How to Make A Website By the Numbers
January 5, 2010 by IBI · Leave a Comment
You’ve been thinking about it for a while now and it is finally time to learn how to make a website. If you think making a website is difficult, you might be surprised to learn that it is a rather straight forward process.
Step 1 – Planning
This is the most important part of learning how to make a website. Why? Because at this point you are either setting yourself up to make a successful website or for a great big disappointed. The reason we want to plan before we make a website is because we need to know what our website is going to focus on.
You may be saying to yourself, I want to learn how to make a website, I don’t need to pick a topic now. This is what most people say when they learn how to make a website. This is also why most people’s websites fail to rank very well in the search engines.
By picking a topic before you make a website, you can see how much competition you’ll face. This can be done by seeing how many websites you’ll be competing against. To do this, go your favorite search engine and search for the main word(s) that best describe your website. Is surfing your theme? Then search for “surfing”.
Once you’ve gone and found how many websites there are on the topic, you need another piece of data: search volume. There are plenty of resources out there you can use to get this number. Google AdWord’s Keyword tool is one of them you can use.
Now that you have these two pieces of information, divide the number of websites by how many people search for it. This can be seen as competition divided by search volume. The bigger the number the harder time you’ll have ranking when a user searches.
This is a very important step to understand when you learn how to make your own website. And as I’ve already said, it may very well be the difference between success and failure when you make a website.
Step 2 – A Fitting Domain Name
Since we’ve done our research and planned the subject for our website, we can now pick a fitting domain name. We’ll use the previous “surfing” example throughout the rest of this article on how to make a website. Seeing as this is our keyword fitting with our theme, we will want to make sure we use it in our domain name. This will also make ranking easier.
There are two ways you can make a domain name for your website. The first method is the one that you will most likely be familiar with. That is the none hyphenated version. It looks like this: www.mysurfingshop.com The second version is hyphenated, and is easier for your visitors to read. Unfortunately they may not remember it as easily. Especially if you place hyphens in such a way they don’t remember where they go. This example would look like: www.my-surfing-shop.com
When you make your own website, it might seem tricky at first, but once you’ve done it several times you’ll realize like everything else, it is very straightforward.
Step 3 – Website Creation
This is a very broad topic, and while it is still part of making a website, it is no longer the major part. Let me clarify, when you learned how to make a website years ago, the Internet was in its infancy (some still say that it is). There were fewer books and other resources for you to gain a handhold on, and unless you knew how to code… Well lets just say be happy you’re not trying to make a website then. Today when you approach the task, there are countless resources on the Internet you have instant access to. If you encounter a problem during the course of making your website, you can ask a question and get a fast reply.
But you can go beyond that. And that is what I want to make clear in this step. You don’t have to learn how to code a single line (though it is a valuable skill) to make a website. And in fact there are plenty of websites out there that would never have been made if this wasn’t true.
There are so many solutions for how to make a website, and a large number of them are free. Let’s look at WordPress. Though mainly a blogging platform, it is so customizable it can easily be enhanced to meet almost any need. It’s fast, you can literally have things setup and running within a matter of minutes, now how is that for learning how to make a website? Did I mention it was free? Oh yeah, I did.
Now I know what you may be asking yourself, how do I make pages, posts, etc? The days of coding pages from scratch in a text editor are over. Those tasks are often left to professional web designers. For many the creation process is done directly in their browser.
If you can type, then you can create a page or blog post without the need for a single line of code. If you want to try your hand at HTML, there is a built in editor, WordPress leaves the choice up to you. And relieves you of the task of building your website from scratch.
I use WordPress as an example because it is a highly advanced system that gives you access to features you would otherwise have to work very hard to implement yourself. Even in your beginniner’s phase, you can personalize your website with plugins and themes easily downloaded from within the software.
That’s how easy it is to make a website today. But there is just one small thing you should know. Read the next step to learn what that is.
Step 4 – Web Hosting
No matter what system you approach, when you learn how to make a website it boils down to two essential things. A domain name and web hosting. You cannot put up a website when either of them are missing. Without the domain name people won’t have a place to go, and without hosting they won’t have much to see once they get there.
When you learn how to make a website, this can be one of the more difficult areas to traverse. Why? Because there are lots and lots of companies blasting their sales pitch at you trying to get your hosting dollar. If they are the right host for making your website is another question alltogether.
So let’s look more closely at this final step in learning how to make a website.
As I have already said, there are many hosting companies to choose from. So are really well know, spending millions on Super Bowl ads. Does they mean they are the best? No, it just means they have money to spend. Others aren’t as well known and are equally less reliable, while others have built a name for being reliable and fair.
One trick I implement when I evaluate a new host is register for only one month. Why is this a trick? Think of it this way, if you’re learning how to make a website and you make the wrong decision, like picking an unreliable host, do you want to be stuck with them for a year?
This is something that I did when I was learning how to make my first website. It isn’t a pleasant feeling. And if you’re not careful and don’t pay attention, you may be slapped with another year. Before you panic, let me explain. Some web hosts, I call them unscrupulous companies, will renew your account for the same time period when it get close to expiring.
You’re now locked in to a new contract.
That is why I always register for the one month first. This may make you ineligible for some promotional offer for new users, but then wouldn’t you rather miss out on a few dollars savings than the alternative. Namely, paying for a service that doesn’t suite your needs to make a website.
Trust me, I have been through more than a few web hosts over the years, and this method of evaluation has saved me some money.
My current web host even allows you to evaluate their service for 45days for only one cent.
In conclusion, get a feel for the company before you buy server space from them. If you are truly serious about learning how to make a website, take your time at this step and do a little digging.
To Recap
Don’t underestimate how much competition there is on the web. Do some research and see if you can compete with the other websites in your niche. This is done by comparing how many websites there are for your main keyword by the number of searches performed for the same word each month. If the ratio is too high, pick another theme to learn how to make a website with.
Once you have your theme, register your domain name. Make sure to use your main keyword in the URL. This helps target your website to the theme and make it easier to rank. And that is the sign of success for any website, no matter if you’re making your first website or your 100th.
Coding would have been the third step only a couple of years ago. And don’t get me wrong, it is still a big part of the web today. But for you, in the beginning stages of learning how to build a website, it isn’t crucial.
There are so many opportunities that allow you to make a far more advanced website than if you learn how to code one from scratch. I mentioned one in this article, and while it has shown to be the most widely used, it is far from your only option.
And lastly, web hosting. Even though I run the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will say it again. Don’t jump into a contract for a long period of time with any host unless you’re certain they meet your needs. This part of learning how to make a website is probably the trickiest.
Steps to Starting Your Own Web Design Business
November 20, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Web Design is an exciting field for anyone with programming or graphic design skills to get into. It’s especially attractive because of the very low barrier to entry for people with a large amount of talent but not the same large amount of startup capital to start their own traditional business. Thanks to the constantly falling costs for the essentials of a web design business you can start your new career in an afternoon on the cheap.
The first thing you’ll need is your own web site on your own domain name. It seems obvious but you’d be surprised how many people either fail at this first critical step or make some bad choices along the way. Your own site will be used not only as a portfolio for any existing or future work but as a means for potential clients to contact you as well so it’s important to make a good first impression. A .com domain name only costs $10 on average so spend the money and pick a name that suits you and your business. Try and be professional but at the same time unique.
Once you have your domain name chosen and purchased you’ll need to find appropriate web hosting for not only your site but your clients as well. Again, it’s important to choose your web host wisely. There are many snake oil salesmen in this industry so you do not want to rush out and find the cheapest provider you can. For a few hundred dollars a year you can find a high quality host with lots of storage and bandwidth available.
The web host is without a doubt the single most important aspect of starting your new web design business. If you pick a host that is constantly having problems with uptime then you’ll eventually lose clients and work. That is why it’s so important to make the right decision now to avoid disaster later.
Once you purchased a domain name and found suitable hosting its time to put together your site to advertise your services. If you have previous examples of work you’ve done make sure you add them to your site. It’s important to only show the strongest pieces of your portfolio so if there are some designs or sites you’ve done in the past that you aren’t 100% proud of then leave them out. Only present your best work to potential web design clients. In addition to a portfolio, it’s critical to provide a working email address or contact form on your site so potential customers can contact you. It’s recommended that you include a phone number and postal address to help at legitimacy to your business.
Those are the three basic steps to launching a web design business. Once your site is up and running to advertise your skills and talents you need to start searching for new clients to keep the work coming in. Being a freelance web designer can be challenging but also incredibly rewarding for anyone with a passion for programming and design.
How To Build Up A Loyal Blog Clientele?
November 19, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
If you are a new creator of a blog page, there exist a number of things that you should do if you want to increase how many people actually visit your blog site. Several Internet users go to blog sites quite frequently and they ultimately decide how profitable a blog will actually become. When they have finally discovered a site that they really enjoy, Internet visitors will then subscribe to the blog and usually remain a loyal patron if they maintain a curiosity in the site.
In some instances, however, blogs do not maintain a very high rate of popularity and they often begin to decline in visitor numbers. Readers begin to unsubscribe from your blog and look for other sites that spark their curiosity and peak their interests. This can be a big problem for your Internet site because the amount of traffic flow to the blog will definitely determine how profitable you will be. There are a few ways that you can prevent readers from quitting your blog site, but you need to first realize the reasons why people do unsubscribe. There are many reasons why people might leave a web site, but there are a few that are much more common and frequent than others. The following reasons, if understood, will help you to stop readers from unsubscribing from your blog. Probably the most frequent concern that a blog site owner encounters is that there exists a never ending number of posts published on the site and it becomes confusing for people who visit it. A blog site should be well structured, simple, and easy to read, which will allow people to navigate easily and find out information that they are searching for.
If there are too many posts to sort through, then readers will become frustrated and leave your blog with hopes of finding a blog that is much easier to understand. If you want to surmount this specific dilemma, you need to also get rid of any writing that is negative or irrelevant to current events. As a blog designer, you have to keep feeding your target audience with information that is both exciting to read and very educational for everyone who visits your site. One of the most important aspect that blog creators need to remember is the importance of the blog’s texts and what is published on it. The quality and effectiveness of a web sites content will determine if the online business is recognized by large search engines and therefore increase its amount of traffic flow. There are a few techniques that web site designers can use to increase their popularity to both search engines and Internet users. Blog owners need to realize that the quality of texts on a blog site is crucial to its success.
If you want your blog to be promoted by search engines, web page writers should use certain key words that visitors use to search the Internet. The titles and subtitles of the blog posts should also be carefully written so that it will have a higher probability of being promoted by search engines.
How to Choose Affiliate Products to Promote
November 18, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Many people are making great incomes working form home using online affiliate marketing to sell other people’s products. The affiliate is paid a percentage of each sell of the products sold.
There are many important considerations when choosing affiliate programs to promote. Which products you choose to
promote may depend on your experience level. The guidelines in this article are directed to those who are new to internet marketing.
You will want to determine which types of products you want to promote. In the online world of Internet marketing this is referred to as niche marketing. Niches can be on just about any topic from business, to health and fitness, marketing, family and home, fun and entertainment and the lists goes on and on. There are literally thousands of great niches within each of the broader niches.
I recommend choosing a niche that you already have an interest in. It is very difficult to promote a product if you do not have passion about it. It should be something you have a great interest in and that you already know about. You can choose products to promote that you know nothing about but you will need to educate yourself about the products.
Once you have chosen a niche you have an interest in you much chose a product within that niche to promote. The best affiliate products to promote are the ones you have personally tried and found very beneficial to yourself. It is much easier to sale something you yourself are sold on. Your customers will appreciate it so much more if they can hear about your personal experience with the product. Let your customers know what they can expect and how the product will personally benefit them.
In choosing a worthwhile niche and products within that niche you need to do the market research to see if those products are in demand. Google has great tools to help you do your market research. You can use Google’s free keyword tool to assess how many people are looking for the product you want to promote. Go to Google.com/keyword tool. Enter the main keyword that describes the product you want to promote. You will see an approximate search volume for that keyword in the Google search engine for that month. You can see just how many people are searching for that type of product.
You can then go to google.com/trends to see how well that product has been doing over time. With some products you will see a high demand for the product around the time of its launch and then see the trend fall off. Other products will show more of a steady demand for the product. Other products show an upward graph as the demand for this product increases. You should promote products that are in increasing demand or are steady in demand.
There are many good affiliate networks you can choose from to promote affiliate products. Here is a list of the best places to find products to promote.
1. Clickbank.com
2. Paydot.com
3. Commissionjunction.com
4. Linkshare.com
You can go to any of these sites to sign up for a free account and join an affiliate program. You will find an endless supply of products to promote.
Many people make a very good living working from home promoting affiliate products. Remember to choose products you are interested in promoting. Then do your market research to see if there is a demand for these products.
How to Start An Online Paid Membership Site
Online paid membership sites are increasingly becoming popular because it provides a steady source of recurring revenues. A small amount of monthly membership fee quickly adds up to substantial income for you if you have a few hundred members. Once you set a successful membership site, you can copy the success formula and create several membership sites.
Membership sites are good for digital products in the form of ebooks, audios, and videos. It should be geared towards teaching something that your target market is hungry to learn and implement in their lives to solve problems related to money, health, and personal development.
The challenge then is to find customers and then provide them with such good value that they will retain their membership month after month and hopefully also recommend your site to others because you pay them a generous affiliate fee.
There are four main criteria you need to consider to achieve this and they are:
1. Your site must be in an established membership type market.
2. You must provide excellent value content or service
3. You need to use software that will password-protect your site so that non-paying members cannot get the content for free.
4. A marketing system to attract new subscribers and retain them once they sign up.
Criteria 1 – Your Membership-Site Market
In assessing your potential membership-site market, consider both online and off-line habits. Ask yourself whether people with an interest in this subject would buy monthly magazines, belong to a club or organization about it and perhaps whether there are books on the subject on Amazon’s best popular seller lists. Online, check if there are eBooks that sell well, blogs, forums or other on-line communities about this subject.
The topic must be popular enough to have many potential subscribers or you will be wasting your time. It is worth offering some free material, perhaps an ebook on your subject to see how many people have an interest it it. Another strategy to test your market is to set up a simple survey, asking what issues people have. You can offer free membership to your new site as an incentive for people to reply; the answers you receive will guide you as to what kind of concerns people have on this subject.
The information most in demand online is that which solves someone’s immediate problem, so it is worth considering whether your content or service solves just a one-time problem or whether there could be an ongoing or related issues that you can address.
An example of a one-off problem would perhaps be a remedy for snoring and for an ongoing problem, think of new parents, who have many worries and sleepless nights when their baby cries, perhaps in the middle of the night and there is no-one they can ask for advice. A membership site that contains suggested solutions for the numerous problems new parents face would be a valuable resource for them.
Criteria 2 – Quality Content
The four main types of content are: written, audio, video and web-based software solutions. Naturally, the media type you use will depend on your site topic as some will be more relevant than others. Most sites will include a significant percentage of written material as this is still the primary method of sharing information on the Internet, but audio recordings are increasing popular because people can download them and listen when they are walking, driving, exercising or away from their computer for any other reason.
Video content is preferred when the information you are providing is instructional; “how-to” in pictures or a video can make a process very easy to understand compared with following a written list of instructions.
Another situation where pictures are helpful is showing symptoms of something. For example, for the new parent site mentioned above, there could be photos of the types of spots or rashes a small child might have on their body if they have caught any of the various common childhood complaints such as measles, chickenpox or have been bitten by an insect.
There are many sources of good content apart from writing your own if you are qualified to do so. Your own material is obviously the cheapest, but will take the longest to prepare and you need to know enough about your topic to keep providing fresh material on a regular basis.
Use other people’s material by utilizing royalty free articles from article directories such as ezinearticles and free content sites, free to use videos from YouTube, metacafe.com or eHow.com or good quality PLR (private label rights).
Outsourcing is another option that will be less time-consuming although you will have costs for the ghost-writer or freelancer you contract to produce your work. Apart from the well-known elance and rentacoder, there are hundreds of other sources as a simple web search on “outsourcing” will reveal. If you plan to outsource on a regular basis, it is worth the time and effort to find a freelancer and develop a relationship with them, rather than going through a ghost-writing service provider.
Interviews with experts are something you can do yourself with basic equipment. Prepare a list of open-ended questions before the interview and send a copy to the person you will be interviewing two or three days beforehand. Any sooner and they might forget about it and any later doesn’t give them time to prepare.
The following are some suggestions for interview questions that will give an expert the opportunity to give you excellent material for your membership site:
1. What is so good about ………?
2. How did you get involved in ………?
3. What do you consider the top 3 things someone should know about ……?
4. What would you suggest would be the best way to get started?
5. How long would it take to be proficient at ……….?
An hour is a good length for a value interview but you may want to go longer and edit the script later. This is easily done even with a free audio editor such as audacity.
Criteria 3 – membership site software to protect your subscriber’s investment and save you time
If you can, invest in a specialized memberships-site software package or script. There are quite a number of good choices of varying prices, for example Membergate, Memberspeed, and Wordpress plugins like Wordpress Wishlist, Digital Access Pass (DAP), YourMember and aMember. The advantages of using one of these is that so many of the member functions are done automatically, for example:
1. Membership levels
2. Membership types
3. RSS Feed encryption so that non-paying members cannot access your content through the RSS feed
4. Sequential delivery so that someone cannot sign up and download all the material and then unsubscribe – the longer a person is a member, the more content they have access to
5. Payment gateways – preferably more than just Paypal
6. Training and Support
7. A good strong guarantee
Criteria 4 – Strategies for Recruiting and retaining members
1. Instead of focusing on trying to sell memberships, focus on how how one particular article of your content can solve a specific problem a person might have so that you are providing a solution to that problem and also giving one month’s membership to the site for free.
2. Use free advertising by writing and submitting articles and reports, posting on blogs and forums, make Squidoo lenses and Hubs.
3. Buy Pay per Click advertising and banner ads etc
4. List your membership site on Clickbank, Paydotcom etc
5. Email your list and if you don’t have one, form a joint venture partnership with someone who does and pay them a generous affiliate commission.
There are many other marketing tactics that have been written about at great length and can be found in a web search.
In summary, if you can address the four main criteria of using an established membership type market, providing premium value content, using appropriate membership software and attracting subscribers, a paid membership site can become a very profitable business model.
Visit Deepak Dutta’s web site to find out how to make money by internet. Start an online business and make more money using his free classifieds site.
Is Your Wordpress Blog A Google Magnet?
October 28, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
How can a robot determine whether an article is good or not? * You would check article for originality – not scraped from someone else
* The use of keywords – is the usage natural or are the stuffed?
* Keyword density – is it in a reasonable range?
Did you use related keywords, or did you use the same ones over and over – Latent Semantic Indexing
* How the keywords relate to the title
* Many other characteristics of the article – Who knows?
* Finally, how many people comment on your articles You should be striving to become an authority site. We want a site that has incoming links from other related high pagerank sites indicating that our site is trusted and recognized. One of the fastest ways to get quality incoming links and recognition from the search engines is to have many high quality, original articles that people have commented on. The dream is to get a discussion going on your site. This is where people use your article as a vehicle to “argue”, “debate”, “dispute” and “discuss” the pros and cons of what you have written. Here is a small list of things you can do to increase your number of comments: * Make a controversial post – Take a strong position. Try to create controversy. Get them commenting by being somewhat outrageous * Ask people to comment – The vast majority of people won’t comment, but asking them to comment does help. Ask some questions at the end of your post that invite people to express themselves. * Use Web 2.0 type promoting – Post your article on Digg, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Propeller and at least one to two other sites. You don’t have to be on all the sharing sites, but you will want to hit the influential ones, at least. Use an article submitting service such as SubmitYourArticle. You will find that it pays off pretty quickly. Your number of incoming, one-way links will increase over time. Be a friendly person and freely post comments on articles that you like – Experienced bloggers really appreciate it when you make an intelligent, non-spam comment on their blog. Many blog owners will make it a point to search out your blog and comment on your work. Within Wordpress, the blog owner can simply click on the commenter’s blog URL. It is pretty to reciprocate. In summary: Comments are very important in your success. Treat them with respect. Engender them and you will see your rank improve. Do you agree with the list above? What other ideas do you have? What have you found effective in increasing the number of comments your blog gets?
Richard Day at TrafficBumper.com has many tips to help you promote your website to the front page in search. Learn how to use search engine optimization and videos to get targeted traffic. Visit http://www.TrafficBumper.com Related article on how to get pagerank

