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Building a web site isn't something that is really cut and dry. There's
a huge variety of products and services that can either help you get
your web site where you want it or simply confuse you.
It's also
important that you make the right choices upfront so that you don't end
up having to restructure your whole web site because of some problem in
your design layout.
The level of time investment neccessary for mastery
in a lot of these software packages can range from little to a VERY
significant amount. Because of this I feel it's important to be led in
the "right" direction to make sure you don't spend time in the wrong
areas, or learning some software that might not be all that useful for
you later on.
Where you should start greatly depends on what you plan on attempting
to do, and how deep you're going to dive in. For a moderately
professional, clean looking web site without a lot of automation or
intensive animated graphics you can probably get by with some basic
knowledge of html, ability with a good WYSIWYG editor, and an image
editting program.
On the other hand, if you're someone that's looking
to build something that will really wow your audience then you might
consider spending some major time and developing some animation skills
with a program like Macromedia Flash. I personally always spring for
what I believe will bring me the greatest amount of profit with a
minimal amount of effort, and because of this I usually end up spending
all of my time diving in deeper with ONLY my WYSIWYG HTML editor, and
my image editor.
What is a "WYSIWYG" editor?
A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor is what allows you
to get by with minimal knowledge of HTML. Yes, that means you don't
have to know EVERYTHING about HTML to have a decent looking website.
When you use a WYSIWYG editor it interprets what you're doing
(inserting an image for example) as being a certain series of HTML tags
with attributes, and does it for you...
Thus, what you see on your
screen is what you get. Instead of seeing a bunch of HTML code in text
format, you'll mostly see what will actually show up in your browser
once your web site is up WHILE you're making it. I highly recommend
using the latest version of dreamweaver -- it is well-known as one of
the best HTML editors by general consensus. Dreamweaver's interface is
very friendly, has a built in FTP client, and is specifically built to
be flexible enough to suit both the coder and the everyday amatuer
webmaster.
Image editing? What do I need that for?
Okay, let's be realistic here: If you're going to make a professional
*appearing* web site it's important that you can make some basic,
decent looking graphics.
There's a lot of graphics problems that can
truly get the job done, but as far as power and flexibility goes I
recommend Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop definitely takes some time
getting used to, but in the end it's VERY rewarding. I've ended up
using my knowledge of Photoshop to make not only graphics for multiple
web sites, but also touched up portraits, made business cards, flyers,
and other online advertisments such as banners. Infact, I've used it
for everything except animation...
But it also comes with Adobe
Imageready which is very good with animation. This software is amazing,
and if you're going to learn ANY image editing software I recommend you
start with Photoshop because of it's widerange of overall...
usefulness!
Let's get me some sales!
Kick off your new web site you've gotten up from your knowledge of
webmastering and image editing with a few new sales... Sounds like a
plan? Well a great way to do that quickly is with pay-per-click
advertising. BUT WAIT! Doesn't that cost money?
Well... Yes. But with
the tools brought to us by some of the biggest pay-per-click
advertisers out there we should be able to make a good evaluation of
how much profit we're going to make without much investment upfront.
The big question behind pay-per-click advertising is whether or not
it's worth the cash when you can simply get traffic from regular search
engine ranking (otherwise known as organic traffic). Afterall, there
are plenty of companies out there that promise to help get you all the
traffic you need through optimizing your web site for organic ranking.
The answer to this question is quite simple: profit is profit. Through
conversion tracking tools such as those offered by Yahoo! Search
Marketing and Google Adwords anyone can calculate exactly what their
profit is after cost of PPC advertising is taken out.
In my opinion,
Google Adwords has the most user-friendly interface among the PPC
advertisers. Google Adword's interface makes it very easy to see which
keywords are pulling you in the most sales, and which ones aren't even
worth your advertising money.
Let us not forget, however, that in order to make those conversions
we're going to be needing a shopping cart! There's a lot of diverse
software packages out there you can use with success. Nothing's a better
bargain than free, eh?
Once you've scored a few sales it would probably be a good idea to
start using some kind of lead management service. I highly recommend
the use of autoresponders for this purpose. Autoresponders are,
essentially, a newsletter sign-up that allows you to strategically
determine what you want to send each lead after a certain alotted
amount of time. For example, let's say someone visits your web site and
you offer them a free newsletter. If you were selling an ebook on some
very complicated topic, you might consider sending them only
information on the most basic concepts at first to get them interested.
Slowly but surely, you can turn those visitors that might have left
your web site and never have returned into some serious revenue!
As far as autoresponders go, I highly recommend the use of FreeAutoBot.com.
It's the only free autoresponder I've found that doesn't place ads into
your eMail messages. In fact, some paid autoresponder services
advertise in your messages, so watch out for that. FreeAutoBot also
offers tons of free information and
guides on making the most of their services.
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Handy Guides: eCommerce
Gal Recommends...
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Here are
products and guides I personally recommend for building your online
business. There isn't a guide or tool recommended on my site that I
haven't personally used and found to be helpful. My philosophy
is to bring quality, affordability and value to as many
people as possible.
Check out my latest product recommendations.
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Internet
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