Weebly’s site editor, showing a site I created in 30 minutes.
I created the above website in under 30 minutes, using the free website creation tool Weebly. Weebly’s a fun tool to use. I hadn’t used it in a while, so I timed myself. The 30 minutes included writing the content, and changing the Domain Name Servers (DNS) from Namecheap to Weebly. Weebly hosts all the sites you create on it, so you don’t need to worry about hosting. Indeed, you don’t even need to buy a domain — I wasn’t using the writepreneur.com domain for anything else, that’s the only reason I used my own domain.
What would it mean to you if you could get a website online FAST?
It would mean that you could jump on money-making opportunities quickly. I talked about money-making opportunities in Make Every Word Count in 2013.
Here are some examples of what you could do once you were familiar with a tool like Weebly.
1. Create and sell websites
Let’s say you come across a business which doesn’t have a website. Instead of calling the business, or sending them a letter, you could whip up a quick site.
Weebly has a mile of themes, arranged in categories, which are free for you to use. Just click the Design tab in Weebly’s site editor to access them. Weebly’s popular, so many companies create both free and premium themes for Weebly — here’s one. So you just create some content — a few hundred words will do — choose a theme, and hit the Publish button.
Include the site’s URL when you send a message to your prospect. SHOWING the business an example of a website which could be their own is a lot more effective than saying “I could create a site for you”.
Of course, you’d also warn the business that you’d be offering the site to another company if you didn’t hear from them within 48 hours.
How much could you charge for a website you’d created quickly? That’s up to you. However, when you’re selling websites, here’s a big tip… The money is in site management and maintenance, rather than the initial creation of the site. Let’s say that all up, the site creation took you four hours. You could charge $900, with an on-going site management fee of $50 a month. That’s inexpensive, and even in these straitened economic times, few businesses would quibble at it.
What if you had ten businesses paying you for site maintenance each month? That’s excellent extra income for you.
2. Sell affiliate products
I created the above website in Weebly a few years back. I haven’t touched the site since. Yes, it’s old-fashioned. I’ll get around to updating the site with a new theme soon. I can’t remember how long the site took to create — maybe a couple of hours. Weebly has become considerably faster and easier to use since I created that site.
Over the years, that little site has more than repaid the small amount of time I spent creating it. There’s been no expense at all. I created it on the free version of Weebly, and Weebly has generously hosted the site ever since I created it. That’s the point of Weebly — you can create free sites, which will make money for you for a long time to come.
3. Sell your own products and ebooks
If you’ve created a product to sell, you need a website. Create a 30-minute site. That 30 minutes will be paid for many times over, very quickly.
Weebly’s sites have everything you need. Even though they’re simple to create, they’re real websites, with SEO.
Above: the Settings for my 30-minute site.
I haven’t yet done the basic SEO for writepreneur.com. This will take me ten minutes or so later today. As you can see from the image above, it’s easy to do — just fill in the fields.
Creating websites is simple, and profitable. Spend an hour or so creating a website today. That website will pay you income for years to come… for free.
Make Your Website Sell — special offering
There’s a special offering on my new Make Your Website Sell coaching workshop until January 12. I’d love to work with you, to help you to increase your income by developing money-making websites.
Sell Your Writing Online NOW
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