I’m happy I could help

As for how long it took me, I don’t know if my timeline is a good comparison. I’d say it took me about 2.5 years to get my first money-making site up and running. But that was also while I was working full time in a corporate job. My emphasis while I was working was to learn as much as I could, not to spend a lot of time actually doing it. I put that first money-making site up almost as an experiment. I was combining a couple techniques I thought would work well together, and they did.

In hindsight, though, I would definitely not approach Internet Marketing the way I did, if I had it to do over again. I spent too much time and money investigating every “cool new idea” that hit my in-box from guru after guru. Everything SOUNDED so great! Everything new that came in made what I was working on seem boring and “outdated”. I kept changing my direction & strategy, even before I’d finished DEVELOPING my direction or strategy!!

And yes, most of the sales letter you get or see promise some kind of “magic button”, super-fast results. Don’t believe it. Internet Marketing is work!! For me, it’s work I really ENJOY, but it’s still work. There is no magic button, and anything that promises you’ll be making money in a few days is probably untrustworthy. Granted, some of these things can work pretty fast, but if they do, they’re probably either:

1) Exploiting a “loophole” in the search engines or some other “window of opportunity” that ends up getting closed FAST, or
2) Going to lose their effectiveness in a hurry as word gets out about the technique, and EVERYBODY starts doing it.

I finally (after much time & money spent) realized that the BEST approach is to pick ONE approach, learn it well, stick with it, implement it and make it work. Get better and better at it. Once you’ve got a solid, working process, duplicate it (do it again. And again.). Once you’re sure that you’ve got a process that works, and works more than once, then do as much as you can to automate it, and build in ongoing optimization (squeeze everything you can out of each of the implementations).

It’s so tempting to jump on “the latest bandwagon”, but resist the temptation! In fact, get yourself off all mailing lists that have nothing to do with the approach you choose, and when you get something in an email from a merchant you’ve chosen to keep, only look at what they’re offering if it has something DIRECTLY to do with what you’re working on. It takes discipline, but it will also help you resist (and avoid) temptation!!

Thanks!

Scott <><

The info was very helpful.

It appears that I knew much less than I thought I knew a few days ago…. May I ask approximately how long did it took you from the day you started until you published your first “e-commerce” site - I do understand that one will be learning each day as you continue - but to get a handle on some of the basics, until you feel confident?

Some of the advertisers indicates that you can have your site up and running in four days. According to my current experience - if you start from zero - that is very difficult to accomplish!!!

http://info-and-tools.com/communication/?p=8

Thanks!

Scott <><

First of all - welcome to the community!! (small as it may be at the moment…)

Secondly — your English is great!! So no worries about that, really! What IS your primary (first) language? (just curious).

I can elaborate more if you’d like, but to answer your question quickly & directly: you do NOT need separate domains for each mini-site you set up.

There may be some small gains to be made in terms of “psychological factors” or maybe even a few “Google points” by having a dedicated domain name for a particular product. BUT, you can make up MOST of that, simply by having a DIRECTORY or SUBDOMAIN on your primary domain that contains the name of the product you’re promoting and/or the main feature(s) of the product(s) you’re promoting.

The point here is this: searchers (or Google) will be looking for keywords or product names (depending on your keywords) within the URL. That gives you more credibility (with visitors) and “points” (with Google) because it doesn’t look like “just one of a thousand things” you’re promoting on your site. The fact that you’ve got at least PART of your URL dedicated to the product in question says something. Maybe it doesn’t say QUITE as much as a fully-dedicated domain might, but I don’t think the loss is that big a deal.

Here are a few examples. My Info-and-Tools.com site is one of my main “hub” sites (actually THE main one). I have other “generically named” sites that I intend to use as well. But I promote multiple products via my Info-and-Tools site like this:

My Niche Inspector promotion uses a directory off my main Info-and-Tool site:

http://www.info-and-tools.com/NicheInspector/

NOTE: my Google ads actually DISPLAY “NicheInspector.Info-and-Tools.com”, which LOOKS like a subdomain. Subdomains get a few more “psychological points” than directories. My DESTINATION URL is the one I have above. Google doesn’t seem to mind, as long as the display Domain and destination Domain are the same.

I’ll be adding a few more product promotions to that “hub” the same way in a week or so.

But like I said, you can also do ACTUAL subdomains. One of my other “generic” domains is “Package-Offer.com”. One of my business models is to offer a”package” around a popular product to motivate folks to buy through my link. That generic domain seemed like a good one to communicate that idea. An example of using a subdomain off that generic site is:

http://SpeedPPC.Package-Offer.com/

OK? Now, that being said… IF you think you’ve got a product you’re going to promote for a long time, and IF you can get a decent domain name that kinda reflects that product, you can and often SHOULD try to do that. You’ll get a few more psychological points, a couple more Google points, etc. Domain names are not expensive. I get mine through GoDaddy for under $8.00 per year (usually). If you think the product you’re going to promote will generate more revenue than that, you might want to do it (if it ALSO meets the criteria I just mentioned). I have several like that:

http://www.InstantPopOverPRO.com
http://www.SoftwareBuzzMarketing.com

Etc.

The costs for domains are pretty low. And if they don’t make you money, you just don’t renew them. Along those lines, I’d suggest you ONLY buy your domain for a year, and renew it for more year(s) if it’s profitable. if not, just let it expire.

The key point here is that to some extent, it’s a matter of preference. There’s not much more hassle to having a whole domain vs. hanging something off a “hub” site (or “mother” site) via directory or subdomain. There IS a LITTLE more expense involved in having your own domain. But not much.

The other thing to think about is BRANDING. By hanging things off your “main” site, you ARE establishing some level of branding. If people come to trust you, they’ll trust just about anything you hang off your site. (Don’t abuse that trust!!!!) They’ll RECOGNIZE your main site when it’s part of the name. This can also be helpful if you’re trying to build anything around your main domain itself. Like I am with this site. http://www.Info-and-Tools.com is it’s OWN place, and it’s where I put this blog. So it has a life of it’s own, in addition to being a “hub” or “mother” site to some of the products I promote.

You can do separate domains, subdomains & directories all on the same HOSTING account, so don’t let anyone talk you into buying hosting for individual domains, etc. TOTALLY not necessary.

Does that make sense? I’d intended quick answer, but it just EXPANDED, LOL!! I hope it’s not confusing

Feel free to send a follow-up comment!! Or request clarification!!

Thanks!

Scott <><

I start learning to build my own internet business now for about 2 months (unfortunately I am a slow learner but once I know how something works I can move on that). One thing I have learned is that everyone teaching you (those materials I got so far) make it seem to be sooo easy…. You just click here and click there and whola you have a website. Only to get a rude awakening once you start applying the knowledge they taught you and you discover how little you actually know - if you are new in this learning curve as I am currently. Well my question today is - remember I am still very new at this - the design stage… I am interested/trying to become a affiliate marketer. In saying that I discovered that the most successful strategy is to create a minisite for each individual product. My question is (which I could not obtain clearly from the learning material) do you have to register a separate domain name for each of the individual minisites or could you have one registered mother-site domain name and have all these mini-sites linked to this one mother-site?
PS. English is my second language - therefore please excuse all the mistakes….

Scott <><

Did the video help? Is that where the confusion actually was?