Build a Website That’s Profitable
Every day tons of people start a website in hopes of making extra income online. You need to be ready to put in a considerable amount of work, learn how to bring targeted traffic to your site and then turn that traffic into paying customers.
Should you Choose a Free Website?
Choosing a free website is the most common mistake made, rather than opting for a site they pay for and actually own. WordPress.com is one of the most common traps out there. WordPress is fine but don’t make the mistake of thinking that once you build it that you can actually monetize it. The rules are strict about what you can and cannot do on the WordPress.com site.
Blogspot at Blogger.com lets you build your site free, but you need to remember these types of sites are never really your own. What would you have if you labored away to build your site only to find Blogger.com shut down at a later date. All your work would have been gone.
A better option is to have your own site hosted at a web host. It costs a little bit a month, but it’s yours, you can monetize it however, you want, and you know it will be there as long as you want it to.
Keywords and Traffic
Keywords are very important to targeting traffic to your website. You don’t just want traffic you want traffic that would actually be interested in what you offer. You can have the most fantastic products or services, but if no one can find you then your online business is going to be dead before it ever gets off the ground.
You need to analyze the people who would want what you have and what they are typing in to find what you have to offer. Choose around 20 keywords/keyword phrases. Those are what you’ll use to target traffic and also to get your website ranked by the search engines.
Build your Website
Great news! You don’t have to understand HTML or CSS to build your website. There are tons of site builder options available to you including software programs like Dreamweaver and Xsitepro. There are plenty of online options too, and many web hosts offer site builder software so take advantage of it and get your website up and running in no time at all.
You can build a profitable website and begin to earn revenue from it. Best of all it isn’t nearly as complicated as you might have thought, so why wait another day?
How to Build Your Own Website in 5 Easy Steps
So you have decided to make your way to the World Wide Web not as a surfer but as an entrepreneur – good for you! Done correctly, it won’t be long before you are able to generate income from your website. But first, you need to know how to build your own website, so let’s get busy!
We’ll start by assuming you already have your domain name.
Step #1 Hosting
Hosting involves where you website pages reside. In order for others to see the website you build on your computer, it must be hosted somewhere. There are many different web hosts. Some are free, others offer standard hosting, and still others offer dedicated or virtual hosting.
Many head towards the free hosting, which can have a number of drawbacks including space, bandwidth, and even your site’s ability to become ranked. Make sure you read the fine print and know what you are and are not getting.
Step #2 Decide What Your Website Will Look Like
Once you have your domain and your hosting, you need to decide what type of website you will build. Is it a site designed to provide information, news, sell products and/or services, etc? Remember content is key in the world of search engines so think about how you build a site that promotes your focus and provide rich content.
There are tons of web edit services that can offer you WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). It makes building your website like using a word processor.
Step #3 Publish Your Website
Great, you’ve built your site and now you need to publish it. Publishing it is simply a matter of uploading the pages you have created to your web host service. FTP is the common method to upload. Sometimes you have to download FTP software, while other times the web host has streamlined everything so there’s no need to download anything. These are things to consider when you are choosing your web host services.
Step #4 Promote Your Website
“If you build it they will come.” Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to a website. You are going to have make sure your site is search engine optimized (SEO). You need to build content that focuses on relevant keywords so that your site gets ranked and placed well, which will bring targeted traffic to your site.
Step #5 Maintain Your Website
You can’t just put your website up and forget about it. You need to bring new content in on a regular basis, test to ensure your site is running properly on all browsers, and in general keep your website fresh.
That’s it in a nutshell – just 5 easy steps to building your own website and starting your online business.
How to Design Your Web Page
You have chosen your domain name, figured out where you are going to host your website, now it’s time to get down to business and start to design your website. If you are going to be attempting to design your own site, you’ll want to read on.
There are many things to consider when you decide to create your website. As a beginner, your starting point is to start basic, get a site launched onto the internet, and worry about refining and building your skills over time. The first thing you need to be introduced to is WYSIWYG is otherwise known as ‘What You See is What You Get.’ There are software or web hosts that offer website building templates that use this rule. For you, this means you create your site, and what you create is what you are going to see online. The HTML or language code is created by the software, and so therefore you do not need to learn or understand it.
There are tons of web editors ranging from free to commercial. If you don’t mind spending a little money for a good commercial web editor you might look at Dreamweaver or Xsitepro. Both offer excellent customer service support and online tutorials to help you work your way through the design process.
If you would rather use a free web editor there are a couple of decent ones kicking around such as KompZer. However, you need to remember that free web editors are going to have limitations. They may not have customer support, limited templates, and limited functionality. There are others to choose from. Just do a search for “free web editor.” It does pay to read the reviews so that you aren’t disappointed.
An important component in web design is ensuring that it is search engine readable. It is the search engines, like Google, that are going to be responsible for where your website places. So you want to make sure the web editor you are using isn’t adding tons of unnecessary code that makes it difficult for the search engines to read your site.
Your web design also needs to be content rich, and you should be focusing on a handful of important keywords that target your business and the type of traffic you want to receive.
Most of all, don’t worry about mistakes or limitations on your first website build. You will develop skills, learn techniques, and get more proficient over time. Your website can be changed and/or updated at any time.