Creating your first website

Well, you want to start a website. At least play along, if you don't want to start a website wait until the end of my lens and see if you haven't changed your mind. The first step is coming up with an idea, before you can do any of the fun things like programming or making money off it you need to come up with a game plan. It took me about a week to come up with the idea for my website; I went through many other ideas such as a video game review site, a sports discussion site, a Collegehumor type of site (I'm currently a freshman in college), along with many others that I disqualified for a number of reasons. I came up with the idea for my site eventually after browsing many different websites to try to find ways to make money online, and then I decided that since there weren't many unbiased sources of information, I would start my own to provide the information I wanted to disperse. Once I had my idea, I started to draw up my game plan.

Congratulations, you have your awesome idea that will make you rich, end world hunger, make people laugh, or whatever your end goal is. The next step in the path is deciding what you want to use as your domain name.

Why don't you create your content then base a name off it afterwards you may be asking, and the answer is simple: you need to incorporate your name into your site. In order to get indexed by search engines eventually, you will need to have your keywords used in your content, but anyways more on that in the search engine section. I brain stormed ideas for my website's domain name for two days or so and then put them to the test, I went to GoDaddy.com to check what domain names were available (at the time I used GoDaddy to search because I intended to use them until hearing many negative experiences from webmasters, now I would use IXWebhosting instead).

Obviously the majority of the good domain names were already taken, dumbly enough my first attempt as "makemoneyonline.com", the odds of that being open are very slim to none. As you rifle through the various website names you will eventually think of modifications that don't change the meaning and may be open. I'm quite pleased with my selection of : www.easyonlinemoneymaking.com as it is easy to remember due to its' use of common words and it also happens to make a decent search term for Google.

Keep trying and eventually you will find a domain name that is perfect for you. This is where you will get varying advice; some people would say that now you have a domain name so you should register it to make sure nobody else beats you to it.

Personally, I believe that unless the $10 a year fee is totally trivial that there is no reason to do this as the webhosting company I use (link in middle of paragraph) will give you a free domain name for a year and then there is less hassle with trying to transfer it over from one provider to another, I like having my webhosting and domain registration on the same bill renewed on the same date once every two years.

To learn more about IX Webhosting and the other web hosting options check out my newest site, WebHosting Reviews and for more on IX Web Hosting check out IX Web Hosting Review.

**For an in-depth review of ThinkHost check out Think Host Reviews

Now you successfully have thought of the next great idea for a website, and you also have either come up with an available domain name or have already purchased it against my advice. That's a good start but now you are going to need to find a source for your content.

Many people when they are just starting out will just make editorial comments about whatever their topic is. This is great for blogging as everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but if I want information from a site I want to know that some serious research went into every piece of information listed on the website. This was my original problem with the other making money sites on the web was that they basically just found the companies that would pay them the highest to affiliate with them, and then left it at that.

www.easyonlinemoneymaking.com took well over 100 hours of research before I even purchased the webhosting/domain name on October 27, 2007. By this point I've spent approximately 200 hours just to get information on making websites as well as gathering all the information I can on sites that I will eventually link to in order to ensure their safety, privacy, and legitimacy. Research is the most important part of the whole web site creation process as far as I'm concerned because you will always go back and tweak the appearance and performance of a site as well as adding some keywords here and there, but you will rarely re-research a company, product, etc. unless it is a commonly used product. I cannot stress enough that market research is one of the most crucial aspects of starting a website, you need to find out who your base is, my base of support is any group of people with some spare time, 10 minutes a day for an extra $30 a month is appealing to many people.

Unless you have a truly unique idea that has never been done or anything like it (very unlikely) then you should check what your competition is doing. I wouldn't suggest trying to copy their content or advertising techniques, etc. because the purpose of creating your own website is to provide original content and to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. I'd say for every sub-page that goes on your site, 5 hours minimum of work should go into it in order to ensure quality content.

Congratulations you have next big idea, you have a domain name, you have the information to drive your content, so you are ready to start building your website.

There are many products out there to help you with web design such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. These are great if you feel like shelling out a bunch of money, I prefer to use a free WYSIWYG called Nvu to make the base for my website and then I edit the Html myself. Here's a link to the site if you want to try it,Nvu.

A WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) is a program that allows you to use a graphical interface to move around images, text, etc. while generating the HTML source code for you, it is a great way to create a first website and I'm quite pleased with Nvu as the price is just right :).

While creating the layout for your website keep in mind a few things: copyrights, keywords, and functionality.

Most images are copyrighted on the internet, so if you wish to use one contact the owner to see if you can, if you want to make a banner for your website just do a Google search, there's a million banner generators out there.

Keywords are an essential part of any website as you could have the best idea in the world, with the best information, that also brings world peace and ends hunger...yet it is useless unless people can find it. By introducing keywords into your content (try 3-7 per 100 words) you will make your website far easier to search for (more on this later).

Functionality is a thing that many people glance over, if your website is full of ads on all sides and the text is too small and it is purple text on a navy blue background, your website is not going to get anywhere. Many people will not use a website for more than a few seconds unless they feel that it is "professional"; www.easyonlinemoneymaking.com would not quite fit this description yet, leave comments/suggestions about my website if you'd like.

The webdesign aspect of the website is by far the most fun (depending on how you decide to advertise). It can be frustrating at first to have things not work the way you want and to realize that you've done dumb things (such as all the links on my website were absolute so they were pointing to my desktop when I published). I'm a rather practical person so I'm not the best one to critique website appearance, if something works then it's good enough for me.

There are plenty of good books out there to teach you proper web design skills, depending on how much you care about your website it may be worth the $20-30 to go pick one up. The main thing to remember is that you may be working, but it doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. If you get stressed out, watch some T.V. and go get some water, no need to be up until 4am because something isn't working properly.

As of today (11/6/07) I have changed the format of my site from a very simple looking one to a slightly more professional appearance. The new site is: Easyonlinemoneymaking, the old site is still available through this link as I have not deleted it from the server: Easyonlinemoneymaking. The difference between these two sites is quite clear, one is very simplistic and is not very functional. My first site was mostly created for self-justification to prove to myself that I could make a website in HTML without any issues. To convert formats took me less than two hours and the results are quite apparent. To create the second website I used SiteStudio, a service provided free by my webhosting company, IX Webhosting. I'm quite pleased with the results, the only issue you will notice when using a program such as SiteStudio is that it is more difficult to add scripts to your site. I took the html produced by SiteStudio and edited/published it with Nvu to include my Google Analytics script and my new AdSense ads. The key to success when you are trying to distribute information is trust. If your website looks unprofessional, the information you provide cannot be taken seriously. I'd highly suggest writing the "first draft" in HTML yourself just to learn the workings of the language, but to save time I'd use a program like SiteStudio to make your site look more professional later on.

**Recently created a lens specifically for the topic of webhosting, quite detailed feel free to check it out IXWebhosting Review.

Ok so now you have a domain name, and a website! Now you are at the point where you link them together, I will be using my experience with IXWebhosting as my point of reference, so things may be slightly different if you choose a different webhosting provider.

Now comes the time to choose a webhosting company, as I said above I prefer a webhosting company that gives you a package including a domain name. The two best options for a beginner are either GoDaddy.com or IX Webhosting.

They are both reasonably priced and allow you to register a domain name along with your webhosting plan. I've heard of many bad experiences with GoDaddy's customer service and supposedly their server downtime is bad by industry standards so I decided to pay a few cents a month more for a quality webhosting service (not to mention it came with a few hundred dollars of advertising services such as Google Adwords and Yahoo search credits).

There are many different companies out there so you will need to choose the one for you, but I must say that I couldn't possibly be more pleased with IX, $3.95 a month isn't bad at all (if I eat one less batch of pizza logs per month it is paid for).

Now you've chosen your webhosting provider. The next step is actually getting your website on the internet. After purchasing your plan it should be linked to your domain name which can then be edited.

If you used a program such as NVU your website is probably saved in XHTML format, I usually open it with Mozilla and save the page in html only format with the name "index" and extension ".htm". This can then be uploaded to your webhosting server with a FTP service, if you decide to use IX then simply go to file manager, click on the site's name, and upload "index.htm" and your page will be uploaded and applied.

Any images you use in your website should be stored in the /images/ folder or else they won't be accessible by people coming to your site.

Wow, you've successfully made a website and hosted it. That's far more than most people have done, first off give yourself a pat on the back. Ok, back to work, no more self-congratulating.

Your website is great and beautiful and everything you had ever hoped for, but now you are wondering how many people are actually seeing what you have to offer. There are many different things you can buy to monitor the in-out traffic from your website, but I see no reason to pay for it when the best on the web is free.

Google Analytics is a completely free service as are the webmaster tools, simply make a google account and sign up (I also use gmail for my business contacts so that I have a one-stop-shop). The only way to see how sucessful your website is at bringing in visitors is through a service such as this, you can see unique visitors, page views, conversion goals, etc. It also breaks down all of the page views into referral/direct traffic and shows what links from what sites are eventually leading to yours. This will become extremely important once you begin advertising.

Google Analytics works by adding a small java script into the bottom of your section. The script ads a small tracking cookie called an urchin to the computers to see where on your site they go after they get there.

I'm sure you've heard of it, Adsense. It is the main source of revenue for many of the non-commercial websites out there including my own. To see what it is, check out the top of my website's homepage (and yes, it would probably look better on the side rather than top) Home. The reason that it is so popular is that it is incredibly easy to use, the website provides the code and shows you how to implement it. The ads are contextual meaning they will scan the page and pick ads relevant to the content as provided by AdWords users. This is a great source of revenue for my site and is also what funds Squidoo to a large extent. To get more information about AdSense and see how I've implemented it check out my Advertising Page.

This is the part of making a website which is typically the least fun and most expensive, especially at first. If you can eventually establish name recognition congratulations, you're marketing campaign was genious. Most websites will settle for having a high ranking on a search engine or making more money in conversions than they pay out to advertising companies.

This is the phase I just entered on my website so I cannot say too much on the topic just yet, I do have a few suggestions however. The key to any websites success is it's "organic" ranking on search engines, this means the page placement for your site on search engines (not including sponsered links).

There are many ways to optimize your website by purchasing a search engine optimization (SEO) service. I settled for using a few free tools and my own knowledge and then submitted my website for free to ~40 search engines using submitexpress (search for search engine submissions, you'll get a few million hits).

If you decide to shell out money for pay per click advertising, be prepared to pay quite a bit of money unless you use a "PTC" generating pay per click such as ClixSense. This is quite a good service for those on a shoestring budget, the cost is only $.01 per unique visitor, obviously the trade off is quality of visits. I've heard conversion rates of 3-4% off of these visitors which would be truly incredible and save vast amounts of money, I haven't invested enough resources into it yet to see how it fares for my website.

There are also free ways of getting your website out simply by spoken word, it may have taken me hours to write the articles for this lens but hopefully there will be some users that decide to check out my website as a thank you, and if a few people a day visit a day it would be time well spent. Luckily I'm doing what I love by writing these articles anyways and hopefully they will help others.

More on my successes and failures with advertising to come in the future.

I recently discovered the magic of social bookmarking, thanks to StumbleUpon the traffic to my site has increased by leaps and bounds. I just created my account a few days back so as I get more data I will gladly share it.

It's been a few days since I last updated this lens and since then my site has been seeing much increased traffic, currently around 900 visitors a week which is better than I expected for my first month.

I've been advertising by various means, but mostly by just finding forums and getting my name out there. There are various ways to do this, you can either talk about your website directly which may be considered spam in some places, or take the approach I prefer. Most forums will allow you to use signatures to post links to sites, so I simply add a link to my site with a little blurb such as "(link) - Free information on making money online".

Using tracking software such as Google Analytics you can tell exactly what page your visitors came from, this is very convienient when seeing traffic from forums because you can see exactly what you were talking about that lead to a hit. Many times I am surprised as I will be talking about somethiing completely random yet somebody decides to check out my site.

I'd highly suggest using forums to increase traffic, just do not spam forums as you will most likely be banned and it will most likely not generate any result.

I'd just like to announce that as of today my first website has obtained a PageRank of 3 and some of my Squidoo articles have a PR of 4, I would've never guessed that I would achieve such results so quickly!

Well if you enjoyed my article there are multiple ways to say thanks, visit my website: www.easyonlinemoneymaking.com, visit my other lenses: Easy Online Money Making and The Online Butcher, or give my lens a nice ranking and link to me. Thank you for taking the time to read this article, I wish you success in your future web design endeavours.