Building your web site

How to Get Less Poor Slowly

The second step: build a web site. The site should not be fancy with Flash, animated graphics, and other distractions. It can be plain, primarily text with  graphics (drawings or photographs) only if they are needed to support the text. The primary purpose of the site will be to provide information to others, particularly to people less experienced. You should have a reliable host service. It can be the same ISP that provides your internet service (assuming you have your own home internet account) or you can use other services such as Yahoo. You should avoid the free services that provide web pages containing advertising.

Step 1: Finding a host

Many large commercial sites own computer servers that are always on, dedicated to serving web pages to the internet, with an expensive high speed connection. For smaller sites, that is not an option. First, your computer is not always on, and if you use dial up, not always connected. If you don't have your own computer (you should have one, eventually you will make enough money to buy a cheap one), for example, you use a computer at your office, hosting your own site is not an option. Second, hosting your own site is extremely expensive.

Many smaller web sites are hosted by a web hosting service that has its own server computers, always running and connected to the internet.

There are free services such as Yahoo GeoCities, Angelfire, and others. I do not recommend using them for income producing web sites. They are free because they serve ads themselves that will take away clicks to ads on your site or sales from your site. However, a free service may be a good way to get started. GeoCities offers the option of converting the free site to an inexpensive paid site with your own domain name (www.secrets-of-cumquat-baking.com). This may be a way to get started.

The free and less expensive sites often offer tools to build your site. They are a good way to get started, but will not provide the necessary capability you will need later.

A relatively inexpensive host is Yahoo (owner of GeoCities) with several packages, ranging in price from about $9 up, depending upon the options you need.

If you have your own home internet service, such as Earthlink (known as Internet Service Providers, or ISPs), your ISP may provide web hosting. Their service may be a little more expensive than Yahoo, a little more difficult to use, but provide more options and service.

A more expensive method is to find a professional web hosting service. In many cities such services can be found in your local Yellow Pages. These services are more expensive but provide more direct service and, for a fee, will do much of the work for you.

This site is hosted on Yahoo, presently using the "hosting starter" package that cost about $12/month. I also use Earthlink (my ISP) for my larger site. That cost is slightly higher.

Step 2: Building your site

Most simple web sites, such as this, are made of "html" (HyperText Markup Language) pages. (there are some more complex languages and techniques that are not necessary). An html page is simply a text file with codes inserted to handle formatting, uploaded to the host computer.

It is possible to build a text file in MS Word or some other word processor, embed the html codes, and upload the page. However, there are better ways.

Some web hosting services, such as Yahoo, provide tools to simplify the building of web pages. The advantages of these services is the simplicity of building the site. The disadvantages are the limitations on what can be done on the site and the fact that you have to be on-line to build the page.

There are several programs for PCs that will allow you to build a web page similar to the way you build a print page with a word processor. When you store the page, it is stored as a text file, with the html tags, and an extension of .html or .htm. One such program, used to build this page, is Microsoft Front Page.

The html file must then be uploaded to the host computer. Yahoo and other services allow the upload through your web browser. To upload to other hosts, such as Earthlink, you will need to use a File Transfer Protocol (ftp) program such as cuteFTP. These programs allow you to log into the host computer and upload files.

Step 3: Getting Visitors

Your web site will do you no good unless you have visitors. This involves being listed on search engines (Particularly Google and Yahoo). There is much information on the web about how to get listed on search engines. However, the best information can come from the search engines themselves. A number of sites sell search engine submission services where you pay to be listed. Some may actually improve your position in the list of results from a search, but the improvement is not likely to be worth the investment.

The most important search engine is Google. You may list your site (only submit the top: www.mysite.com) to Google. The Goolge "spider" will then (within a few days) crawl your site and add other pages to their data base. Other search engines receive results from Google.

Search Engine Optimization

Your site might be in niche with little competition, so that once you are listed  in the search engines your site will always show up in the top few listings for relevant keywords. However, this is unlikely. You should optimize your site for best placement on the search engine (high in the list of search results).

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