free traffic, free website, free business, can I succeed

I want to build a free website, so I can get free traffic, to gain a following and ultimately offer my services for free as well. That sounds pretty good in theory but it's not going to work out that way. You see, Google requires you have at least one site that is above 500 pages indexed by them in order for your website to show up in their organic search results. The way around this is if you offer your services for free upfront and then request payment after the service has been rendered.

It's always good to start with something low-cost and test the waters before sinking tons of money into something that may or may not be feasible.

For example, I'd like to start offering free remote desktop support services. In order to do this, I need a way to receive money online without it being fraudulently sent through. So I decided on PayPal because of their popularity and security. Once you create an account you are given a page where you can set up your business information, click here , register your business, and complete the steps needed to get started.

Next comes the hard part (well maybe not really); you post your website address all over the internet so that people can find it easily once they decide that they want assistance with their computer issues (more on that later). Once they visit your website, there are a few different ways you can go about it, all depending on how much time you want to spend.

1. You can create the initial page yourself with your basic contact info and/or a free quote form (upfront cost: none). This is sort of like the "get a free quote" except it leads to some information at the top and then has a form embedded at the bottom of the provided page for contact info and/or a free quote. (I'll be using this method)

2. You can have someone else create the initial page for you (upfront cost: $100-200). This is probably the best route to go because you are not limited on the amount of information you can have or pages you can have for your contact form. Just imagine that there is a big picture of yourself at the top and then form fields directly below it leading down to where the "send" button would be.

3. You can purchase a template that will give you everything already set up for $7-15/mo (upfront cost: none). This is probably the best route to go if you are not super tech savvy so it's easier for you to understand and get up and running quickly.

You will want to have all of your contact information set up a few days in advance as well (make sure that it's not publicly viewable) in case people are unable to access your website due to a computer problem, a computer repair problem, or just for whatever reason. You may receive the same number of calls / e-mails over the first 4 weeks of your business and then things will slowly pick up steam after that.

After those first few weeks, you can pay for a monthly ad on Clickbank (upfront cost: $50-100). Clickbank is an affiliate website that pays you commissions on any sales that you generate. Some of the most popular affiliate sites on Clickbank are:

1. PayPal (upfront cost: $100-200). This is probably the best one to choose if you plan to offer free remote desktop support services because people will almost always need some sort of payment method to trust that they are dealing with a real person and not some kind of scammer. If you only accept Paypal, then you will need to make sure that your website has their authorization code pulled into the source code somewhere so as to confirm your authenticity. http://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/overview

2. Commission Junction (upfront cost: $25-50)

3. CJ Affiliate by Conversant (upfront cost: $100-200)

The ad platform will pay you every month for as long as your account stays active and the earnings you receive from that particular company do not decline or stop altogether. This is very important because if the payouts for a particular company decrease to the point where it becomes unprofitable, then there is no sense in continuing to have an ad with them on your site. You will want to switch from PayPal to a company like Commission Junction since you can offer multiple payment methods; it's still free traffic but it does not require someone to pay up front.

I have been running my blog for about 5 years now and if you see my ads, you will notice that they are all PayPal ads. Here is my latest ad on Clickbank (upfront cost: $50-100)…

Updating your ad on Clickbank is easy. All you need to do is log into your account and click the "sell" tab. Then find the particular company's banner image you'd like to update, and click the massive red button at the top right to update it.

Getting back to the topic of how to get people to find your website and then contact you… Google is not going to help you out with this one. You will need to drive traffic yourself. To do this, I recommend mostly using Google Adwords and Bing Ads. If you would like more information on what I use for my ads, feel free to check out this post of mine (upfront cost: $50-100).

Ok, now that you have your website set up with an ad pulled into it and a few different free quote forms posted around the internet, now you need a way for visitors to contact you. There are a few different options. Here are my choices:

1. eBay (upfront cost: $10-20)

2. CraigsList (upfront cost: $5-20)

3. Free daily e-mail newsletters (upfront cost: free)

4. Craigslist blog post / posts (upfront cost: free).

Conclusion: I definitely recommend eBay and Craigslist. The others are not worth the time and effort.

I will be comparing all of these options in a few weeks to decide which one is best for me. For now, I'm going to stick with eBay (upfront cost: $20) since most of my items are sold there. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below!

Until next time, stay tuned for articles on how to make money with your blog (upfront cost: free). 🙂

(If you're looking for a list of 100 top paying affiliate programs, click here.