Design My Own Website

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Creating your web site can be a tricky process. It is getting easier and easier today with more software available to you.  However, for many people they would rather do what they do best whether it’s being a dentist, a photographer, or a businessman.

My Tips For Getting Your website online quickly

For that reason it seem to still be cost effective for these folks to choose a web design company.  Unless you run a web-based business, you probably do not have web design experience within your company. Building your web site will take time and a little homework!

To create a web site for your business, follow these steps:

1. Establish your goals
2. Determine your budget
3. Pick a web design company (and usually with this a web hosting company)

Establish Your Goals

Before you begin looking for company to help you design and build your web site, take the time to understand the goals of your web site. This will be extremely important to help set expectations with the web design company you choose.  Web user psychology is very important when taking into account what you want your site to do.  Is the goal for users to buy?  To subscribe?  Or …?

In order to set your web site goals, ask yourself the following questions:

• Why do you want a web site?
• What do you want your users to do when they get to your website?
• Who is your target demographic?
• What is your industry?
• Who are your competitors?
• Do they already have web sites? If so, what do they look like?
• How soon do you want your web site?
• What happens if you never create a web site for your business?

For many businesses, the online web site presence is the last piece of the puzzle to success.

Take the time to answer each of the above questions and if you have time, write the answers down on a sheet of paper. These are the same questions most web design companies will ask you before they begin to create your site. If you have these questions answered up front, you will have some criteria for choosing the right web design company.

Determine Your Budget

How much do you want to spend on your web site. web sites can cost you anywhere from $100 to $100,000 depending upon what you want it to do. Know your spending constraints before you begin negotiating with design companies.

Check Out web design Companies:  Review their Portfolios

A well established web design company will have a solid portfolio of web sites that they have created for other clients. Ask for links to other site the design company has created and review each one. Do you like what you see? Do the sites have a style that appeals to you? In addition to reviewing web sites, ask for customer references. And remember, what you see and personally like MAY NOT be what is right for users coming to your site.  This has to be figured out in the section above as far as what you plan to do with the website.

Comparison Shop

Pricing for creating a web site can vary. Typically, web design companies will charge one of three ways:

• Time and materials: price is variable based on the actual number of hours spent working on your site.
• Fixed Price: some design companies will charge you a fixed fee based on a fixed set of requirements.
• A La Cart Pricing: some design companies will charge “by the page” or “by function”.  This can allow you as the web master to have some flexibility within your budget.

Lastly, get everything in writing.

And do not finalize the deal until you understand all of the costs up front. Also make sure that you understand what “done” means.

As an incentive for both parties, and to split the risk amongst both the designer and yourself, structure partial payments at certain milestones.

There are thousands of web designers across the country and they should all fight feverously for your business! If a web design company dismisses any of your questions regarding their design process, pricing, or client references, take your business elsewhere!  Good luck with designing your own website and building your website for online!

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In Making Money Blogging – Part 1, I discussed pay per click advertising companies (e.g. google adsense). In Making Money Blogging – Part 2, I discussed affiliate networks (e.g. commission junction).

In this blog, I will be explaining how you can get paid to write a blog for a specific company, or about a specific product (for example – you would be asked by a toothpaste company to write a blog about cool mint toothpaste). This is the primary way that most people will make money from their blogs – and it can be a fair bit of money as well (the top earners at blogitive & pay per post earn up to $US1000 per week – just form their blogs).

This sounds a difficult task to achieve (getting a company to ask you to write a blog about their products), and one would expect that you would need a very well know blog to achieve this – but in fact it is very easy, and you don’t need to have a “known blog” to be able to write for a specific company.

How do you go about this? Well – there are several blogging companies, that will accept an established blog* into their “network of bloggers”, and will send you different topics to blog about ,depending on the type of blog that you have (for example – you may have a shopping blog, and be asked to write about some new electronic equipment from Company Bravo).

*An established blog is based on a number of factors, which differ depending on the blogging network you choose. As an example – blogsvertise accept blogs that are 1 month old, blogitive accepts blogs that are 3 months old & have a certain amount of traffic – read more on the requirements below.

If you apply to a number of different blogging network companies, or have a number of different blogs – you can make a fair bit of money (for example – you may get 3 blogs at $5 each from blogitive, and another 5 blogs at $7 each from pay per post, and another blog from blogsvertise at $10) – so you have 9 blogs to write, and make $US 60 doing it).

The other good thing about applying to more than 1 network is that some of the networks require that you write 2 blogs in-between blogs for them. For example if you write one blogitive post, you need to write a further 2 non-blogitive posts before you can write another blogitive post. If you are also a member of pay per post, and blogsvertise, you could write one blogitive, one pay per post, one blogsvertise and then another blogitive post (which means all of your blogs for the day are paid). It takes a bit of juggling but can certainly be done.

The following companies offer paid blogging opportunities:

http://www.blogitive.com Blogitive have several opportunities for bloggers. You don’t need to say that the blog has been sponsored, and you don’t need to write nice things about the product (i.e. you can write that product x is awful and should never have been invented). You are generally paid $US5 per blog. Requirements are as follows: – Blog must be 3 months old – The Blog must receive (or can receive) some level of traffic – The blog must be indexed in the Google and Yahoo search engines. – The blogs must not contain violent, hate related content or be adult natured – The blogs must maintain a minimum of 3 posts per week – You must write 2 other blog posts in between paid blogitive blog posts – Blogs must be active for 1 year (but payments are made at the latest 1 week following the post) – The blogs must not be hosted on the following networks:- Writingup.com, Bloggerparty.com, Blogcharm.com, Clearblogs.com, Xeeks.com, Blogfeast.net, WordPress.com (blogs that use wordpress software but are hosted on individual url’s (e.g. http://www.shoppersclub.co.nz) are acceptable and Geocities.yahoo.com

http://www.payperpost.com Pay per post have probably the biggest range of opportunities on the market for bloggers today. You do need to notate that the blog has been sponsored, and you may be asked to write positively about a product. Payment is from $US4 to whatever the advertiser is willing to offer (e.g. $10, $15 etc..). The advertisers have more leeway at Pay per post, and can specify blogs to have a minimum page rank, traffic range etc (this is great for advertisers, but not so good for new blogs). Requirements are as follows: – You must be 18 or over to participate in Pay Per Post (and have a valid Tax ID if a resident of the United States) – Your blog must be at least 90 days old, verifiable by a third party index of the site – If over 90 days old, your blog must have at least 20 entries in the past 90 days. If just around 90 days old, your blog must have 20 pre-existing entries. – No blogs with gaps over 30 days (no entries posted for 30+ days) will be accepted. – Blogs must remain live for 30 days – you will be paid after 30 days. – You must write 2 other blogs in between a pay per post blog.

http://www.blogsvertise.com Due to being a newer blogging network, Blogsvertise currently have a limited number of opportunities for bloggers. However, they do tend to offer more money when they do offer blog posts (e.g. $US 7.50, $US 10.00). Requirements are as follows: – Blogs must be 30 days old – Blog entries must be permanent – You will be paid after 30 days (once the blogs have been verified). – Blogs must not be adult related – The blog posts are not required to be positive (i.e. you can negatively review a website or product) – You are not required to say that the blog has been sponsored

[http://www.creamaid.com] Creamaid is great in that there are NO requirements. Anyone & everyone can write a blog about any of the creamaid products. The advertiser (rather than the blogging network) will review your blog after your write and approve/disapprove it (I’ve never heard of one been disapproved yet – but I guess if you are writing very negatively about a product it may just be…).

As well as writing a full blog on a topic, you can also place text links on your blog (so you would place a text link at the bottom of your blog, or the sidebar of your blog, rather than writing an entire blog about the subject). The good thing about text links is that you set the price. If someone wants to advertise on your site, they will have to pay what you ask. If this suits your blog or yourself best, some networks to look at are: – http://www.text-link-ads.com – http://www.textlinkbrokers.com – http://www.linkadage.com

And… that my friends – are the most common paid blogging networks in the blogosphere today.

And… that is also the end to my Making Money Blogging Series – keep tuned for more money making opportunities.

Shirlene Moore

If Ya Want – Making Money Working from Home

Author: Shirlene Moore
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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I’m an entry level freelancer and am trying to figure out some rough pricing.

I get this question a lot. Web Design contracting is not that difficult. The “hardest” part is getting clients.

As far as charging, it really depends on the type of website and how much maintenance.

Web Design As A Contract Job Can Be A Good Source Of Income

If you’re looking to do just local ma-and-pa type shops and professional services (like dentists) and throwing up a brochure type site with nothing too fancy, I would say you could charge $20 a month for everything. Some months they will want a lot of work, some months they won’t need any work.

So you might want to try just one or two and see how many hours you spend on maintenance and then from there adjust your pricing depending on how much time you find spending on maintenance.

However, if you use WordPress, much of the maintenance can be done by the client. WordPress content management is easy to use.

I would say that the initial build of the site you could easily charge $500 for, especially for small brochure sites for professional services type clients: a dentist, chiropracter, physical therapist, etc. You could do $500 for a professional service site (WordPress) and then $10 to $20 a month for maintenance.

Good luck and have fun!

It really depends on the purpose of your site and your timeline – if it’s not overly complex, you can do it yourself. Otherwise you will have to get a professional.

This is by far my favorite web design resource “Web Design Mastery” which I talk about often on my own blog.

The first part of Web Design Mastery, “Planning your website” , is exactly what you’re looking for as far as designing your site. It will also give you some good info if you end up going with a professional so you can speak the same language and know what kinds of questions to ask.

The rest of the resource is helpful if you will build your own site, it won’t be much help if you go with a professional in which case I’d leave it up to you if it’s worth $67 to buy it. I’m sure the info is out there for free or cheaper but I pretty much use “web design Mastery” for a lot so I don’t know what else would be out there. If your timeline is pretty liberal and you are on a budget, definitely keep looking.

As far as tips and tricks: Web Usability is very important and I think it is often not thought about enough.

I did write a quick article on a few common Dos and Donts (based off of “Web Design Mastery”) .. it’s on my blog but here’s the quick version of the Don’ts (and it might be common sense except for the last one)

Don’t:
poor load time
poor browser compatibility (i.e. too complicated)
slow loading graphics
too many graphics
too many animations
busy distracting backgrounds
poor use of frames
too much advertising
large welcome banners (even your own!)
overuse of java
overuse of any technology for that matter
confusing layout and usability ****

This last one is tricky because even if your site is nice and clean it can still be confusing. As an example, if you go to a bunch of membership sites where you need to register for an account, you’ll know what I mean – some of them have very very easy to find “Register” or “Sign up Now” buttons, others are very hard to find. Usually these should be in the upper right. Most “function” buttons (login, logout, register, etc..) are found in the upper right.. Put them somewhere else and users conditioned to see htem in the upper right will be confused. Also, why use “Sign Up” (two words) when “Register” works just as well and lets the user think less.

Another example of “confusing” or “not confusing” layout: shopping cart buttons. Thanks to Amazon and some of the early and big stores, people have been conditioned to see a shopping cart and know to click on it to go to their cart. So the words “Your Cart” or “Go To Your Cart” will be confusing. Even though the design is clean, it can be confusing.

Hope this is helpful!

You can definitely do it yourself and pretty cheaply. Credit card transations is a bit more on the complicated side, PayPal is much easier, at least in the beginning.

1) Get a domain . I recommend godaddy.com

http://godaddy.com

2) Get a hosting account. I can recommend hostmonster:

http://designmyownwebsite.net/go/hostmonster.html

I’ve used a handful of webhosting companies and to be honest their support was the first that seemed to really be on top of things. Whichever hosting company you choose, I say go to the live chat at odd hours and ask presales questions and see what you think of the company. That is why I would pick hostmonster (even over the very popular hostgator)

Paypal makes it very easy to take credit card transactions online

3) Get a paypal account. You will see a “Merchant Services” tab and you can generate your own link and button and PayPal will give you the HTML to use

http://paypal.com

4) If you know HTML, you can design it on your own. Otherwise you can use WordPress to get yourself going quickly (and then use html and graphics skills to really spice up the site). WordPress is limiting if you want a lot of interaction with the user but it’s good for general layout ideas.

http://wordpress.com

There are actually some great HTML resources out there too. My personal favorite is Web Design Mastery because when I first bought it I was expecting to open up the book and learn HTML right away and instead the entire first book had NO HTML in it – all she talked about was what makes effective web design for marketing and usability – that was new to me and I really liked that approach

Good luck!

Web design and seo have a very grave relationship and one needs to be acquainted with both to make his/ her web portal both eye catching for the web users and easy for the search engines to index and rank. The emergence of professional SEO marketers has made it possible for virtually any web portal to feature in the top searches on the major search engines.

The best part is where you optimize your web portal without compromising on the attractiveness and design of the specific web portal. The very foremost concern is that you can never ignore the design faade of a web portal as it also holds imminent connotation. It will be wise on your part to make sure you are well versed with web design and SEO at the same time and invest in both of them because: – they can assist you in flaunting yourself at the top ranks in search engine result pages (SERP) when someone types in a particular keyword related to your trade.

It also makes certain that your online presence is expanded to an unprecedented level and quality, organic traffic is drove on to your web portal in huge volume. This will also incessantly generate business specific leads and in no time your sales will reach a new high. This should also go as a relief, if you are involved in pay per clicks and other PPC programs. The guaranteed high ROI (Return on Investment) should motivate you to take up web design and SEO to a completely new level. Web design of your site should not pose a hindrance in the way of search engine optimization.

Those business entities that have a powerful and resourceful web site of their own; you should be very likely to fix it with actual personalized contented and not taking into account the design hindrance that comes in your way. Even if you have allowed your web site to take care of the more accessible genus of the World Wide Web, it should still possibly be created as a thoughtful and recognizable expansion of one’s enterprise. The explanations for doing so will be authorized, and cannot only just be unnoticed for the sake of achieving an initial time alignment.

Mark the words Web design is as essential to a business as seo is. The primary backbone about search engine optimization can be augmented with SEO friendly web design (exclusion of flash, etc) and the web site will be designed in such a manner that search engine crawlers can optimize the web portal with utter ease. And, you may not be alone amid those that have that sad thought-If I do this all Search engine optimization collectively and attain major ranking generally; people might deem that my site is consequently stale and unexciting.

This is an altogether wrong notion harboring in many a mind right now. Whether you are a fortune 500 company or a recent start up SEO can give your business the much needed online presence and proper web design will help you connect with your customers.

Mr. Pankaj is a SEO expert, providing SEO Services India and lot more. He came from a technical background. He did MCA from a reputed institution in India. After just one year and great success in the role, Pankaj was promoted to SEO Manager (Operations). He is passionate about internet marketing technology and love to spend the valuable time to research and operate SEO operations Team. Explore SEO Plan.

Author: Pankaj Kumar Singh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Search Engine Optimization, or seo, is a relatively new concept in the world of web design, but if you want a successful, profitable website, it’s something you cannot ignore. Competition for rankings on popular search engines like Google is fierce, and without SEO, your website is at a huge disadvantage. So when exactly, in the process of setting up your new website, should you seek an SEO specialist? The short answer: the sooner the better.

Ideally, you should consult with an seo expert before you meet with your web designer, since your idea or vision of what you want in your website might not be seo friendly at all. For example, a flashy site with lots of sound and graphics does nothing for improving your rankings on the search engines. Reviewing the basics with an seo company early on can save you endless heartache and expense down the road.

The next step – when presenting your ideas to a designer, you should also include your seo expert. If it is not feasible to all meet in person, a phone conference can easily be arranged. Some designers might try to convince you that they are SEO knowledgeable, but it is truly better to hire a separate company to handle SEO matters, as it is very unlikely that web designers have the time to stay up to date on the constantly changing details of the seo world.

A good way to proceed with the design is to arrange in advance points at which your seo expert will check back on the website’s progress. That way, you are ensuring that your site is seo friendly at each stage of the game, and you avoid wasting time and money by having your designer re-design parts of your site later on.

Finally, make sure your seo expert is involved in the final review process before you seal the deal. Corrections are often much more expensive when done after the site is launched.

By involving an SEO expert from the start of your web design, you are giving your site a huge advantage of being optimized from day one, which of course, exponentially increases your chances for profit and success.

NewSunSEO : Internet Marketing NYC

http://NewSunSEO.com

NewSunSEO develops and utilizes search engine optimization strategies that result in top placements. With extensive knowledge about the underlying structure of search engines, we help your website gain exposure, added traffic and more business. NewSunSEO uses the top current technologies with highly effective, ethical methods that are proven to work continually.

Visit our Blog to read, comment, and/or ask questions about Internet Marketing at

[http://SEO-Blog.NewSunSEO.com]

Written by Terri Polk at NewSunSEO, Inc.

Author: Terri Polk
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Android apps

A common question that comes up:

“What’s the difference between web design and graphic design?”

The answer:

Graphic Design tends to be with layout, with print, or has to do with logos. It has to do a bit with spatial design. Web Design is the same.

The main difference (and it’s a big one!!!) is the user psychology is different.

Someone looking at a can of coke has a different psychology than someone looking at a website. Web user psychology is a whole different ballgame people.

A great analogy of user psychology I like to reference which helps people “get it” is road rage. You could be the sweetest person in the world, but you get behind a car and some M’F'er cuts you off and you are a sailor’s worst nightmare. Something about cars. Something about the isolation. About being anonymous.

Being behind a computer is the same. There is a whole different psychology there. People expect to find things quickly (and more often than not for free too!).

That being said, Web Usability is a huge huge topic that requires a lot of research and studying if you want to be a really good web designer. There are equations, math, and psychology all involved.

However, if you want some light (and fun!) reading, the very best reference I can recommend is “Web Pages That Suck“.

They take a look at actual sites that are designed poorly and explain WHY they are designed poorly. And sometimes it’s quite humorous. Sometimes it’s humorous especially if you’ve been a web developer for some time because you KNOW you’ve committed these same errors!

This is a really fantastic series of books. I can’t recommend it enough. If you have a web designer friend, this is the perfect book. It’s a great combination of humor and a lot of great web usability/web psychology lessons all rolled into a nice big colorful book! Go check it out!

GO CHECK OUT “Web Pages That Suck” !! 

GO CHECK OUT “SON OF Web Pages That Suck” !!