google Adsense, and more.  This ads value to your site and various ways to monetize your content.

Wait What? What about Wordpress?

Unfortunately, the free hosting and domain plan on wordpress.com does not allow affiliate marketing links in posts and pages.  The software strips the HTML of vital information so that when the post is published it does not display property. And there are no work arounds in the Free version.

I want to take a moment here to make sure I am clear because there are two WordPress companies.  There is Wordpress.com which is in the business of providing website hosting… and there is Wordpress.org.

Wordpress.org is a free website package available through any paid self-hosted plan.  In other words, if you went to www.easybuildawebsite.com and purchased Hosting, Domain, SSL security you would have purchased your property and secure address on the internet on which you will build your home on the internet for free with the Wordpress.org’s software. 

If you can budget about $100 a year for your website, then I would 100% suggest Self Hosting a wordpress site. (stay tuned for my next article Pros and Cons of Free vs Paid Wordpress Website)