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Duplicated Instant Websites

Instant Websites are presented as an all in one business solution. The real truth about them does not sink in until it comes to marketing, and the truth then really bites if you don't know what is causing it to fail, or what to do about it.

Instant websites come in several varieties, but all of them have the same kinds of problems:

• Virtual Malls - You get a site that is duplicated, and stuck in a subdomain or sub-folder of someone else's site. You can't ever really make these unique, and many marketing avenues are closed to this kind of site.
• Business Packages - You get a site that is essentially the same thing as a Virtual Mall, only it is for a specific MLM or direct marketing package. Same problems as Virtual Malls, you have to market them differently than you are lead to believe you have to.
• Replicated Websites - These are sites that are pre-built and sold to multiple people. Search engines penalize them for duplicate content, even if the sellers tell you they do not. This kind you upload into your own webspace, and you CAN change them.

The problem with these types of websites are that your primary sources of free marketing are closed to you one way or another. Search engines will not index sites that have nothing but duplicate content, which means you don't get any free traffic that way. It also means that article marketing and link placements have only the power of their own clicks, and give you no other exponential benefits like they will with a regular website. Further, if you have a subdomain, or an affiliate type link, most search engines and directories now will not allow you to directly advertise those sites. You cannot use link trades or ad swaps with business packages or virtual malls, because there is no place for you to put a reciprocal link on your site. Even if you try paid ads, some venues will not allow you to market that type of site directly.

Replicated websites also have the further problem that they may contain links that go to sites that have been banned, or that are low quality, which will hurt your reputation with the search engines. Pagerank of the sites that are linked into it are not the problem, unless they have been banned. Site quality very much is an issue, and those links can hurt you. Some articles in replicated sites may also be poor quality, which can hurt your site's reputation.

So, avoid a business that has one of these unless you want to take the time to market in different ways. There ARE ways to cope with each of them, but they take much more work than is implied most of the time before you buy.

For Virtual Malls and Business Packages, you need to build a small site of your own. Put up a Home page, a Contact page, and an About page. Add some informational articles if you want it to attract better traffic. You can put in articles that deal with topics that are related to your business. Link your business site into every page (you can do that in a sidebar where it fits quite naturally as an extension of your small site). Then promote THAT site instead of your business site. The search engines will index it, you can list it in directories, and you can market using article submissions. Link trades fit nicely into it. Plus you get to put in your own testimonial, tell your own story, or give your own personal reasons for being involved in your business. That can have a powerful influencing affect, and begin the process of building a relationship with your prospects.

For a replicated website, make it unique. Check the links on the pages for quality, and check the articles to make sure they are useful and well written. Remove any pages that you don't like the content to (that will help make it different and improve the quality), change the filenames and the links to them, add comments on each page, giving your opinion of the articles on the site. Then upload it and register it, and it will do OK because it is no longer a duplicated site - it is unique, and it adds something to the informational content of the web, and that is all the search engines want! To keep it earning, learn how to add new pages, and how to find articles to add to it (this isn't hard - go for quality and good information). This process is time consuming, and a LOT more work than you were told it would be, but it is still much faster than building a site from scratch, and can be a very helpful way for new businesses to get a foot in the door more quickly.

These items are not disasters unless you don't know the catch. If you do, and can work around it, then you can be much more successful using them.

There is only one kind of Instant Website that does not have these problems, and the reason it does not, is because you copy and paste your own content in (from a packet of reprintable articles). The trade off is that you have to do a little more work to get the site up and running, but you get a site that is totally unique, fast to build, and which has good support behind it if you purchase from the right place.