Hi WA

Hope everybody's doing great today.  Just wanted to blog about my last couple of days as a student of WA. 

I started my morning by reading "Who Loves Money?"   (There is some fantastic stuff in this book ya'll.) 

I had gotten down to around page 45 or 46, where Kyle and Carson were talking about Ugly Web Pages that don't sell and they were talking about how quick and easy it is to create nice landing pages using google pages (now google sites). 

The distinct advantages of using google sites, is that they are "google-friendly" which simply means that they have a built-in structure whereby google will automatically index the pages in the site, without you having to use a lot of meta-tags and keywords... 

It's was both a new concept and a new idea for me to understand the importance of this when building webpages.  So, in the process, I also learned that Google indexes sites based on the site's title (or name) and the description, the content and finally how many links are on the page.  (Wow, that alone is powerful!).  And that is also why content is sooooo important and must be focused and relevant.   This is how I began to understand how important it is to "optimize your webpages (a term I knew nothing about until I joined Wealthy Affiliate)."

The next advantage of using Google Sites, is that it is completely free, so it gives you a good way to get exposure, and get your stuff out there without having to pay ONE DIME...

I spent my ENTIRE DAY yesterday, learning how to actually create my first "Landing Page" using google sites.   I probably set up 15 google sites, designed for each of my products.

 I got the idea after reading "Who Loves Money" which I haven't actually finished yet, but strayed off the beaten trail to actually try to implement some of the stuff I was reading about.

So, thinking about one of my affiliate projects, I decided to try it out.    Now, I was already very familiar and comfortable with google sites, because I actually had built an entire website using Google Sites.   You might want to take a look at  Clark Memorial Funeral Service.   But, I had never thought about building a promo-site to help me get needed exposure for any of my affiliate programs.  

So, I thought I would find me a nice promo page to use as a model, and try to set up a landing page using Google Sites.      

Well it was something that took HOURS... roughly 10 or 12.  Now, I call myself a "writer", but as I have said in previous blogs about this, IT IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT KIND OF WRITING THAT YOU HAVE TO DO FOR MARKETING.  (I am throwing my M.Ed. OUT THE WINDOW, because it has not helped me AT ALL! --   Not in this arena).   The more I work with WA, the more I learn that your writing and everything you do MUST BE VERY FOCUSED --  something I haven't actually been doing lately.  (I tend to write in very broad terms)  

So, for me it was a very intense thought process to set up this page.  Although there is not a lot of stuff on the page, I got it done.  The page supposedly promotes my affiliate link to one of the programs I joined, Global Domains International.  

I'm not thoroughly satisfied with it, and I know it's not the "model landing page" but I think for the first time out of the box I did SOMETHING to enhance my marketing skills, and I'm feeling like it's going to be okay. 

If you'd like to visit that page, it is called  Leverage your Time, Become a GDI Affiliate  (or something like that).

If you took a look at this page, you've probably figured out what occurred to me in the process.  A landing page like the one I built may not necessarily be the best way to promote this particular affiliate program.   So, as you are doing exercises like the one I did yesterday, your thought process actually improves in terms of how to best market a product or service. 

While I have used google sites to gain exposure for my "brick and mortar business" what I learned from yesterday's experiment was that google sites offers a very real opportunity to set up totally free, optimized webpages, that I can also use in a totally different way, to gain exposure for my products and services.

It was truly worth the time I spent playing around with it.   But, more importantly, every day, I'm learning something that makes it clear to me how valuable my WA memberhship is going to be, in terms of finally KNOWING WHAT I'M DOING HERE.

Okay, that's it for today.