Free Courses on Starting Your Own Online Business from Home
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Hello! I am Michael Star, the creator of the www.AstrologyZine.com web site. If you are the kind of person who wants to be his own boss in a business that can be started with little or no investment and operate from your own home, there are some free courses described on this page which could help you get started in the right direction. The Internet has opened up many opportunities for people like you and me, and these free courses tell you how to create a few of your own!
Back in 1995 when I heard about the Internet and the World Wide Web, I saw it as golden opportunity to start my own business from home, without having to spend much to get it up and running on the Web. I already had an "information product" because I had written software which created personal horoscope readings printed on paper, so all I had to do was modify the programs to print them to email letters instead.
With a web site of my own, I could "advertise" to millions of people around the world for only the cost of my ISP, which was about US $22 per month at the time, including the web site and surfing time. I thought, "This is like having my brochure posted on millions of bulletin boards in grocery stores around the world, without even having to print the brochures or go to the stores to post them!"
In the Spring of 1996 I bought a book on HTML coding and web site design and signed up with my ISP, and started participating in the alt.astrology newsgroup. Within a few weeks I was ready to use a friend's Win95 computer to build my first web site, which was completed in two days and had five pages.
I added my site's URL to the "sig" (signature) line in my posts on alt.astrology and on the same day my site went on-line I got an order from one of the participants for US $30 - which more than covered all my costs for the first month! Back then, I couldn't even see the graphics on my web site using my old DOS computer that didn't even run Windows 3.1. But I could create the horoscope readings and email them without paying postage, and happy customers would send me checks or cash in the mail. I was in business! And it was "profitable" from the very first day. Lucky me!
You could be in a profitable business too, with a lot less time and effort, for the free courses listed below will tell you how to do things right and get you started fast. You can make a good living right from home, full-time or part-time. One day you will be able to "fire your boss" and be your own boss in your own home business! Imagine... no alarm clock, and no commuting in heavy traffic. And if you have fun doing it, there's no stress!
Without spending ANY money on advertising for nearly five years, my site is now linked to from many other sites and search engines and delivers over 400,000 page views per month and attracts over 3000 visitors per day. The visitors who actually choose to pay for personal horoscope readings by email now support me in a comfortable lifestyle, and I make extra money from displaying banner advertising and affiliate program links on my site's many pages.
Sometimes I also get personal appearance bookings from people who found my web site, such as the recent one to do readings at the nation's capital on July 1st during the Canada Day 2001 celebrations.
I had to do things the hard way back in July of 1996, for there were no software products I could afford that created and maintained a web site the easy way, as there are now. When I started I didn't know much about the Web, and had never used Windows or a web browser before! There were few places to find information about all the things you had to know to set up your site and let people know about it, such as submitting pages to the search engines. Now there are products and books available which tell you everything you need to know, so you can learn all the right moves very quickly and not have to learn from weeks of "trial and error" effort.
It's one thing to have your own "home page" or a commercial web site - but it's another thing entirely to have one that people will come to and that they will buy from.
Look at all the "dot-bomb" big businesses that failed last year. They put "hype" ahead of "helpfulness" in their business equation, and found it just doesn't work. Buying expensive ads to get millions of eyes to look at your site doesn't help you succeed if your visitors don't feel motivated to buy your product or pay for your service, or if you don't build enough "trust" to make them willing to enter their credit card number.
Nowadays, there are excellent and reasonably-priced products and services available, like Dr. Ken Evoy's "Make Your Site Sell" book to take you step-by-step through ALL the right moves necessary to create and promote a site which presents your product or service in a way which builds the trust people need in order to want to buy it from you. It is based on the fact that "content is King", and helps you create the content and copywriting that makes your site attractive to both search engines and potential buyers of your product or service.
I recommended this excellent e-book to my friend Bob, who wanted to sell his own music CD online, and wished that I had been able to have such a complete step-by-step guide to help me get my site started. He loved the "Make Your Site Sell" book, and used many of the proven techniques he learned from it. He even got listed in the Yahoo directory on the first try, and for free. Now he sells his self-created ballet music CD around the world, and is working on a second one.
Bob had paid a web designer $1000 just to create his small site and set it up on a commercial web hosting service, but now the designer is not available to help him modify it. For way less, he could use a new service I mention below to build a successful web site he can maintain himself, and also have it hosted for a whole year on a fast commercial web server. And he'd get several other tools which a web master needs and would have to pay for separately, all included in the one fee.
This year (2001) I heard about another Ken Evoy service called Site Build-It! which provides many automated tools to create and market a web site which will get listed high in the search engines so people will find you, and which will "sell" your product or service most effectively to your visitors who come to read your site's free and useful "content" (information they need, which you can provide). It even helps you register your own domain name, get listed on the search engines, track your stats, and includes a year of high-quality commercial web hosting for your site. Click here to enter the monthly drawing for a free Site Build-It! and two years of free web hosting.
If only I had such a tool back in 1996! It would have saved me months of work and avoided a lot of mistakes and lost opportunities. I would have much more "traffic", more "brand recognition", and higher income from my site if I had known what Ken Evoy will tell you in his Site Build-It! service.
He offers some free introductory courses by email, which I highly recommend. Anything this man offers is full of excellent ideas that have proven to "work", and his books and services are now famous for "over-delivering" - in other words, you get WAY more value than what you paid for! It's a nice surprise which everyone appreciates when they see it.
Quite frankly, when I first read "Make Your Site Sell" it amazed me! I had already learned a lot of what it said, but it covered EVERYTHING in a simple style yet in great detail. Ken not only tells you what to do, he tells you WHY. It reminded me of some things I should have known but had forgotten to do, and taught me some things that I didn't know but needed to do!
And it costs less than US $20 for over 500 pages of great tips and techniques. I paid twice that for my first book on HTML coding! I would have paid ten times that $20 for all the great ideas I found in this Site-Sell book. Really. If it only increased my sales just a little, it would pay for itself in short order. So for just $20, how could I not take advantage of all this valuable information? Actually, last time I looked it was only $17 for the downloaded version in Adobe Acrobat format.
I later got Site Build-It! at the introductory price of US $99 for one year, which is less than I was paying for my web hosting alone! It has since been bid up in price, but is still worth way more than you pay for it. I am going to build a new web site from scratch, using the Site Build-It! tools and recommendations.
The Free Courses
Some of the free e-mail courses described below come from Dr. Ken Evoy, some from other reputable authors, and they are ALL worth the small investment of your time, even if you decide not to invest some of your money in buying the book or the service. You will learn things you need to know, from people who really know about what they are teaching you and know how to explain things clearly. There is a lot of hype and misinformation on the Web, but you won't find it in these courses or in the books they are taken from. Just straight talk about what really works to make you successful at what you want to do.
I can recommend Dr. Ken Evoy's materials without reservation, and I'm proud to know that he is a Canadian like myself! He was a medical doctor, but in his spare time learned all about the Web and online marketing the hard way (as I did) by starting his own web site back in the "early days" to sell a software program for investors in the stock market. Now he is one of the best-known and most respected Internet marketing "gurus". Even other respected marketers recommend him!In the interest of "full disclosure" I want to mention that I was so impressed with Ken Evoy and the other authors listed here, that I signed up as an "affiliate" of their programs to help promote their books and services and receive some commissions on any sales to people I referred. I'd recommend them anyway, so why not make a little extra money for my time and effort? I don't think my friend Bob begrudges me the referral commission I made when he bought the book that he keeps thanking me for recommending. ;-)
The courses and information listed below are FREE and without any obligation. If you later choose to purchase one of the books or services, I may receive a commission from the seller. (This will not affect the price you pay.) You may want to apply to be an "affiliate" yourself after you see how great these books are! I can tell you that my musician friend, Bob, has thanked me at least five times for recommending the "Make Your Site Sell" book to him. (Say, if you want a great gift for any ballet students or teachers in your family, check out Bob's CD of ballet practice music at www.RLongBalletMusic.com)
To sign up for the free e-mail course of your choice, just click on the underlined text and your e-mail program should open with a blank letter already addressed to the appropriate mailbox. You don't need to type anything, just hit your "Send" or "Queue" button and the blank message will get to the right place and sign you up automatically to receive the course material at the return address in your letter. You can choose to stop the emails anytime if you wish, but I don't think you will want to miss any...
I hope what I have told you here will help lead you to the success you want in your own Web business! Despite all the former media hype and the present doom-and-gloom outlook for "dot.com" businesses, the fact is that many small businesses like mine have been steadily growing in size and profitability while the "big dogs" have greedily bitten off more than they could chew and then "bit the bullet" in recent months. Don't worry about their mistakes, such as blowing a million dollars on one Superbowl commercial - just learn from them and understand that they don't really apply to the kind of small business you could operate from your own home. With your minimal expenses and small investment, you have little to lose and much to gain!
Live long and prosper!
Michael Star
Taurus from Toronto
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