How to Create a Muse for Beginners
I’ve been posting a lot on the 4-Hour Week Forums. One of the questions I see coming up quite frequently is “How Do I Create my own online business when I have little or no computer experience?”
If you are an advanced marketer, you can stop reading this post now.
Here’s how I replied to the post:
I see computer skills as necessary for most online businesses (muses). So for example, if you are outsourcing the creation of your website - how are you going to edit it in the future?
Are you going to have to hire someone each time you want to change something? This could get expensive!
I’m not saying you have to be a computer/internet guru, but you should start learning some basics, most importantly search engine optimization and pay per click marketing. If you are not familiar with these topics, then you are going to have a difficult time finding a qualified outsourcing partner/link builder.
If you are brainstorming what type of muse to create, I would suggest starting a Wordpress blog about a particular niche that you are interested in. You could go to the Google Keyword Sandbox for ideas.
The reason why I recommend a WordPress blog is because its very easy for someone with little internet experience to use the Wordpress administration menu to post, edit posts, and arrange elements of your website (without having to hire someone or spend too much time learning).
Once you find a niche with little competition, your next step is to look for merchant sites that you can review. So for example, if your niche is ‘learning to play piano’, you can review ebooks or training methods, and receive a commission for each visitor you refer in what is known as affiliate marketing.
Setting up a wordpress blog is relatively easy, and if you don’t know how to, someone on elance or rentacoder can set it up for you for under $20 dollars I imagine.
The next step is purchasing your own domain name and host for your wordpress blog. Make sure you get your own domain name, such as ‘LearnPianoReviews.com’ (make sure its a .com and brandable, and easy to remember!). You can customize the design to your liking by looking for wordpress themes. If you are going with a Wordpress blog, make sure you look for ‘linux’ hosting packages, and not Windows based hosting.
I recommend 1and1.com or Bluehost for domain hosting, with packages starting as little as $4.95/month.
Regarding your questions, computer knowledge in my opinion, always nets a positive return. As I mentioned above, a better investment in your time is to focus on internet marketing aspects rather than learning HTML (which you can easily pay someone to do with little knowledge on your own part).
