I don't know why it's such a formidable barrier. But that's because I can do it. Easily.

Still, it was impossible for me less than a year ago.

How did I do it? I made the decision to go forward.

I had been studying Internet Marketing for a while and the whole time I was looking into it I was avoiding the website thing. It seemed too complicated! Too technical. They talk in code!

I remember the day well. It was a beautiful early summer day and I was in my van down by the river. No I wasn't living in it.

I had my two little wiener dogs with me and a packed lunch, including dog treats. I was also blessed with a good laptop AND I had rigged up a high speed wireless antenna in my van!

I had everything I needed that day, except the ability to build a webpage, no matter how simple.

I had a nice lunch, watched people floating by on inner tubes, and played with the dachshunds a bit...all the while gathering up my determination.

We got back into the van and I rotated my little computer table into position and got online.

I wasn't intimidated anymore, I was just going to do it.

I'd been told about the FREE webpage building software, and where to find it.

So I found it online and downloaded it onto my trusty laptop.

It's actually free software that has been in development for years by this group of people so altruistic that they are willing to work there for FREE!

So now I had it, right there in front of me. Nothing could stop me.

It took a while to boot, so it must be a big program, but soon there was a blank document with a tips box that I read and clicked off. I was good to go.

As it turned out, HTML editing isn't intimidating. It looks like a word processor. But you're making a webpage!

I had close by a special tutorial that I had printed out. It looked a lot easier to follow than the online instructions, and it turns out it was!

First I saved the file as "firstattemptatwebsite" to the desktop so I wouldn't lose it.

Right here I'd like to remind everybody to save often, so that, in case the unspeakable happens, you won't lose everything!

Second thing was, I had to look at the top of the blank document for a bit and notice all the little icons across the top.

No problem. Some of the icons were familiar but most of them were foreign to me. I decided not to let that bother me.

I moved the mouse arrow up to the "Table" icon. A box appeared on my formerly blank document, a little one. But it had those grabby things so I grabbed it and made a big box!

This is progress! I had a big, empty box! I moved the arrow up to the little icons for rendering text to be right, center, left, or fill space. I picked "center". Voila! The box was centered.

I decided to save this now because I didn't want anything bad to happen and this was, after all, my first webpage!

I chose to make the box light blue. Wow. The box has a little blinking thing where you can type in text. Wow, now I'm on text! What next?

I typed in "My First Webpage". It was at the far left, centered vertically and was in small Times font. That would not do.

I "selected" that text and moved my mouse arrow up to the icons I had just used and chose "center". Nothing happened! I couldn't believe it...something has gone wrong already!

The dogs are staring at me.

Total elapsed time from start to here, about 5 minutes. They don't need to go out yet.

I consult my tutorial. Aha! I go up to the table icon and watch it drop down.

It has two tabs. One for tables and one for cells. What's a cell?

Anyway, in the "cell" box I find that I can move the selected text to center top and there it was, at the top in the center. I've come a long ways.

Not one to rest on past achievements I move my arrow to the upper right to "Headings". I think it should be called "Headlines" but I'm not down at that place working for no wages.

I select Heading 1. My text gets big! It's a headline!

It's black though and I want to change it to red even if I'm not at that part of the tutorial yet. So I do. It gets red. This is easy!

But something's bothering me. The text is at top center but the tops of the letters are too close to the border of the box. It looks cramped. So I go back up to the "table" pulldown and I discover "padding".

Padding? That's the distance between the table border and it's contents. It is set at 2 pixels. Way too close!

I change it to 10. Bam! The text moves down a little and looks a lot better. I have a webpage! Sure it's not fancy, but if it's this easy so far it might stay easy all along.

I'm a webmaster! Not much of one, but a webmaster, nonetheless.

But it's not up on the web! Oooh, FTP...I start to re-feel the intimidation vibes. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Phew!

Thinking ahead I have already looked into FTP, found a great FREE FTP software and have it installed.

Another thing I have done in advance is purchase a domain and hosting package! They make it so easy.

So save my first HTML webpage file and I fire up the FREE FTP. I'm growing comfortable with all these foreign terms.

I am preparing to upload and publish! More new terminology.

I had to go to my host and get my secret code words for my website, so that my FTP software can claim it represents me and none other, and be allowed access. More new things.

My new FTP software is waiting. I tell it which file I want uploaded to my host's servers. In the pulldown menu I select "upload" and "choose file".

In "choose file" I select "firstattemptatwebpage.html" that I had saved to my desktop and click upload. About four seconds later it's done and declared "successfully uploaded". Man!

I have come so far in the last half an hour that it just blows me away! I'm excited. But now...the real test...is my webpage on the web with hungry hoards looking at it?

As it turns out...no hoards. The only person in the world that knows it is there at this point is me. And I never changed it from that day on. But it gets traffic. I put a counter on it.

Let's go there. Ok. My FTP software has the address!

I click on it. My first website comes up on the web!

It has an address.

Actually it's a URL. Uniform Resource Locator. Who knew? My first website! Well, webpage.

I'm literally overwhelmed with the potential of this. I see sales pages and my business account going up for once.

Yes, it's just stupid simple but it's incredible, really. Not the webpage but the fact that it works!

The whole thing took about 30 minutes. Now I could do it in 5, including changing or correcting text, etc. Typos happen!

I'm a webmaster. It feels good.

Now, if you need to be able to do this, just do it.

I became capable of making money online that day down by the river. I have webpages now that are more complicated but the basics stay the same.

It is actually easy and I was afraid of it. That's human nature I guess.

To recap... get a domain name and hosting. Buy the cheapest one...you're a beginner, after all.

Then type into search "Free webpage software" There's plenty!

Then type into search "Free FTP software"..same thing, plenty.

Next, make your simple webpage and upload it! You're in business. Welcome!

The only thing with an actual cost is Domain (URL) and Hosting, and it's very reasonable. Mine is ten bucks a month.

So, go for it folks, there is very little standing between you and you being able to put a webpage (salespage?) on the web.

Just take it one or two steps at a time and, soon, you'll be able to do business online!