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But keep in mind that you can redirect people to any page on your website. So you could have a sign by your cash register inviting people to sign up for your email list, for example. Offer them special discounts and other benefits when they subscribe to your list.

Then put a QR code on the sign that takes them to the sign up form on your website. All they need to do is enter their name and email address to subscribe to your emails. This is much more effective than having a book where they write down their name and email address to get added to your email list, which is how a lot of small businesses still approach building a customer email list.

Another example of a business where QR codes could be used very effectively is real estate. Realtors could put a QR code on their for sale sign that directs people to a web page with all the detail about the house they’re selling, including a video tour of the inside.

People just driving by could easily scan that code and check out all the details themselves, with no need for printed flyers or anything else they have to physically pick up.

This example brings up one of the drawbacks of QR codes - once they’re generated, they can’t be changed. They will always point to the same website when someone scans them.

The simple solution to this problem is to use some kind of redirect service that will let you change the ultimate destination of the code. The QR code would point to the redirect link, and that link can be updated any time. So in this example, when a house sells, the realtor would simply change the redirect to point to another listing when they move the sign.

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Because you're giving people free access to this course, there's no need for any kind of payment processor like Paypal or WSO Pro.

All you need to do is put a link in your sales letter to a squeeze page where people can sign up for your course. This could be a simple text link or you could use a big "buy" button.

If you use a button, just make sure the text on it is suitable for what you're offering.

eg. "Sign Me Up" is probably going to work better than "Order" - anything that sounds like it will cost money will cause confusion. In fact I can say from experience that just the fact you're giving it away for free will probably generate some questions from people who don't understand that it is a truly free offer.

One question that I've been asked about this process is whether or not you should make an offer on the squeeze page or the confirmation page after someone signs up for the course.

Personally, I don't do it because I feel like it "cheapens" the offer. If people sign up for your email and get hit with an offer right away, it can look like that was the motive all along - trying to sell them something.

Now let's face it - that is ultimately one of your goals. You're doing this to make money, but that doesn't mean that you should try to do it right away.

If you're providing good content in your emails, people are going to be much more open to promotions once they've received a few messages and have seen for themselves what kind of value you're providing.

There are plenty of marketers who recommend always putting offers on your confirmation and download pages, however, so it may work. It just doesn't feel right to me - make your own decision on whether or not to do it.

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Once you've picked the market(s) that you want to target, now it's time to get back on the computer and do some actual research work.

The first place I normally head is Google Trends. The first thing I want to find out is how seasonal the market is.

There's nothing wrong with a seasonal market, in fact they can be quite lucrative, but if you're building a new website in January, and the peak season for the market is January to March, you're probably not going to get much traction before the busiest time of the year is over.

If you spend the next six months promoting the heck out of that site and not seeing a lot of traffic, you might decide it's not worth the hassle and give up before the peak season hits again.

So you want to know this stuff up front.

Let's look at an example... The fitness and "lose weight" market tends to get more traffic in December and January, when people are thinking about the new year and making resolutions to lose weight.

So if you're thinking about building a site about elliptical machines, you can search for "elliptical machine" on Google Trends which will give you a chart like this one.

As you can see, the traffic peaks through December and January every year.

In this particular market, you'll see traffic all year long but it will spike considerably over these two months or so. Which means you might make a large percentage of the total annual revenue on the site over the course of a couple of months.

Another market that's a little more extreme in its seasonality is Halloween costumes. You can see in this Google Trends chart that the traffic peaks in September and October, then dies out almost entirely after Halloween, and through most of the year.

Just be aware if you're going to work in a seasonal market, you'll need to plan accordingly so you're not spinning your wheels at the wrong time of the year.

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Another choice you'll need to make when deciding on web hosting is what operating system you want to use. This is a little like the "Mac vs Windows" debate for personal computers, but instead of the Mac OSX and Windows you'll be choosing between Unix and Windows.

There are actually several variants of Unix that you'll commonly see - FreeBSD, Linux, CentOS, etc. - but they all work essentially the same way. (In fact, you can even get Mac OS X hosting if you're a total Mac fanatic, but it's really just another form of Unix.)

In most cases, Unix-based hosting is the most effective because it is compatible with more applications and scripts. This includes content management systems like Joomla and WordPress, as well as many of the server-side scripts you'll find useful for internet marketing.

While some of these applications will work on Windows servers, it can be more difficult to get them up and running, as well as to maintain them, because they were really designed to be used with Unix.

There are some applications that require Windows hosting, mind you. And if you're using something that does, you'll more than likely be aware of it so you'll need to look for Windows hosting specifically.

There is one big advantage of Windows hosting that many people overlook.

That's the fact that you can run most Windows applications directly on the server itself, and log in remotely to use them.

This can be very useful if your primary computer is a Mac or if you use a portable computer with less RAM or other resources. By running your applications on the server, you can access them via any internet connection and they run via remote access - no matter what operating system you have, or how powerful your computer is.

For example, let's say you use a program like Micro Niche Finder, a keyword and market research tool. This is a Windows application so it could be installed on a Windows server instead of your own PC and accessed from any type of system, even an iPad or other mobile devices.

Incidentally, this can also be very effective for outsourcing since you can give your VA's remote access to the software on your server.

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Off-site SEO really comes down to one thing - backlinks. That is, links pointing to your website from other sites on the internet.

Google was the first search engine to count these links as a factor in how they rank websites, but all the large search engines use links as a factor these days. The idea is, the more links you have pointing to your site, the more popular it is and therefore the content must be useful.

Of course, Google's original algorithm assumed that these links were appearing because other people thought your content was good enough to link to. Building your own links kind of circumvents that assumption, but it's a necessary part of SEO.

Hopefully the content on your website is good enough that other people will link to it as well, so over time you will have a mix of links that you've build and links that have appeared "naturally."

Link Sources

There are a lot of ways you can build links to your website. Some are easier than others, and some might even cost money. But there are several methods that have worked quite well for years now, and will most likely continue to do so (provided you do them correctly).

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Remember Marlon Brando in The Godfather, suggesting someone be made an offer “he can’t refuse.”

You may not be able to make a prospect an offer he or she can’t refuse but when you present an offer to a hot prospect, you need to have done your homework. You should have analyzed the prospect’s web presence and decided what it is you can do to help him or her the most. You should have a plan in mind and be prepared to provide prices.

If the prospect doesn’t have a web site, your first offer might be to build one. You’ll need to be ready to handle objections as anyone who doesn’t have a website probably has a strong belief that she or he doesn’t need one. The first comment you’re likely to get is, “My store is doing fine. Why do I need a website?” Or “I used to have a website but it didn’t get me any business so I took it down.”

You may even hear tales of someone who charged the merchant an arm and a leg, took six months to get the site up and then disappeared. Be prepared to deal with people who have had experiences like this because trust us. There are a lot of them out there.

This is where your offer comes in.

You need to be able to show your prospect why the website you would build is bound to be successful. You need to be able to demonstrate how you can use SEO to get the site ranked highly in Google and how the merchant could use the site to draw in business – using tactics such as coupons and special offers.

You could make a special offer yourself using the razor and razor blade marketing strategy. This is where you would offer to build the site for practically nothing so you could get paid to maintain it every month and add new content – which is where you would make your real profit.

If your prospect already has a decent website, you should be able to sell him or her on paying you to build a Facebook Fan Page. Most business people have seen the big guys like Ford Motors referring people to a Fan Page but have no idea how to build one or get customers to go there and Like it. So offering to build a Fan Page for the merchant could lead to an easy sale – and an easy job for you.