Web Hosting
Being new to web development we had several major decisions to make. One of these was who is best to host our website and hopefully in the future, websites. The decision would involve research about who could cover what we needed best. So we first had to decide what we needed. We came up with a list of ideals:-
- UK Web Hosting with a range of hosting options. Windows, Linux, and cPanel
- 24/7 toll free Support, good customer satisfaction
- Reasonable Costs
- Host Unlimited Domains
- PHP 5 / MySQL 5 support
- Automated Wordpress installation
- Guarantee 99.95% uptime
Being Windows specialists we thought about using a Windows hosting package, however having performed research we decided that cPanel would be best. So we started comparing packages.
From our research we came up with eUKhost. They offered a great package for us. The cPanel Gold package was exactly what we were looking for. The reviews were good and we spoke to an advisor online to ask the questions we had. If you would like to find out more about eUKhosts then please visit them here.
Wordpress for Dummies
This book is a must read if you are new to Wordpress and blogging.
It will help ease the process of setting up your Wordpress blog site.
Wordpress for Dummies is a comprehensive and easy to follow book, which covers everything from Getting started with Wordpress, to Designing your blog site, using Templates and Plugins and also some examples of good templates and plugins.
We created this website using Wordpress and as well as this book we came across Revolution which has some great themes that are easy to use and customize.
Q&A with co-founders of affliateproject.co.uk
We thought we’d document some of the thoughts, apprehensions and expectations on this exciting project and we thought the best way to do this would be via a Q&A session with ourselves.
1. Who came up with idea and how did it get started?
Paul: Gary came up with the initial idea through some research he was doing. I thought it was a great idea and together we just kind of went forward discussing more and more ideas. Eventually we thought, hey we should write some of this down and actually get this thing going for real.
Gary: I have always been looking at ways to make some extra money to help pay the bills and to support my family. I had some ideas related to comparison sites. I wanted to understand how they worked, so started to research making money online and stumbled upon affiliate programs and google adsense. Some videos on Youtube attracted my attention, showing their huge pay checks. After reading some more I told Paul about this idea and thought how hard can this be. And here we are today affiliateproject.co.uk has begun.
2. Why did you start this project?
Paul: For me personally it was very strange. To be honest I thought, it’s not really me. I work the hours I do in my current job to enable me to spend as much time as possible with the family, however I don’t enjoy the work. So I really want to change what I do but can’t afford to take a pay cut to enable me to learn something new. This opportunity seemed like the way to learn a new skill, earn some extra income and maybe, just maybe it will develop into a full time role and I will be able to substitute the current job with this.
Gary: It was a new year resolution of mine to change my job, but I didn’t want to stay in support as I’ve done this for far too long now. Like Paul, it’s difficult to change careers without taking a pay cut and re-training. Even more difficult if you have a family to support. This seemed like a good option, it’s low risk with good potential of earning enough to hopefully pursue this as a full time hobby.
3. Why work on this together?
Paul: I don’t think we really sat down and agreed to do it together. It started as an idea and we both added to it so it came to a stage where we just thought, are we going to do this or not. We both decided to go for it. Then the benefits of doing it together started to show. We both had good ideas. Working together has enabled us to discuss these ideas and get opinions and other views which alone we may not have thought of. We are both new to this so we can both learn. We work well together, get on well together so although in the long term our profits (if we make any!) will be halved we can both come up with some niches and each write different websites and work on different parts of the project therefore hopefully actually maximizing our profit. We are both good at researching and learning new technologies so this should benefit the project.
Gary: I think it’s great to be able to bounce ideas off someone, both Paul and I have a lot in common, both wanting to get out of our current jobs, both have families to support and we both get on well. Additionally we can both add value to not only affiliateproject.co.uk, but many more ideas for case studies that we have already starting thinking about. We can then build up a portfolio of niche sites and dedicate more time to more sites and also give each other feedback on how we think this should improve. It’s great to start this venture together with someone with similar interests.
4. Why does the project work for you?
Paul: Where do I start! As previously mentioned I have a young family, hence having my full time working hours set at 07:00-15:30 works really well for me as I get to be home at a great time and spend time with the family. This project still enables me to do that. I spend some time in the evening once my wife and I have put the kids to bed writing and developing making sure I spend time with my wife as well. I don’t do it every evening but basically I can work on this project without compromising time with all the family. Hey it may result in a few later nights but I can catch up with sleep when I’m retired ?
Another great plus was the investment costs. Our budget at home is tight as are most people these days. This project works with a low initial investment and the revenue generated will pay for the growth of the project and future websites. The only real investment is time and that is up to me. See our investment page for more information on this.
Gary: I believe that you should be able to enjoy your work, especially as you spend the majority of your life at work. I’m hoping that this project will allow both Paul and myself to escape from the mundane 9-5 and do something we enjoy long-term, but in the short-term, this project will hopefully make life more comfortable financially whilst we can both hold down our current jobs.
Again highlighting what my partner Paul has already said, the investment costs are significantly low with huge potential gains. What have we got to lose!
5. What are your fears?
Paul: Well initially I was very unsure about this. As mentioned earlier this isn’t me. I am a very safe and secure person. A non-risk taker. I like to know where I stand. I can’t afford to invest money in this. Then working through it, discussing it with Gary, discussing it with my wife I thought, hey what if I don’t do this. How will I know whether it will work? After that it seemed like a no-brainer. The startup cost is minimal. If we don’t make money I can afford to lose that small amount. If it does make money all the better. In the end my thoughts were not of what if it doesn’t work but, how can we make this work.
Gary: I would say my only fear would be not to succeed. I want to be able to provide for my family and live a healthy happy life without not having to worry about money. I am willing to work hard at this and understand there may be obstacles along the way. It’s not about having an easy life and I have worked hard all my life so far. I believe that most things in life, anything can happen if you put your mind to it.
6. What are your expectations?
Paul: The sky’s the limit! No really at the moment my expectations are that if we can keep affording to put in the time we can grow this. At the moment I would like the project to generate some income, to start making some profit. Then if it generates enough to pay a personal bill a month, that would be great, then if it pays for a holiday a year, great, then who knows! I think we can only get better. Remember we are 2 guys starting this with no previous experience in this field, not much web design knowledge, just some enthusiasm and some willingness to invest some of our personal time.
Gary: I think that at the beginning, it may be a slow starter as we’re new to affiliate marketing, but as time goes on, we’ll do really well and hopefully be able to ditch the 9-5. Ask me again in 6months, maybe 12months time!
I think both Paul and myself are very dedicated and hard working honest people.
It’s easy to start day dreaming of the possibilities and the potential, Paul often has to bring me back down to earth. Any money is better than none and will all help.
Glossary
Affiliate marketing – Affiliate marketing is where a company will reward an affiliate for each visitor that makes a purchase on their website when they have been redirected to them by the marketing of the affiliate on their own website. The affiliate is the website where the click originated from.
Backlink – A backlink is a link received by a web page, directory, website, or top level domain from another web page, directory, website, or top level domain. Backlinks can also be known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.
Click Through Rate (CTR) – Click through rate is one way to monitor the success of an online advertising campaign. A click through rate is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on an advert on a web page by the number of times the advert was presented (impressions). An example is that if an advert was presented on various websites 100 times and 1 click was registered on the advert the click through rate is 1 or 1%.
Cost Per Click (CPC) – Cost Per Click is the amount of money a company pays search engines and other website publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings the visitor to its website. So if a website has adverts and a visitor clicks on the advert the company that the click re-directs to will pay the owner of the original website a fee for generating traffic and therefore potential sales to its own website.
Google AdSense – AdSense is run by Google. Website owners can sign up for AdSense to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites. The advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. So if someone visits your site and clicks on a Google AdSense advertisement the website owner will receive an amount based on the cost per click.
Pay Per Click (PPC) – Pay Per Click is a web based advertising scheme used on search engines and content websites where an advertiser will pay when a visitor to a search engine or content website clicks on the advertiser’s advert and redirects to their company page.
Search engine optimization (SEO) – Search Engine Optimization is the method of improving the volume of traffic to a web site from search engines by improving the content and using keyword which will place it higher on the search results. The higher a site appears in the search results the more visitors will visit that site.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page) - A search engine results page is the list of web pages that are returned by a search engine in response to a keyword search. Typically the results can include the web pages with the title, a link to the page, and a short description highlighting, in bold, where the keywords have matched content within the page.
Sponsored links / adverts – Sponsored links / adverts appear on search engine results pages alongside the returned searches and companies pay a fee per click on that link to become a sponsored link and appear on the page alongside the returned search result.
Our first ever post on affiliateproject.co.uk
We are currently testing our wordpress template and will be adding lots of interesting articles to the site in the near future. Watch this space!
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Sponsors / Adverts
