The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job (17 page)

adequate safeguards against these troublemakers.

Speaking of troublemakers, here’s a bit of advanced advice. Once you are up and

running with a few web sites and you see a steady stream of income, consider getting

what’s cal ed dedicated IP hosting.

Every computer has an Internet Protocol Address, or IP address for short. The vast

majority of hosting services put hundreds of their customers’ web sites on a single

powerful computer, with the result that those customers share the same IP address.

Let’s assume for a minute that your hosting company put 280 different customer web

sites on one of its computers. Let’s further assume that—contrary to the policies of the

hosting company—a few of those customers decided to put up pornography sites or

sites that send lots of spam about Viagra®.

If that happens, sometimes Google and other search engines wil blacklist that IP

address. The result is the bad guys—and the other 270+ sites on that same computer

—are now banned, and you wil not show up in the Google listings. They can taint your

reputation for something entirely out of your control.

Hosting companies are getting better at catching that kind of activity and it’s possible

to appeal to Google when innocent bystanders are affected, but that can take time.

Therefore, it’s a good practice to get dedicated IP hosting, where you are the only web

site on a fresh, pristine IP address. You can even choose to have al of your sites on the

same single address, but that’s okay because al your sites wil be good, nonspammy

ones.

Dedicated IP hosting costs a few more dol ars than shared IP hosting—it’s more like

$30 per month for the first web site and around $1 per month for any additional sites you

host. If you’d like my current recommendation for dedicated IP hosting just go to

www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type “dedicated IP” into the search box.

“If dedicated IP hosting is better, then why wouldn’t I want to get it from the

Question:

outset? Why should I wait?”

I’m just trying to get you a good site for the lowest cost and with only

manageable risks. If you’re extremely short on cash, then go the $3-per-

month route until your info-product business starts to bring in money. I would

Answer:
hate for you to pay more for hosting and watch the expenses add up, only to

bag the whole idea of a six-figure second income before you see the money

coming in. Right now, do what you can afford.

Building Block Three: Get a Web Site Design

If your web hosting is working properly it wil be invisible to anyone visiting your site. Now

let’s tackle the issue of what your site wil look like to anyone who types in your web

address.

One thing that deters people from ever creating a web site is the thought that they’re

not programmers or graphic designers. Fortunately, you can have a great web site

without knowing much at al about programming or graphic design.

Let’s look at your options for designing a web site.

Option One: Custom-Programmed from the Ground Up

This is real y unnecessary. If you were a large corporation then you might want everything

custom-built for you because nothing off-the-shelf seems to fit your needs. When you get

to the point of being a large corporation then you can ponder this option, which is also

usual y more expensive than the alternatives.

I say usual y more expensive because it’s becoming more practical to have a site

custom-coded for you. Remember in the last chapter I talked about the web site

www.99designs.com and how you can get a T-shirt design created? You can also

sponsor a contest to have a whole web site design created for you for a few hundred

bucks.

The contestants wil submit designs only, not the programming necessary to make al

the web-page menus work or have al the buttons clickable. Once you pick your winning

design, you can have that design turned into an actual, usable web site with al the

programming,

also

known

as

coding,

done

for

you.

Just

go

to

www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type “design coding” into the search box and I’l

tel you my current favorite source for this service.

Even though what I just described is a nice option, you’re real y paying more than you

need to pay for a perfectly workable web site. I’d only suggest that route if you have your

heart set on a specific design or set of features and you simply can’t find it anywhere

else.

Option Two: Learn Programming and Build it Yourself

Ouch. Hey, if you enjoy that kind of activity then by al means learn the programming

languages of HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and others necessary to create a solid site.

Only do it if you enjoy it, though, because otherwise it’s not the best use of your time.

The days and weeks you spend learning those skil s could be better spent creating

another info product.

I do agree that knowing something about programming is a good thing because

you’re less likely to be intimidated by a programmer who gives you a song-and-dance

about how a task wil take real y long to complete. Even then it’s possible to ask your

buddies in your soon-to-be-large network of info-marketer friends and they’l quickly let

you know if your programmer is tel ing the truth.

In terms of cost, this option is effectively free. The tools to learn programming are

available free on the web. Simply Google a term like “learn web programming” and you’l

see a ton of them.

Option Three: Use a Wizard-Based System

Some companies have web-based online wizards that lead you through a series of

questions and screens at the end of which you have a web site designed and ready to

go. Until recently these systems were great in theory but in reality they required you to

learn their own involved procedures for changing web pages. Every year or so a new

generation of these tools comes on the scene and current systems are becoming more

intuitive.

This option has another problem relating to customization. These companies are

great if al you want to do is take one of their hundreds of pretty designs and stick your

text on the page. However, if you want a slightly different page—for instance, you’d like

to add a box here or eliminate a photo from the top of the page—they’l tel you, “Sorry,

that’s not going to be possible.”

These systems are often bundled with web hosting and domain names for a real one-

stop-shopping experience. Occasional y, they play games with who owns the domain

name and they definitely wil charge you more than a few dol ars per month for hosting.

Stil , it’s relatively inexpensive.

I’m constantly on the lookout for wizard-based systems that combine ease of use with

enough custom capabilities. If you want to know if I have any current favorites in this

category simply go to www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type “wizard system” into

the search box.

Option Four: Use an Off-the-Shelf Template

This is how I’ve done the majority of my web sites. A template is an entire web site that

contains al of the professional y created design and programming, but it has

placeholders for text and graphics. You then add your own pictures, text, links, and

whatever else you want.

It differs from the wizard-based system because with a template you can customize

anything. Some templates al ow you to move many elements around on the page without

knowing programming by instead employing a drag-and-drop approach.

It comes down to knowing what you want to accomplish with a site. If al you want to do

is stick your text and pictures into the template, then you might as wel go the wizard

route. The template-based approach requires a bit more knowledge on your part in

exchange for lots more flexibility.

Another option with templates is to hire a programmer to do the customization for you.

It’s usual y a pretty inexpensive proposition, measured in tens of dol ars to perhaps a few

hundred dol ars.

Templates are also quite inexpensive. They range from around $20 for a simple one to

maybe $150 for a very sophisticated one. If you want to know my current favorites in this

category simply go to www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type “template” into the

search box.

“I’m real y starting from scratch here and don’t trust myself to learn much

Question:
web-related stuff. I can afford to pay a little bit but have to watch my dol ars

pretty careful y. What would you recommend?”

In that case your best bet is to start with Option Three—the wizard-based

system. It wil get you up and running the quickest, and that should mean that

profits are coming back to you the quickest. That wil give you the luxury of

sitting back and deciding how you would like to improve your site. If the

Answer:

wizard system can accommodate those improvements, then great. If it

cannot, then you’l know what specific modifications you want to make to

your current site and you can move either to the template approach—Option

Four—or to more of a custom site.

If you do decide to go with Option Three, the good news is you can skip the next two

Building Blocks and go right to Building Block Six. However, you might want to breeze

through these next two blocks just so you know what they contain.

Building Block Four: Get an HTML Editor

The granddaddy language of the World Wide Web is HTML, or hypertext markup

language. At one time almost al web pages were constructed using that language, which

dictates where text and images wil appear on the page and how they wil look. Even

today most web pages contain some HTML despite other languages gaining in

popularity.

As I said before, you’l never need to become a programmer in order to make a great

deal of money with info products. In fact, you’l hear a number of other info-marketing

gurus trumpet: “I don’t know the first thing about computers and look at al the money I’ve

made!”

I think that’s going a little overboard. It’s like a person being so helpless that he’s

somehow proud to say, “I can’t even turn on a washing machine. I’ve always had people

to do my laundry for me.”

Personal y, I like to be just a little bit self-sufficient and not total y held hostage to techie

people for the least little change to a web site. It’s handy, for instance, to be able to

change an address or a date on a web page without submitting a request to someone

and waiting for it to happen.

Also, as you’l read in a later chapter, most search engines focus on certain elements

of HTML in order to determine the quality and nature of a web page. Therefore an

informal knowledge of HTML is helpful.

You can get a very good HTML editing tool for free. I’l give you the current location of it

when you go to www.sixfiguresecondincome.com and type the term “HTML” in the