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

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

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!

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!