How to Design My Own Website

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!

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!