Starting & Building A Successful Internet Business

Okay, how many of you match my profile?

I definitely am daydreaming about retirement.
I’m 69 years old (O.K., so I’ll really be 70 next month).
I’m still working almost full time because I can’t afford to retire completely.
I bought my first computer in the mid 90’s, and didn’t even know how to turn it on and off correctly.
I thought the internet was a fad that would never catch on (boy, was I ever wrong about that).
I now see the internet as my path to retirement (from my present job), and working at home.
I consider my most important task right now to be the learning of computer/internet technical skills.
I realize the competition is fierce, but the rewards can be substantial.

I’m a little older than the first wave of Baby Boomers that are now reaching retirement age, but I would bet money that a lot of them will be facing the same problems that I am. And boy, there is going to be a bunch of them!

I know that many people around my age just cannot afford to quit their regular job for a variety of reasons.

To name just a few………

They simply do not have enough money saved up to quit working completely.

Soaring medical costs for them or their spouse require them to keep working.

Still have a large mortgage payment that won’t allow them to quit their job.

Feel that they need to have another income source assured before quitting their job.

All of the above

In my case, I have been working very hard at establishing a home based internet business for the past several years. At first, I was overwhelmed with all of the hype and hullabaloo that you get bombarded with once you get your name and email address exposed to all of the millions of people wanting you to buy their latest and greatest product that will make you an overnight millionaire.

I bought a lot of ebooks, never read most of them, and spent a lot of time and money and got absolutely nothing out of it. I soon learned that there is no “magic” that is going to make you an overnight success while working at home in your pajamas. It just isn’t going to happen.

I now realize that the path to building a successful internet business is the same as the path to building a successful brick and morter business…..it takes hard work, dedication, and perserverance.

With that being said, there are a lot of ways that can shorten the learning curve and make it a lot easier. I think probably a lot of people are just like me, they find it very hard to learn from ebooks and such because it becomes very difficult to concentrate on technical material in written form.

I find it is much easier, and I retain the material much better, if I use high quality video tutorials as my learning media. If you invest in a widescreen monitor (I just did, and boy did it make things easier), you can have the tutorial on one side of the screen, and you can have the actual application you are learning about open on the other side of the screen. That way, you can do each step as you learn it, and this hands-on experience reinforces the whole learning process.

You can find good video tutorials on almost any subject that you want, and you can quickly and dramatically improve your computer and internet skills by watching them and applying what they teach.

I know that with the upcoming retirement of millions of baby boomers, not to mention those of us that are a little older but considering retirement, there will be a large percentage that will need to supplement their retirement income with some type of home based business. Many, like me, will look to the internet for that opportunity, and will look for better and faster ways to learn the skills needed to succeed.

So, if you are retired and looking for a way to supplement your retirement income, or if you are considering retiring but can’t quite handle it financially……

Then stay tuned for more on this subject……

Several months ago, I didn’t know what Joomla was, couldn’t even spell it, and now I am getting to be a huge fan of it.

I created a basic Joomla site to start with, and it didn’t take long to figure out what a powerful and versatile application that Joomla is.

I decided to have a go at creating a membership site using Joomla as the content management system. I found that there are a lot of components available for Joomla that can handle almost any task you can imagine.

I used a component called AEC to handle customer subscriptions and monthly payments. A component called Fireboard handled the member forum. A component called Docman and another called Remository handled all of the content distribution and downloads for members. A component called Community Builder handled the member community functions and profiles, etc.

After building the membership site, I stumbled across a component called VirtueMart, which allows a person to use Joomla along with VirtueMart to build a complete and professional internet storefront.

I installed Joomla along with one of the great templates available at Rocket Theme Template Club. This gave me a great looking site right from the get go.

Next I installed the Virtuemart component and was very pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get started setting up my storefront. The VirtueMart component has a very good help file right in the administration area, and also has a very good forum you can access to ask questions and receive answers.

In no time at all, I had some of my products setup and ready to display, I had my payment module configured to handle customer orders and payments, and I was ready to launch my site.

The Rocket Theme template I used had the Fireboard forum component already installed, so I had a customer forum setup and ready to go.

Since my products are all digital, Camtasia how-to-do-it videos to be exact, the VirtueMart component handles the download chores with no effort on my part.

I’m still adding more products each day, and learning how to use all of the features that VirtueMart offers. I added a plugin called Xmap that automatically creates a sitemap to submit to Google, and it updates each time you add another product.

All in all, I’m really pleased and impressed with the Joomla/VirtueMart combination, and for anyone wanting to create a product storefront, I would recommend you give it a try.

If you are new to Joomla, take a look at my storefront at http://www.CheapMembershipSite.com/Mall/ and check out my video on installing and configuring Joomla. It can save you a lot of trial-and-error heartache if you are just getting started with Joomla.

Cheers,
Lewis Poteet

How-To-Do-It Videos at CheapMembershipSite.com/Mall

Is Drupal right for you?

Well, it depends on what , exactly, you are looking for.

Listed below are some of the types of people who use Drupal. Also listed are some of the features they may want and the skills they’re likely to have.

If the features meet your needs and you have the right level of skills, Drupal may just be the perfect system for you.

(More about the skills later.)

#1 I’m a Blogger and I need…

single-user or multi-user blogs (or both)
ways to assign categories to my content
commenting
trackbacks
themes I can use to customize the style and layout of my site
support for images or other media, using contributed modules (plug-ins)

Skills needed: end-user, administrator

#2 I’m evaluating Drupal for my organization or company and we need…

customizable user roles and permissions
robust security
scalability
functionality we can configure and extend to meet specific business needs
a support infrastructure (documentation, community, etc.)
ways to assign categories to our content
additional features or functionality

Skills needed: evaluator, end-user

#3 I’m a community organizer and I need…

ways for community members to easily share ideas (blogs, forum, files, etc.)
tools members can use to self-organize
the ability to evolve as the community evolves (keeping up with the state of the art for interactive web sites)
a support infrastructure (documentation, community, etc.)
customizable user roles and permissions
safety and security on the web (control over spam, trolls, etc.)
preconfigured tools for community-relationship management like CivicSpace.

Skills needed: evaluator, end-user, administrator, site developer (to some extent)

#4 I’m a small-business owner and I need…

a site I can set up myself
themes I can use to customize the style and layout of my site
customizable user roles and permissions
scalability and adaptability to the needs of my changing business
ways to to categorize my content
a support infrastructure (documentation, community, etc.)
e-commerce support for
shopping carts
premium paid-content subscriptions
functionality I can configure and extend to meet specific business needs

Skills needed: evaluator, end-user, administrator, site developer (to a limited extent)

#5 I build or design websites for clients and I need…

the freedom to create a custom look and feel with my own themes
additional features and functionality
easy-to-provide support for my clients
access to a community of designers and developers

Skills needed: evaluator, administrator, site developer, developer (to some extent)

#6 I’m a programmer and I need…

a robust, well-designed, modular system I can customize and extend
well-documented APIs
system and architecture documentation and coding standards
access to a community of other developers
a rich list of features

Skills needed: administrator, programmer

Do you know what type of Drupal user you want to be?

If you do, review the skill sets below to see what you’ll need to get started:

Evaluator: Be familiar with web terminology and concepts.

End-user: Be familiar with browsing, clicking, submitting web pages, selecting options.

Administrator: Manage roles, select themes, categorize web pages (content), configure module settings, install and upgrade software and databases, apply security fixes.

Site designer/developer: Install software, design style and layout (with css and minimal php), build and deploy websites, evaluate contributed modules, work with LAMP.

Programmer: Program in php, administer databases, program through a well-defined API, design database objects, evaluate existing solutions, apply patches, collaborate with other developers.

Drupal is a very powerful and robust system, and chances are it can be of great benefit to you or your organization.

For some detailed information on installing and using Drupal, here is where you can find a video tutorial on how to install and configure Drupal.

Lewis Poteet

Drupal

Are you like me, never used Drupal and don’t really know what it is and what it can do?

If so, here is some information and facts on Drupal.

After reading about all of the powerful features, and finding out what it can do in the way of managing content and content sites, I’m definitely going to be using it in the future.

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual, a company or corporation, or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.

Many thousands of people have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including

Community web portals
Discussion sites
Corporate web sites
Intranet applications
Personal web sites or blogs
Aficionado sites
E-commerce applications
Resource directories
Social Networking sites

Drupal is ready to go from the moment you download it (and it’s free to download).

It even has an easy-to-use web installer! The built-in functionality, combined with dozens of freely available add-on modules, will enable features such as:

Content Management Systems
Blogs
Collaborative authoring environments
Forums
Peer-to-peer networking
Newsletters
Podcasting
Picture galleries
File uploads and downloads
and the list goes on and on.

Drupal is open-source software distributed under the GPL (”General Public License”) and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.

Drupal is free to download and use, so why wouldn’t anyone want to give it a look-see.

If you feel some detailed video training would be a real short-cut to getting Drupal installed, configured, and operating on your web site, then take a look at this video tutorial on Using Drupal Content Management.

Lewis Poteet

If you are the type of person who is wondering how to create a web page, chances are that you are not all that Internet savvy. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn though, and there are tools available that can make it fairly easy.

Really, creating a web page can be easy or difficult, depending on how ambitious you are and what you want to include. A basic web page, one without a bunch of complicated scripts and things, can be very easy. A more elaborate web page, with lots of “bells and whistles”, can take a little more time.

You can download a free HTML editor, such as Kompozer, and begin creating basic web pages in no time at all. You can shorten the learning curve a bunch by watching a training video on how to use Kompozer to create basic web pages. Kompozer is a very good WYSIWYG HTML editor. In case you are wondering, WYSIWYG stands for “what you see is what you get”, and it basically means you do not have to know HTML in order to create a pretty decent web page.

If you are only wanting to create your own blog, then there is absolutely nothing to it. All you really have to do is to register with one of the many services set up to make blogging easy, such as Blogger.com. They will tell you step by step how to create a web page, but believe me, it is easy to do on one of these sites. The layout is already set up for you, the page is basic and functional, and no programming knowledge is required.

If you are serious about blogging, especially if you want to get in it to use in your business, and to make money, then I recommend that you use Wordpress. Wordpress is free to download, and it offers you a lot more flexibility and features than Blogger. There are tons of plugins and templates available for Wordpress, so you can have a really professional looking blog at almost zero cost.

Again, if you know very little about using Wordpress, you can really shorten the learning curve by watching some training videos. One such video teaches you step-by-step how to build a Wordpress blog that auto-updates using RSS

One way to make money with a blog is to have your own membership site. If you have a passion about some certain subject, then chances are that a lot of other people share that passion. Create a membership site and make some money while sharing your passion. Same goes if you have expertise in a subject, then you can charge other people (members) for that expertise.

You can build a membership site using Wordpress and a Paypal plugin for a total cost of around $37.00 plus whatever you pay for a domain name and web hosting.

If you want a truly professional membership site with one of the best content management systems available, then you definitely would want to consider Joomla. Joomla is a content management system that will do just about anything you could want in managing a membership site.

Joomla is free to download, and there are numerous sources of templates to make your site look and feel exactly as you want it to. I recommend a video that shows how to install and configure Joomla, and another video shows how to build a membership site using Joomla.

If you are after something more elaborate, then more effort and expense is required. You can register several domain names, for example, which will cost some money. That way, you can match keywords and domain names for better search engine optimization and more traffic to your web sites.

In order to create more eloborate and sophisticated web sites, with even more “bells and whistles” you will want to learn some basic HTML. A shortcut, if you can afford it, is to invest in one of the professional HTML editors, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver. You also can use programs such as Macromedia Fireworks to create your own graphics.

Of course, once you learn how to create a website, there is still the question of what to do with it. The Internet has so much junk already, just there to look cute and take up space, so it would be a shame to just add more to the trash.

Create a web site or blog that provides some real quality content or products, make it look good and be easy to navigate, provide quality customer service when needed, and you will get the traffic. It’s only a matter of time.

Give it a try.

Lewis Poteet

5 Important Rules in Website Design

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are five important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well. Your web site is your “store”, and it is where you meet and greet your customers. If your store is junky looking, then people will probably not come in to look around.

1) Do not use splash pages!
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

The big thing right now is to put up an “Opt-in page” that requires your visitor to give you their name and email, in return for some free product or report, before they can proceed to your sales page. This is a good way to build a list, but the danger is that many people will not give their name and email, they will just click and leave, and that is a potential sale gone. On the other hand, if you can offer a good enough incentive for them to sign up for your list, then you gain a valuable name to send your follow-up emails to, and you still get to send them on to your sales page. I recommend using Aweber Autoresponder to handle building your subscriber list.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements!
Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. I personally cannot remember the last time I clicked on a banner ad. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy. Here is a sample of how you could weave a link into your content for a video that shows how to build a web site using a free WYSIWYG HTML editor . I’m referring to Kompozer, which is a free WYSIWYG HTML editor that works very well.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation!
You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered drop down menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site. Every page should have clear navigation links that allow visitors to get to wherever they want on your site. Don’t make them use the “back” button to get back to previous pages.

I prefer to create an xml sitemap to submit to Google sitemaps for SEO purposes, and at the same time, you can create an HTML version of the sitemap and put a link to it on your site, usually at the bottom of the page. This sitemap will give your visitors quick access to any page on your site. What’s more, the search bots love it, so it can help you get your pages ranked in the search engines.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is!
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site!
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on and on on your website. I will leave a site in a heartbeat if it has an annoying audio commercial blasting at me constantly. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

With that being said, some of the “experts” now are saying that you have to have audio (and video) if you want to be part of the Web 2.0 scene and appeal to the new breed of web surfers. You need to create videos and podcasts and put them on Youtube and other social site as well as having the audio/video snippets on your web page. You can always get more information about making your own Camtasia videos and creating your own podcasts if you are interested.

There are many more rules that apply when creating a good web site, but following just these five will get you off to a good start.

Lewis Poteet

How-To-Do-It Video Membership Site For Internet Entrepreneurs

Information/Resources Blog For Internet Entrepreneurs

Choosing and using web site design software.

Website Design Software

When it comes to designing your website, you have so many options it can make your head spin. There are various free tools on the Internet that will work well, but for a truly special site, you may want to buy some professional website design software. These have everything you need to help you build a professional and slick looking website. These also come with detailed instructions on how to use the software, as well as help.

You may not know what to choose when it comes to website design software, and it may depend solely on what you can do with a computer and how much help you need. When you look at some websites you like, see if they list what type of software was used to build that site. This may help you narrow down your list. You may also want to email some webmasters to see if they will let you know what they used. You may not get a response, but it is worth a shot.

The website design software I have found pretty easy to use is Kompozer.  There is a video series available that will show you exactly how to use it to build professional looking web sites. 

Kompozer is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor. This program makes it easy to build a nice looking website without being too complicated. This is great for a beginner, because the controls are easy to use, and once you get the hang of it, it is easy to build and update your site. It also makes it easy to upload your site to your server and everything seems to run smoothly.  Oh, and did I mention the Kompozer software is free!

Your selection of website design software may come down to price.  One of the best in my opinion is Dreamweaver, but it is expensive. The best software won’t do you much good if you can’t afford it. You may be able to find used versions on eBay, but make sure it is a legal copy before you buy it. You may find new software at a great price, but remember that the lower the price, the less it can do. 

I suggest you give Kompozer a try, and after you learn to use it, then decide if you really need to spend money for something more advanced.

Don’t forget to search the net for ideas and information. Look for reviews for website design software, and read all you can. This will help you discover which software works the best, and which types are more user friendly than others. Quite often the best advertisement for any type of software is testimony from those who have used it. See what users have to say about ease of use, price, and the results. If the software is easy to use, it won’t be worth the price if it cannot give you a professional looking website when you are finished.

I also suggest that even though you use a WYSIWYG html editor, you need to start learning basic HTML.  It makes it much easier to make changes to your web site that your WYSIWYG editor may not be able to handle.

Check out my blog to get some basic HTML training.

The main thing is to just get started.  That is the best way to learn.  Pick an editor, jump in and start building a web page.  You’re not going to break anything, so give it a try.  Before long, you will be building professional looking web sites that you can be proud of.

Good luck,

Lewis Poteet

How-To-Do-It Video Membership Site For Internet Entrepreneurs

Information/Resources Blog For Internet Entrepreneurs

http://www.CheapMembershipSite.com/Mall

.

This is meant to be an introduction to some of the very basic
tags that you might use in creating or editing an HTML web
page. If you become familiar with these basic tags, you
will be able to view and edit some of the tags that make up
the HTML code on your web pages.

An HTML document consists of text and tags. Text goes between
the tags that specify how this text will look on the web
page. For example, if you put the word “Text” between <B>
and </B> tags, it will look bold.

Other text formatting tags include:
<I>Your Text</I> (Italics )
<U>Your Text</U> (Underlined)
<H1>Your Text</H1> (Large size heading)
There are others for formatting text, but these are the most
used ones.

The font tags, <FONT>…</FONT>, allow you to set sizes, face,
and colors of the text that is inside the tags. For
instance, <FONT size=”3” color=”red” face=”Tahoma”>My
Text</FONT>, will make “My Text” size 3, Tahoma, and red
color. You can also specify color in hexadecimal code,
which allows you to specify an exact color. Take a look at
http://www.december.com/html/spec/colorchips.html to get the
hex code for a lot of different shades of colors.

In addition to formatting tags, there are HTML tags that
define a document structure. Some of them are :
<HTML>..</HTML> (signifies the start and the end of an HTML
document)
<HEAD>…</HEAD> (document header contains title, author,
keywords
and description)
<BODY>…</BODY> (contains all the objects of the document,
such as
text, links and pictures)

There are also tags that create special objects:
<TABLE>…</TABLE> (creates a table on your web page)
<HR> (makes a horizontal line)

Most tags consist of two parts - opening and closing. An
exception here is the <HR> tag. A few others don’t need to
be closed either:
<P> (new paragraph) and <BR> (new line, or break)

Many tags can contain extra information about them
(attributes). For example,
<BODY> tag can also specify a background color of the page
like this:
<BODY BGCOLOR=”PINK”>
A <TABLE> tag can also specify width like this:
<TABLE WIDTH=80%>

This tag inserts a graphic into your web page: <img src=”http:
//www.mywebsite.com/headerlogo.gif>

This tag makes a link to another web page: <A HREF=http://www.CheapMembershipSite.com/Mall>.
To make the link open in a new browser window, add “target=
”_blank”, like this:
<A HREF=”http://www.HomeBiz.GrabMyDeal.com” target=
”_blank”>

This tag: <A href=”http://ecomand1.thirdsphereplus.com/”
target=_blank>Thirdsphere Web Hosting</A>, will create a
link that opens in a new window, and the text “Thirdsphere
Web Hosting” would show on your web page as a clickable link.

How to place an image and text side-by-side, to give your web
page a more balanced look, and to make use of all white
space:

Recall we talked about the <IMG SRC=…> tag? Simply put an
align=left or
align=right inside it like this:
<img src=myimage.gif align=left width=100 height=200>

Right after the image tag start typing your text. The graphic
will automatically be displayed to the left of text. You
could create a table and put a picture and text in two
separate columns, but this is much faster to do and if your
text is long enough it will wrap around the graphic which
can’t be achieved using a table.
If the graphic is too close to the text, you may adjust it by
adding two more attributes to the tag - vertical space and
horizontal space, like this: <img src=ebay.gif align=left
hspace=5 vspace=5 width=100 height=200>

Well, that’s enough for now. Stay tuned for more HTML tips
and tricks.

Lewis Poteet

P.S.
If you need business class web hosting with all of the bells-
and-whistles, including all of the tools you will need to
create a web site quickly and easily, then check out
Thirdsphere Web Hosting at http://ecomand1.thirdsphereplus.
com/ . I’ve been using them for over three years now to host
my web sites, and I use the web site creation software all
of the time to create and edit my web pages.

How-To-Do-It Video Membership Site For Internet Entrepreneurs

Information/Resources Blog For Internet Entrepreneurs

Where are you at in your efforts to start and build your own home business? 

Are you just in the “thinking about it” stage? 
Maybe you’ve made a decision on what type of business you want, and you’re ready to get started. 
Perhaps you’re already started and having some success, and just need a little more time to get things going really well. 
Last scenario, maybe you’ve been working on you’re business for several months or years, but you just aren’t having any success at all.

That last scenario will apply to an awful lot of people struggling to make a success, or even just a small breakthrough, in their home business.  This blog is being made available to offer suggestions, advice, resources, training, tutoring, and a place for home business owners to communicate with each other and help each other in overcoming obstacles and becoming successful home business owners.

What are your reasons for wanting to start a home business?

Are you ready to get out of the “rat race” and make a full time living from home?
Are you happy with your present job, but just want to make a little extra income from home?
Maybe you’re ready to retire from your full-time job, and you need a home business to supplement your retirement income.

Whatever your reasons, a home business can be a good solution to the problem.  Starting a home business can be much less expensive than starting a conventional “brick and mortar” business.  You probably won’t need employees.  In many instances, you won’t even need any inventory.  You can start and operate many home-based internet businesses with just a computer and an internet connection.

Have you considered starting your own membership site? If you have a passion for almost any subject you can think of, there are people who would pay to become a member of a site dedicated to providing information and networking for people of similar interests.

If you are an “expert” on almost any subject (most people are), then there are lots of people who would pay to obtain your expertise on the subject.

You can start a membership site easily, quickly, and at almost no cost using a Wordpress blog and a low cost Paypal payment plugin.

Check out this video tutorial that shows you how step-by-step.

Take a look at a membership site I built using the information in these videos.

Lewis Poteet

How-To-Do-It Video Membership Site For Internet Entrepreneurs

Information/Resources Blog For Internet Entrepreneurs