How to Design My Own Website

Just a quick word out to you all.

I have been busy with website projects (fancy that) but I still plan to be back here soon with more interesting things. I think the most difficult is trying to figure out where to start. There is so much to talk about and so many different levels (I am guessing) of people coming in here. I almost want to just start from scratch and then go from there.

So with that said, what I hope to come back to soon -the basic steps of designing your own website. For now I am going to take a generic approach because there are so many reasons people are designing a website.

It can really be divided into two categories
1) Personal
2) Business

(And of course there’s quite a bit of overlap)

Personal I will say is generally a person, couple, or group writing about themselves, their life, or their experience.

Business I will say is generally a business (fancy that) wanting to sell a product or rather fulfill a need.

Personal can take many forms from a blog (like this), to a forum, to some other interactive site.

Business can also be a forum, interactive site, providing of services, providing of products, etc.

The design you take for each of those sites will vary greatly, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say most of the people coming here are for personal sites OR small online business sites which may overlap quite a bit with personal sites.

So what is the next thing?

1) Figure out the purpose of your site
2) Figure out how you would like to accomplish that
3) Go to other sites you like that may do something similar and get ideas for colors and designs
4) Pick a domain name (VERY IMPORTANT) and register it
5) Get a hosting company. With few exceptions I always recommend a paid hosting company. Free hosting or free blogging sites have their place, but in general hosting is so cheap these days ($5 a month!) that if you really are dedicating time to this, I’d say pony up the money – not only will you get a better product but in your mind you will be that much more committed (very important!!)

From there, you can go two ways
1) Design your site from scratch
2) Modify someone else’s site to be your site

I prefer the second – I don’t want to build my own car. I want to buy a new one (or even used one) and then customize and modify it for me (better wheels, nice stereo, and fuzzy dice!). This means you will have a combination of two things to look at

Fortunately there are so many ways to go about this. You can easily find many templates out there (I’ll point you to some when I go into more detail about this). At the same time you can build up some paintshop or photoshop skills to help with graphic design. You can also learn HTML, CSS, etc. to work on look and feel.

Okay, that’s the general direction. I’ll go into more detail on those steps in the next few weeks. Until then!

Hello, Scotty here.

I’ve been away for a bit. I apologize. I’ve had a busy time of it recently.

I want to put some actual real-life examples here soon (with video) of designing an online web site business from scratch from getting a domain to getting the site up and running. Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, I just wanted to write a simple article on getting a business online and what it takes. In this internet age it is very easy to think about getting an online business and you may have the right attitude, guts, and time, but just don’t know how to focus it.

When beginning a home enterprise there are such a lot of things that cross an individual’s mind.

One of the toughest issues in beginning a home-based business is the person themselves. Beginning a home based enterprise can be frightening because there’s such a lot that goes into it. A home run enterprise isn’t something that you can pick up and start doing without having quite a bit of resource whether that is money, time, knowledge, etc.

The money aspect strikes fear in the minds of many we all stress about cash even if we have got a thriving company. Without knowing where that money is going can be even scarier. We ask ourselves so many questions when beginning a home business. What quantity of money will I need? How many hours will I have make a contribution to this business? Will I be successful? How long can I do this for? Am I smart enough to tug this off? Will someone help me?

Accept it or not, if you’ve got the right perspective you may have all these questions dealt with and be satisfied in virtually no time.

The base cost for starting an online business is actually quite cheap: $1 a month for a domain name, $5 a month for hosting, and then time to find a product, design your site, and market your site (all of which can actually be done for FREE though you can speed up the process spending some money as well).

That’s a total of $6 a month to actually get an online business.

The rest of it is patience, faith, time, dedication, and guts (and a lot of those overlap).

We’re talking about taking time to
1) choose a product to sell (affiliate, your own, etc),
2) design your own website using templates or from scratch.

By the way for templates, I cannot recommend highly enough that you use Wordpress. For from scratch, check out my favorite resource: Web Design Mastesry.

3) Marketing your website.

And there are many MANY MANY ways to market a website, and lots of debate on which are the best. It’s not that they are all bad, it’s that they are all quite good and when you have limited time you want to naturally try the “best” way … becuase all of them might take some time. Some take some money, some are free (but take even more time).

4) fulfillment

I started a t-shirt company that actually did quite well. I stopped doing it because I didn’t like storing all the t-shirts (took up too much room dedicated to my comic book art and statues). But fulfilling orders can be tough. In this case a better idea would be drop shipping, affiliate marketing, or some other online asset.

It’s been said that 9 out of 10 businesses fail. I would agree. Some of it is money,but a lot of it is persistence. Online businesses is the best example as it takes money out of the equation (drop two Starbucks a month and you have your site) and really relies on persistence.

Is it hard?

Sure … but if you are willing to gut it through and enjoy the process, there is no reason you won’t succeed.

I suppose this is more of a pep talk then a technically enlightening post but I hope it helps. Sometimes I write these types of things for me too to remind me to continue to persist as well!

Take care!
Scotty

Just finished your first website? So it is the time to have a look for some hosting and make a choise. Your first question doubtless will be whether to select free or paid hosting service.

Let’s take a look at some benefits and downsides of these solutions.

Free website hosting :
( + ) It’s absolutely free. You do not want to pay for web site name.
( – ) Your URL will be something similar to username.freehost.com or freehost.com / user name. Even though you save the cost of paying for a domain, if you move your site to another supplier in the future you can lose some or all of your organic search engine traffic. There are ways around that and to fix that, but it can be convoluted depending on how your site is built out
( – ) Your supplier will doubtless include advertisements to your pages – customarily one or two banners, infrequently popup windows. If you intend to use banner exchange on your website read conscientiously their T&Cs. Some free hosts doesn’t permit it.
( – ) a large amount of free hosts can change their Terms and Conditions with little to no warning
( – ) Sometimes the free hosts cancel their free service and longer offer paid hosting only. In this situation you have only two choises – pay them or loose your internet site.

Paid website hosting :
( + ) You can host your own domain. If you make a decision to change the website hosting supplier in the future, you simply transfer the domain to the new supplier and do not loose your traffic.
( + ) Most paid hosts offer twenty-four / seven support thru email or live discuss and many of them provide toll-free telephone support.
( + ) you should expect better uptime then on free host. Some paid hosts offer uptime guarantee. In other words, you get what you pay for.
( – ) Paid hosting cost cash ) Before you make the call if select free or paid host you must answer this question : how large ambitions have I got with my website? If you’re beginning small private page for your friends consist of some *.html files then a free host will be adequate. In case you intend to run significant business site, need PHP, database and do not need adverts on the site I like to recommend to have a look for quality paid host.

But really how much is paid hosting? If you prepay a year in advance it can be as little as $4 a month! That is basically giving up, say, one Starbucks latte a month!

I honestly do not know why people would go for free webhosting when there are so many advantages to paid webhosting and yet I see questions on this all the time at the various forums and answer sites – what is the best free web host, etc..etc. I can see using a free webhost for a blog (like blogger.com or wordpress.com) but other than that, I don’t really see the benefit of free webhosting.

Check out some great webhosting companies here:
http://witchwebhost.com/likes/hostgator.html
http://witchwebhost.com/likes/hostrocket.html
http://witchwebhost.com/likes/inmotion.html
http://witchwebhost.com/likes/webhostingbuzz.html

Coming soon: more on dedicated vs reseller vs “regular” web hosting.

Kind of a “bane of my existence” for many online entrepreneurs. This question happened to come from someone running a dating website. The question was on http://answers.yahoo.com (where I seem to be hanging out a lot). Here was my answer for him which he chose as the best answer:

You didn’t post a link to your website so I couldn’t take a look, but people who come to your website probably are not interested in clicking on your ads. One thing about adsense is people know they are ads and maybe they’re more interested in dating and meeting people.

I’d suggest finding a few products you can sell (affiliates products) that may be of interest to your users. Something about how to pick up women, etc.. etc..

Also find ways to market your site for free without paying adwords because than you can get organic traffic instead of adwords traffic. There are a lot of resources for this. Search for how to generate backlinks… examples like
1) submit articles to article directories with link back to site
2) answer dating questions on answers.yahoo.com with link to site (if applicable, don’t want to get banned)
3) social bookmarking
4) if you have a for pay product (like a membership), create a generous affiliate program
5) hold some sort of event for your forum users, maybe local events? And advertise it in the events section on craigslist

Those were some of the ideas I posted to him.

The thing with adsense is you need to have a site where people will want to click on the ads. In this case, a relationship site, you have an end product. Why would people want to click away from a relationship site? They want to find a relationship. The only reason they would buy something is something that will increase the likelihood of them getting a relationship such as a membership fee with increased features (ala classmates.com) or possibly an ebook, something about now that you have a successful first date, what do you do next?

People do definitely click on the ads though – as this online businessman found out because he definitely was getting the clicks (and paying for it), but then trying to make money on adsense alone from that would be very tough.

If you are going for adwords, make sure you have a sellable end product and not just an adsense site.

Good luck!

Hello, Scotty here ..

Yes, the title of this article really is Web Design: Here’s All You Need To Know. Do I mean that? Well, let’s say after reading this you actually may never come back to my site again. Or else you may come back often. Should be interesting to see, eh?

Okay, for the impatient people:

For you impatient people who just want to be told how to design your own website, here’s the course to pick up now. It’s called Web Design Mastery by Shelley Lowery (the woman I refer to as my “coach”). Seriously this course is pretty much the foundation of my effective web design knowledge.

Click here and check out Web Design Mastery by Shelley Lowery

“Web Design Mastery” is fifteen ebooks (plus a lot of other bonsues). It is a complete reference. Pretty much all you need to know. So go check it out now.

Okay, now that being said,

When I created this website I wanted to help share my thoughts on effective web design. I wanted it to be a beacon to anyone who has ever asked themselves: “How do I design my own website?”.

Why do this?

Well, partially just so I could design another website (haha ..I’m addicted). Also to teach, and also to learn. And mostly because I believe in karma and abundance – there is more than enough for everyone if we share and good karma is reciprocated by the universe.

Okay, so what’s the story with “Web Design Mastery”?

Well, here’s my story. It’s not too long because I did my best to cut out all the dull parts and just get to the meat of things.

I basically started just like I imagine most people do – as a serious web user. I love the internet. And then like most people you wonder if you can put up your own website too. You give it your first shot – and no matter how obnoxious it looks, no matter how many blinking color texts you put in, it’s simply AWESOME because you have put up a website!

Moving on, you start seeing so many websites up – they are fancy – and they are cool. And so you start thinking more about website design because 1) you want a side income, 2) you want to learn something new, 3) you just want to build something, or 4) all of the above (that was me!)

Next thing that happens, you google around how to create your own website and want to know what to learn. Most people will say and most of what I found:

1) Learn HTML
2) Learn CSS
3) Learn Javascript
4) Learn a programming language (Perl, PHP, etc..)
5) Learn some databases maybe
6) Find free scripts (javascript, PHP, Perl, etc)

So I actually did learn a lot of that.

And it really didn’t do me much good. I was putting a few websites out, but I had a few issues. First they always just seemed to lack some sort of zip. And second, and most important, they just never really got anywhere. If it was a forum, it never got the traffic to build it up. If it was a business, I couldn’t convert many sales or just could not get the traffic.

I was lost …

I tried to do even more research – and eventually realized there was just TOO MUCH to learn. You know that phrase there is more than one way to skin a cat? Well, there are more than 10 ways to put up a website and more than 100 ways to try to generate traffic. And … And….

Yeah, the more I learned, the more overwhelmed I got till I pretty much was going to just give up.

A friend of mine, a very talented photographer friend, pointed out that maybe it was like photography. Photography may seem kind of easy just to look under one umbrella, but it really was very specialized. Depending on what you wanted to photograph, at what distance, if they were action or stills, there was a lot of different technique involved AND a lot of different equipment to use.

And that was my “A-HA” moment

Web design is often looped under one umbrellla and it REALLY SHOULD NOT BE. Web Design is a complicated beast with so many approaches and so many technologies, and realizing that made me realize that I should learn the different techniques for different websites and different types of customers.

At that point, I realized I could use a coach – someone who’s course, e-course, video course, or ebook course I could identify with and more importantly could learn from. And after another year or so and $500+ spent that is when I eventually found “Web Design Mastery”:

Click here for Web Design Mastery

Mostly what caught my eye was that the course seemed to cover everything about web design – not just technical aspects but also non-technical (read: Marketing and Search Engine Optimization) parts of web design. Not to mention I liked that each major subject was a separate ebook. No more sifting through 300+ pages of material to find something. (See below – this is the “Web Design Mastery” set of ebooks)

So after buying the books, I was ready to go. The first book was “1_preparation.pdf”. (see pic above, those are the “Web Design Mastery” ebooks). To be honest, I almost skipped it. I figured it was going to be a basic tutorial on HTML or some such thing. Since I already knew HTML and already had created a website or two, I figured I could skip the preparation ebook.

However, I reminded myself that I was student now – I was looking for a coach to tell me what to do – no questions asked. So I resigned myself to read the first book first.

And what happened?

Well, that first ebook itself was … well, let’s put it this way:

That first book was a complete gift of information on effective web design. Things I hadn’t thought about. DOs, DONTs, questions you need to answer first before you even think about designing a web page. It sounded just like my friend: you have to know what you’re going to photograph before you figure out how to go about it and what kind of equipment to use.

Seriously this was my “A-HA” moment.

I actually read the first book quite a few times, eventually making it to the rest of her ebooks – some of the later info I had already known but it felt like learning it again for the first time simply because NOW I HAD THE PROPER CONTEXT IN WHICH TO LEARN!! that context being EFFECTIVE WEB DESIGN!

And the rest they say is history.

I’ll mention it again: “Web Design Mastery” is definitely a complete reference to the point where this is why I said maybe after getting it you might not need this website anymore. It covers technical, it covers marketing, it covers how to make money, it really covers a lot. But most importantly it covers what effective web design is, and that doesn’t change even if the technologies do. And that’s why I refer to these books as the basis of what I know about effective web design today.

Just remember to read the first book FIRST

Until next time then? (or maybe not? )

Click Here For Web Design Mastery – A Complete Web Design Reference

Hello, Scotty here!

So I talked a bit about me in the first post, now it’s time to talk about you.

If you came here, hopefully you didn’t just stumble on here randomly (and if you did, well.. welcome!). But you came here in search of something and it’s probably because you’re intersested in making your own website.

There are definitely steps to it. It was definitely overwhelming for me trying to design a webiste because I had no idea where to start, and it wasn’t for a lack of looking on the web to get ideas on how to make a website or build a website. I think there was just too much information and as much as I could learn how to draw tables in HTML, my learning didn’t really give me a clear cut way of how to build a website and furthermore get it out there for people to see.

Eventually I found some great resources and a coach – and that definitely was a moment of glory for me (really a moment of “HOLY CRAP! You mean all these years I should have been thinking about THIS?”).

I think most people out there (esp. when you read forums and answer websites) think that getting into web design is just about learning, learning, learning . And it really is so much more – and here’s my special list of knowledge to gain:

1) learn sufficient technical skills (you don’t need to learn all of them)
2) learn about marketing
3) learn about user psychology
4) learn about getting traffic
5) and, if it pertains to you, learn systems about making money

Learning to put these things together is what I would call web design – or more accurately effective web site design..

That’t the key word so I’ll repeat it again

Effecctive Web Site Design

That’s all for now, a bit short on time but I have a bunch more for next time! Till then!

Just a quick “Hello World” to you all.

Scotty here.. and Welcome to my web site.

My hope is here I can share my experience learning to design my own websitesand pass along some tips and tricks to you so you can create your own website – and much more!

Though I’ve been a longtime user of the internet, my web design really didn’t start standing out until a few years ago. I had tinkered around a lot but with the economy I started really focusing in on my website design. At first I was a bit fearful that it would stop being fun, but after I figured out how to actually do effective website design to make great web pages, it became quite fun (and fortunately made me a bit of money too!)

I’m looking forward to building out this site. I am hoping to share some great tips with you about web pages
and I am positive I’ll learn something myself in the process.

Thanks for coming!