How do you get your own infoproduct online, collect cash from orders 24-hours a day 7-days a week while you're not even paying attention?

Having assisted many people with their online marketing efforts - and having setup several online marketing sites myself, I know that at first, it can be a mystery.

How do you create your own website? How do you take payment? What do you use to capture and build your own list. How do you signup and track affiliates who can bring in many sales for you?

Here's information you will not find in any eBook, interview or course - and best of all, its free.

Step 1. Finding a Webhost

You will need to pay a webhosting company to give you space and features you'll need to upload your web page(s) so that people will see it and place orders.

There are thousands of webhosts out there - I've tried many and my recommendation is this webhost: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part hirdsphere

You get up to 500Mb of space (lots for most websites), terrific features such as cgi, Perl, simple configuration tool and statistics as well as ability to setup additional domains for only $10 each.

Step2. Developing Your Website

Once again - you have many choices of HTML editors - or programs you use to actually code your webpage.

Relax! It's not as tough as it seems.

If you don't know ANYTHING about HTML - you should learn basics. Even if you get someone else to build your website, you should know basics of HTML so that you can a) get a fair price for your work, b) communicate what you want to your web designer and c) make changes to your pages as time goes on.

Here's a great site for learning basics of HTML at no-charge.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp OR

http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/

Here's a few tips for building your product website:

1. Keep it simple, and all on one page. Sometimes called a minisite - it's been proven again and again that your product page should be a single page with a headline, subheadings, lots of benefits, a strong offer and order link.

2. Go easy on graphics. Numerous tests have shown that a strong headline and strong copy will outsell fancy graphics anyday.

3. Your order page should be a well-written, targeted sales page. As with any profit-producing sales letter - focus must be on benefits. Produce your sales letter in MS Word first, then simply convert it to HTML.

4. Other than your main sales page, you will need pages that will...

1. Present articles you write online 2. Sell your newsletter or follow up list 3. A thank you page after your customer places an order 4. An opt-in page containing a form from your autoresponder that sells your visitor on signing up to your newsletter, minicourse or update list. 5. A thank you page for opt-in list singups. 6. An information and terms page on signing up affiliates or partners. 6. A tools page where you help your partners and affiliates make money with pre-written ads, letters, signature files, and training.

I know - all of this can get overwhelming! Don't be scared off, just pick off one item at a time and use existing successful websites out there as examples. You cannot steal content word-for-word, but you can definitely be influenced by how others have done it.

Step 3. How Do I take Orders?

Funny thing internet, it's radically altered whole payment processing industry -now you have online payment processors and merchant accounts that allow you to collect money - in an automated fashion, from your customers.

So how do these guys charge for their service?

Each one will have a combination of...

1. Up-front signup fee. Fee you will need to pay just to get an account setup - ranges from next to nothing with Paypal to several hundred dollars. You should plan for $50-$80

Here's what happened. I had written a research report late last year and was selling it as a downloadable e-book via site. However, I was relying on an offline press release and links from other sites to lead visitors to specific page from which report could be purchased. Although this report resulted in considerable press attention, much of media coverage did not include a link direct to my report page, or in some casese, even my website, meaning that interested parties were forced to conduct a search for my site.

It wasn't until I received an email from a potential customer advising me that he had searched my home page and couldn't find a link to report that I had my "Duh!" moment. I had forgotten to include a link to report page from my home page! My old website had no site map or site search tool either, so potential customers finally arrived at my site, only to click away in frustration after not being able to easily find information on my research report. Goodness knows how many sales I missed out on due to this oversight. Embarrassed, I quickly added a link to my home page and made a mental note to study up on website usability, pronto.

Since then, I've learnt that improving your website usability isn't time-consuming, it isn't expensive and it's certainly not difficult. It simply involves common sense and dedication to task. Here are 10 easy steps that anyone can implement to make their website more user friendly:

1) Create a Site Map

No matter what size of your website, you should include a detailed, text-based site map, with a link to every page and preferably, a short description of what each page offers. An excellent example of a site map can be found here: [http://www.seoconsultants.com/site-map.htm]. The advantage of using a site map is that you don't have to link to every page from your home page, but you should link to your site map from every page. Not only are site maps useful for visitors looking for specific information on your site, but they are great "spider-food", meaning they are a way for search engines to easily find and index every page on your site.

2) Use a Logical Navigation Structure

When designing your site navigation menu, use logical headings and link descriptions. For example, "web site design services" is much more intuitive to a visitor than "Internet services". Use Cookie Crumbs to show visitors where they are on your site at any point. These are headings you often see at top of websites and search portals showing what category and page you are currently browsing (e.g. Home > Travel > UK > Bristol > Bed & Breakfasts). Guide Visitors to specific pathways throughout your site. You can do this using Call-to-Action links instructing visitors what page they should view or what action they should take next e.g. "Click Here to Order", "Bookmark This Page", or "View Our Catalogue Now".

3) Check for Errors Regularly

There's nothing worse than browsing a site or following a link only to find it leads nowhere. Make sure you check your site at least once a month for any broken links. There are low cost link checking tools such as Link Defender [http://www.webposition.com/linkdefender.htm] available to help you keep on top of this. Make sure your HTML code is designed to display correctly in different browser versions. Also ensure that your site hosting provider is stable and reliable to avoid any unnecessary downtime of your website. Services such as Internet Seer [http://www.internetseer.com] can help you monitor your site uptime free of charge. Make sure your site does not contain spelling or grammatical mistakes. If you're not world's best speller, have trusted friends and colleagues check your site copy for errors. When proofing your site, remember to take into account regional spelling usage for different audiences worldwide, e.g. British versus American English. A webmaster service such as Net Mechanic [http://www.netmechanic.com] can be used to check for many of these errors via one location.

4) Use a Consistent Design and Layout

Common sense rules here - make sure you use a consistent design and layout for each page on your site. This means using same general colour scheme, logo, consistent navigation menu, header and footer in same location and consistent link attributes (e.g. always underlined). This way you never alienate your visitor or cause them to become confused and lose their momentum to keep looking.

5) Include a Site Search Tool