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It used to be that you needed a full-time computer geek to maintain your site and do all the work for you. Now, running your own site is almost as easy as sending an email. If you can send and receive email, you can do most of what it takes to run a website.
It used to take a lot of behind the scenes work to get things done. Now, once the basic site is set up, you just need to know how to update the content on the pages. For most people, it's not that hard to learn. The big thing is to get the site put in place initially. You can let your hosting company do that, and then you're off and rolling.
Have you ever purchased something over the web? Have you ever filled out a form on a site with your name and address? Then you click the Submit button to send the information to the site? That's exactly the kind of thing you'd be doing to add information to your site.
You basically fill out a form with information you want on a page. You usually have to give the page a name, and tell where you want the page to show up on your site. Then you fill in the information you want to show up on the page. Click the Submit button and you're done.
Hard to believe how far it's come. All this isn't to say you won't need some help now and again. You do want to make sure that you put your site with a host that offers to help you when you need it. In fact, there are now hosts that offer instructions and tutorials to help you along the way.
Now you might be thinking that all this sounds good, but what about ithe design and layout of the site. If you're not a graphics designer, no problem. Most of the sites allow you to use what's called a template. You can purchase a template or have a designer make one for you. There are free templates out there too.
The template has all the pictures and colors for the site. The program that runs your site knows how to use the template and add your information to it so it looks the way you want. The information you add just gets inserted into the template when someone goes to a page on yours site. Just like the main site, once the template is in place, you don't have to do anything else with it.
If running your own site is something you've wished you could do but have been afraid to try, stop worrying and give it a shot. For as easy as things have become, most anyone can do it.
So you've decided your not satisfied with working 40 hours per week in a dead-end job, not getting ahead and you want to try something else. If you're looking at starting some kind of Internet based business, great! I can help! You can read over my whole life story (http://www.cashsblog.com/about/my-life-story/) and more importantly, my reasons for trying something different on the about page (http://www.cashsblog.com/about/).
Get Creative
It doesn't have to be an original idea, because chances are, it's already been done. And if it hasn't already been done, and it's a good idea, someone will copy you. As my friend Nick always says, “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal!”
Maybe you use a simple website regally, but there are some parts of it that really annoy you. You could remake it! That's why I created the website YouTubeKeep.com. I'm assuming that people reading this have at very least some basic HTML knowledge. If not, that's ok too. But I suggest, if you want to create a successful website, you learn some.
Keywords
You've made your decision. Now you need related name and domain name.
First thing you need to do is come up with some main keywords (what someone will type into Google to get to your site). Then, if you can think of a name that contains one or two of these keywords, you're laughing.
THEN find a domain that contains as many of these keywords in as possible (search engines will give a site preference if the keywords are contained in the page content, title, and domain name).
Use WHOIS to find out what domain names are available.
I know what your thinking: “How the hell am I supposed match the name and keywords to the domain? Well, sometimes it's hard. Maybe you imagine a lot of your traffic's going to come from word of mouth, so you might want to go for a domain name that's short and easy to remember instead. It is defiantly a plus if you can get the domain name matching the keywords and name of the website, but it's not the most important thing, so don't worry too much.
Which TLD (Top-Level Domain) .com, .net, .tv?
A .com is the best (in my opinion). A .com website is easy to remember. People will know instantly that you're talking about a website when you refer to whatever.com. Of course if your website is going to be a non-profit organisation, you might want to go for a .org. If the .com and .net are available, buy them both, then redirect the .net to the .com (or vise-versa). From my research, most experts agree that if you have some other domain names redirecting to your main website, you'll gain a few “points” on the search engines. You may even want to consider country-specific domain names, like .co.uk, .co.nz or .com.au.
Still don't know what I'm talking about? I'll gives you some examples:
Scenario 1
We'll start with an established business. Say you have a business that hires out boats, now you want a web presence. Maybe your put a form on your website so customers can request a quote and look at the boats you have for hire.
We'll call the business “Jimmy's Boat Hire” for this example. So if someone wants to hire a boat, they're going to type “boat hire” into their search engine. So your main keywords are “boat” and “hire”. So if you get the domain name “www.JimmysBoatHire.com” you're bloody laughing. It's easy enough to remember AND it contains your most important keywords.
Scenario 2
Let's say you want to start a business that sells model cars and planes online, at wholesale prices. So two keyphrases (phrases people would search) are “model planes” or “model cars” and maybe the keywords “buy”, “store”, “cheap”, “discount”, etc, etc.
So maybe we'll call the site “Discount Model Cars & Planes” (I'll avoid the word “cheap”, it makes me think of crap). So the domain name “DiscountModelCarsAndPlanes.com” is fantastic in terms of keywords, but a pain to write down or for people to remember. Maybe you want buy “DiscountModelCarsAndPlanes.com” then a shorter , easier to remember domain name as well. Hmmm… say “modelcars.com” and have it redirect it to your main domain: “DiscountModelCarsAndPlanes.com”.
Important Notes About Redirecting
There are certain methods of redirection that search engines like (and raise your “score”) and there are other ways which make your site seem like a scam or like it's trying to scam search engines.
This is all covered in more depth on my blog: http://www.cashsblog.com/