Making a Website

Making a website isn't difficult - once you know how! But where do you start?

Do you want to build a Website, personal or business, and are looking for clear and comprehensive "how to" guidance?

Here you will discover easy to understand, step by step website making courses, articles and tutorials designed especially for beginners, that show you how to make your own website.

6 Steps to Build a Web Site
There are 6 main steps involved in making a website:

1. Plan the site
# Why do I want a website?
# Will I need to update the site frequently?
# Will I sell products from the website?
# Will I use the website to attract new customers?
# Will the website simply be a brochure for the company?
# What will my website visitors expect to see?
# Will I have private parts of the site?
# Will I publish a newsletter?
# How much am I prepared to pay?
# Will I be doing it myself?
2. Decide on the type of hosting and domain names
Choosing a website host, website hosting provider or hosting package from the many thousands of companies offering website hosting packages can be extremely confusing.

The object is not to choose the cheapest, or the one with the most features, but the one you need. Most providers bundle basic web hosting with a variety of web services like email, newsletters, databases etc and combine them into packages or hosting plans.

The choice really becomes one of choosing the most appropriate package for your present and future needs. You should always prefer a provider that allows you to upgrade the package seamlessly (i.e. with no disruption)

In general, hosting providers provide several service package levels e.g.

* Basic
* Business
* Professional
* Ecommerce (i.e. a shop).

Every website has a domain name. Choosing a domain name is one of the first steps in establishing a website. However deciding on the domain name requires that you understand the basics.

Some websites have unique domain names while others share them with other websites. The domain name identifies your website on the Internet and looks something like this www.mywebsite.com.

3. Design and build the Site- See Website Design
There are several aspects to website design. The main ones you need to decide on are:

* Website Fonts - You will need to standardize on a Font type and size.
* Website Logo
* Website Layout
* Use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
* Website Navigation

4. Promote the Site- See Website Promotion
Here is a quick guide to the online Website promotion options that will help you decide which ones are best for you:

1. Search Engines
2. PPC (Pay Per Click)
3. Article Promotion
4. Feeder Sites
5. Blogging
6. RSS feeds
7. Email Marketing -Newsletters and Newsletter/Ezine advertising
8. Link Exchange
9. Banner advertising

5. Monetize- Even personal websites can make money for the site owner. The various methods available are covered in making money with websites.
Are you looking for ways of making money with your website, or are you thinking of building a website to earn a little extra online income?

If so then you may want answers to some of these common questions:

* Do you use affiliate programs?
* Do you use Google Adsense?
* Do you need a shopping cart?
* What are resale rights?
* Do you really need a website?
* Do you ...... ????

and............


* How Do you get a website?
* How much do websites cost?
* How Do you use affiliate programs?
* How Do you use Google Adsense?
* How Do you ..........???

I will do my best to provide answers to these and other questions on how to monetize your website.
Web Site Monetization Methods ?

There are many different ways of making money from a web site. However the two principle ways are:

* Affiliate Programs
* PPC advertising i.e. Google Adwords


Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs were up until recently (2004) the number 1 way web site owners started to make money with their websites. Although affiliate programs can be very lucrative they are not the easiest method to use for beginners.
Contextual Advertising i.e. Google Adsense

Contextual Advertising (Google Adsense) is by far the easiest method for website owners to begin to monetize their website. It is the easiest because all you need to do is to paste a small bit of code (Google provide it) into your web pages and Voila-it's done.

There is no code to update, no special offers to promote; you just keep writing web pages and include the Google code. You don't need to monitor multiple affiliate programs and cash lots of small checks. You just get a single check from Google.

Not only does Contextual Advertising generate revenue for the website owner it also provides valuable resources for the website visitor, as the adverts are target adverts that relate to the web page content ( so called contextual ads).

So if you haven't already started with Contextual Advertising then your letting money slip through your fingers and denying you are visitors access to related resources.

However they are not the only possibilities, Money making Methods has even more that are used and that should be considered.

6. Monitor and Maintain the Site