Is having my own website essential for sales?

I don't know the first thing about putting together a website and hosting it and all that stuff. If I have a landing page, blog, and squeeze page, would that be enough to sell/promote my product visually (aside from articles and the like)? Should I link them to each other? What is the difference between a squeeze page and splash page? and last question, is Squidoo effective as a landing page?

I know it's quite a few questions, but I am a n00b and these are the main ones I am still trying to figure out. Thanks in advance!

 

This really depends on your product and your relationship with it. If you need to establish a sense of branding, because this is your own product, you need a quality domain. If you're just chasing traffic as an affiliate, the choice is up to you. Hosting packages are pretty cheap.
Squidoo is not a replacement for a landing page, it can supplement your efforts but really has had its day.
If you want people to have a sense of authority and trust in doing business with you, there really is no replacement for short, relevant .com domain name. Free blogs can of course do many of the same things as registered domains in terms of funneling traffic.

 

I am mainly chasing traffic as an affiliate. So you're saying that the domain name is the most important. I don't have to build a page and learn HTML? That's my biggest concern.

If I buy "Johndoe.com" and redirect it to "johndoe.blognation.htm.3.abc123.com" that would be just as good? (^-- lol, sorry, does that make sense?)

 

I'll tell you what I do. I purchased a hosting account at bluehost.com. They have this option where you can automatically install the Wordpress blog software for yourself. I registered my own domain and host my blog on it. I've accumulated quite a bit of posts and my blog is my main vehicle for promoting an affiliate product.

I had originally started with a free blog on wordpress.com, but it got shut down because they are very strict about no advertising and no affiliate marketing on there. If you want to use a free blog and not worry about getting shut down, I believe that blogger.com is much more lenient. If you do host a blog on a free blog host though, just make sure you have backups of all of your content!

 

It is possible that you get what you want for Free. But above post told it, if you want to get a "brand", you need your own domain.

So the Johndoe.com would be your "brand", and the efforts would have to be to make this domain a authority site. You would not redirect this to a affiliate merchant although you can put there inside HTML redirect pages which can do this.
That sounds difficult, and it is. But not from the "building sites" point of view, from the "getting a authority" site point. That needs a lot of traffic, seo, relevancy, quality one way links to it and so on.

So for not confusing you too much. As a simple affiliate you can start with free stuff like a Squidoo Lens, or a Weebly.com site, then there are Free Worpress Blog, Hubpages, free Blogger as addition, but you have to be aware of their TOS (Worpress won't allow affiliate Links but you can link to Squidoo), use them to build a link net pointing from one page to a other and at the best you have your affiliate offer as main focus.

I'm at WA and we get free hosting and a free website builder and templates. It's nice and really great for starters. I don't use it as I already had Hosting and a Builder to make my pages before I joined. But who enters as a Member without any resource should use it.

Free Builders are as well available, www.nvu.com is one of the best, but then you should get at least some basic HTML knowledge, what is not so difficult by the way.

Hope this helped.

G.

 

to be honsot with you, having your own website is not at all required, ive never owned my own website and while i was working on it (sadly ive had to take a break from online marketing due to my new "real" job , but i plan to come back soon) and i was getting some great results (started hitting 300 months, not much, but considering i had no website, and invetseted 0 into it, that was -great- extra cash, especially considering im a beginner hardcore)

 

Defiantly buy your own domain name. I dont know about the rest of you but I would never buy anything on a site with a free subdomain or any other thing like that.

 

You are right that conversation is much lower at those sites. But if you do it well and depending on the niche you can create curiosity and make visitors click on some links, just to check your offer. Then the cookie stick there for a while and your chances to sell are real.

But it's correct that you should have your own domain to make a serious approach, no doubt about it.

G.

 

You can make money using Squidoo lenses to promote ClickBank, Commission Junction, Linkshare etc products.

Or if you get your own domain, you can use Squidoo lenses to drive targeted traffic to it.

 

Cool. Thanks for the great advice and tips everyone!