If you have an interest in something – in anything – be it scuba diving or decorating eggs – there is nothing stopping you from starting a website based on that interest and turning it into a cash-generating online business. It doesn’t have to be perfect. My word, I’ve seen people making money from the worst sites you could imagine. And you don’t have to do it in one go. Take your time, but AT LEAST be working towards something.

Here’s what I mean...

Let’s say you go on www.webs.com.

You set up a site called ‘Emily’s Decorated Eggs’ – pretend you’re Emily for the sake of this example and that your interest, in your spare time, is in decorating eggs. OK?

All you do is put up a single page that introduces who you are – Hi, I’m Emily and I love decorating eggs – and you put up some pictures of your decorated eggs.

(I’m thinking here by the way of those regular eggs that are hollowed out and painted – I saw a whole shop full of them in Salzburg once, quite pretty but really fragile.)

So, you’ve set up a site. And I’m telling you, anyone could do this bit. In fact, anyone could do any of these bits.

Next time you get a chance to work on the site you add some more pictures. And this time you invite people to – wait for it... BUY your decorated eggs.

Just a simple order form that people can print or write out and send to you to place an order. You don’t need to worry about automated things just yet. Just get yourself started and you can go from there.

Probably in with me up to this point, right? But you want to know...

How do you get people to the site?

Aha! If this is your stumbling block, and with a lot of people I know it is, I don’t blame you.

It’s what every entrepreneur on the web is fighting for – traffic. It’s not just you. Heck, even Richard Branson would happily have more traffic. And it’s easy to assume you don’t stand a chance against the big players.

It’s easy to assume, but it’s dead wrong.

I’m going against my own rule here, usually I don’t like to bombard you with a ton of things in one email but I want you to go away today with enough to have something concrete set up, enough to be moving forward with your own site...

OK. Here it is... Four steps to setting up a free website and three free (and super easy) ways to start generating free traffic...

1. Set up your website on webs.com. It’s so easy, really. Just go to webs.com. When you’ve done that, here’s what you can do to start generating traffic – for free.

2. Set up a twitter account in the name of your website. (Go to www.twitter.com to do so.)

Put a link from your twitter account to your website and visa versa. Very easily done.

Twitter accounts are really good for getting a high search result on Google. Plus, as the link to your website is from an external source, it will give your website some extra points with Google. When people search for Egg decoration – ‘Emily’s Egg Decoration’ will start returning in the search.

Next step...

3. Do a search on Google for online companies that do the same thing as you. Put the name and email address in a spreadsheet – or just write them on a piece of paper.

Then draft an email that invites them to advertise on your site in return for them putting a few lines and a link to your site on their site.

Send this same email to all the companies you find. If you don’t hear back within two weeks – do it again. Believe me, there’s nothing to lose.

Other people who are already up and running will understand the value of having their link on as many sites as possible so you should soon start to get some replies.

Then, when people visit these sites, who are already generating traffic, they’ll click to your website to check out what’s going on. That, my good friend, is free traffic.

So now we’ve got two free forms – external links from other sites and new followers from Twitter. But, what the heck, let’s get 3 new avenues open.

4. Email your Mom. Oh dear, Glenn’s gone mad. No I haven’t. Email your Mom, your dad, your son, your daughter. Email your aunts, your uncles, your nieces or your nephews. Email every one you know.

Seriously. It’s free and it’s effective. Word of mouth is a great thing.

Tell them you’ve set up a website and tell them to tell their friends. It’s your family and friends so you’d hope that at least a few of them will make the effort and somewhere along the line, you’re going to tap into people who will be interested in what you’re doing.

All three of these avenues are completely free to do and are pretty much assured to start generating traffic to your site.

When they do, you’ll hopefully start seeing a few sales and with the money you make from those, you can start looking into building an actual list of email addresses that you can trade with other companies – then you’ll really be motoring.

But don’t worry about that for now. Just get in on the game. Follow the 4 steps I’ve laid out today. Follow them in your own time, whenever you get a spare mo. Print this email off if it helps and then you can check off each stage as you complete it.

OK. We’ve covered a lot today, but I hope you can see how easy this is to get going and that you can do it with virtually no cost and no matter where your interest lies.

Try this. It might not seem like it right now but this could be instrumental in changing your financial circumstances. And unless you give it a go, you’ll never know. Wouldn’t you like to find out?