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Complete these steps and you’ll have an online funnel in place to build up leads for your business.

You’ll need something to offer people in exchange for their email address : a PDF with useful info, a spreadsheet or doc; or you may intend mailing them a physical thing.

If you have an offer ready, and run through this checklist A-B, then I think that most people can get this small lead funnel up & running in a couple of hours. But you’ll need to stay focused and power through it !!!

Here’s the overview …

STEP 1: Organize the domain name & website hosting.

STEP 2: Put a basic website up.

STEP 3: Set up the offer to get the leads.

STEP 4: Run an add to send people to your offer.

(1) Domain Name

Note 1: You can have many websites ! If you already have a website, you can set up this funnel in addition.

Note 2: You can register a domain name ( www.your-website.com ) and buy hosting for the website ( a place for the website to exist ) separately, and this can often be more convenient. But for a fast funnel setup, do this …

  • Decide on a domain name for your website. It should be something that makes sense for your product or the particular offer you’re going to make ( you can have several websites ).
  • Get the domain name and the hosting in one move. We use either Uberglobal, an Australian service or Bluehost who are based in Utah, USA. All trade-offs considered, we’ve found that these companies provide the most reliable, easiest and cost-effective services. They both allow you to manage the website files with a cPanel control panel which is by far the easiest to use ( cPanel is the brand name ).

https://www.uber.com.au/products/web-hosting/cpanel/ ( starter hosting )
http://www.bluehost.com/shared ( starter hosting )

Both these packages are fine to start off with and if you ask the hosts to upgrade you to faster hosting later on, they’ll move your website files for you.

  • After you’ve signed up, you’ll be sent emails with access information. File all of them for later, either in a folder on your computer or print them off and physically store them.

(2) Website Setup

One of the emails that the hosting company will have sent you will include access information for the hosting control panel. It will have some access details something like this …

and take you to a login page like this …

cPanel login box

INSTALL WORDPRESS

  • Log into cPanel.
  • If you’re with Jumba click on Fantastico.

Fantastico

  • Select WordPress and click New Installation and follow the instructions.
  • If you’re with Bluehost, open the Website builders panel.
  • Click the WordPress icon ( picture over the page ) and follow the instructions from there on.
  • Nearly all cPanels have a similar service.

1 click installation

  • Log out of cPanel.

After you’ve installed WordPress, you’ll get an email that has a link to the admin area and the username and password that you chose.

CONFIGURE WORDPRESS

  • Log into your WordPress site. It will probably be www.your-domain-name.com/wp-admin/
  • In the left-hand column, go to Settings > Permalinks [ Permalinks are the page-identifying words that follow the domain name – www.your-domain.com/permalink-here/. We want the page addresses to be meaningful, like www.domain-name/privacy-policy/ rather than www.domain-name/?p=1 ].
  • Select Custom Structure, type or paste in /%post_id%/%postname%/ and click the blue Save Changes button.
  • Go to Settings > Discussion and turn off the comments that appear by default at the bottom of pages. Uncheck Allow people to post comments on new articles and check Users must be registered and logged in to comment.
  • Click the Save Changes button.

ADD PAGES

  • In the left-hand column, click Pages. We need to create 4 new ones.
  • Click Add New and enter “Home Page” as the title, or something relevant to the product.
  • Click the blue Publish button on the right. We’ll add content to these pages later in Step (3).
  • Use Add New to create a page called Privacy Policy and one for Terms and Conditions. Both of these are required by advertising networks like Google and Facebook.
  • Create a Thank you page that people will be sent to once they leave you their email address.
  • In the left-hand column, go to Appearance > Themes.
  • Select and activate the Twenty-Thirteen theme.

CREATE MENUS

  • Go to Appearance > Menus.
  • Click create a new menu to create one called Main Menu.
  • Create a Footer menu and add the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions to it.

ADJUST THE APPEARANCE

Edit it using this great online image editor http://apps.pixlr.com/editor/ and download it to your computer.
The header images that ship with the Twenty-Thirteen theme are 3200 pixels wide by 460 high, but you only need one that’s the width of the website, which is 1600 pixels wide.
Upload the header into the Media Library by clicking Upload new picture.

  • In Navigation, select the Main menu you created earlier.
  • In Widgets, delete all the widgets in the Main Widget Area ( use the right down arrow to open things up ).
  • Click Add a Widget and select Custom Menu.
  • Select the Footer menu.
  • Use the top left arrow to return to the main sidebar.
  • Select the Home Page you created for a Static Front Page.
  • Click Save and Publish.

ADJUST THE PAGE WIDTH

The pages of this theme are pretty narrow. If you want them wider then do the following ( this isn’t best practice, but it will do for a fast funnel set-up ).

Go to Appearance > Editor.

At the bottom of the right column, click Stylesheet (style.css).

Scroll right to the bottom of the stylesheet.

Paste in this line … entry-header, .entry-content, .entry-summary, .entry-meta { max-width: 800px; }
 Set the max-width to what you like ( measured in pixels ). It will override the width that’s set higher up in the stylesheet.

(3) Set up the Offer

This next step is to put the offer on the main, home page, and fill in the thank-you page, privacy policy and terms and conditions.

  • In the WordPress dashboard, click Pages and open up the Home Page in the editor.
  • Click the far-right icon in the row above the editor window called Toolbar Toggle to get all the options.
  • Type up your offer and format it using headings and colours where needed.

PICTURES & IMAGES

These can hold things up. Do this …

SIGN UP FOR AN EMAIL MARKETING SERVICE

You’ll need to add an opt-in box to ask people for their email address in exchange for your offer. There are a lot of options around. We find that online services are best because the software stays up-to-date, they maintain good deliverability of the follow-up emails you send and generally can do far more cool stuff. We currently use GetResponse.

Sign up for GetResponse here … http://www.getresponse.com

ADD THE OPT-IN BOX

  • Log in to GetResponse.
  • Create a new campaign ( which is the list you’ll be adding people to ) by clicking the top-right drop-down.
  • Make sure that you select the campaign you’ve created and that it’s displaying as your current campaign, top-right.
  • Click the Create a Webform Icon, or select that option from the top navigation bar.
  • Design your opt-in box then click Next Step.
  • Select the Custom Thank-you page option and enter the address of the thank-you page you created earlier.
  • Click Next Step.
  • Copy the Javascript Code.
  • Go back to the Home page you’re editing in your WordPress website.
    Click the Text tab, top-right of the editor window.
  • Paste the Javascript in, then click Update.
  • Have a look at your actual website in another browser tab as you create the page.

FINISH THE OTHER PAGES

  • Get a generic privacy policy from here …
 http://www.visser.com.au/blog/generic-privacy-policy-for-australian-websites/
  • Paste it into your Privacy Policy page and adjust it for you.
  • Add a few terms and conditions to your Terms & Conditions page.
  • Let people know on your Thank-you page what they should expect, or add a link to the PDF or thing you offered them. You can upload PDFs and other docs using the Add Media icon above the editor window.

(4) Send People

The easiest, fastest and most targeted way to advertise at present is Facebook. So start with them.