Creating a website is not something that is really cut and dry. There are a huge number of products and services that can help you get your website where you want it to go, or just plain confuse you. It's also important that you make the right decisions beforehand so that you don't end up having to restructure the entire site because of some problem in your design. The level of time investment necessary to master many of these software packages can range from a small amount to a VERY significant amount. Because of this, I feel it's important to be guided in the "right" direction to make sure you don't spend time in the wrong areas or learning some software that might not be so useful to you later (*cough* Front page *cough*).
Where you should start depends a lot on what you plan to try to do and how deep you want to go. For a moderately professional, clean-looking website without a lot of automation or intensive animated graphics, you can probably get by with some basic HTML knowledge, ability with a good WYSIWYG editor, and an image editing program. On the other hand, if you're someone who's trying to create something that really wows your audience, you might want to consider spending some time developing some animation skills with a program like Micromedia Flash. Personally, I always try to find what I believe will give me the most profit with the least effort, and because of this, I usually spend all my time digging 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 HTML knowledge. Yes, that means you don't need to know EVERYTHING about HTML to have a decent looking website. When you use a WYSIWYG editor, it interprets what you do (like inserting an image) as a certain series of HTML tags with attributes and does it for you... So what you see on the screen is what you get. Instead of seeing a bunch of HTML code in text format, you'll mostly see what actually appears in your browser once your web page is launched as you build it. I highly recommend using the latest version of Dreamweaver - it's known as one of the best HTML editors by General Consensus. Dreamweaver's interface is very user-friendly, has a built-in FTP client, and is specifically designed to be flexible enough to suit both the coder and the everyday amateur webmaster.
Image editing? What do I need it for?
Okay, let's be realistic: If you're going to create a professional *looking* website, it's important to be able to create basic, decent-looking graphics. There are many graphics problems that can really get the job done, but for performance and flexibility, I recommend Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop definitely takes some time to get used to, but it's VERY rewarding in the end. I ended up using my Photoshop skills not only to create graphics for multiple websites, but also to edit portraits, create business cards, flyers, and other online advertising such as banners. I've actually used it for everything except animation... But it also comes with Adobe Image ready which is very good with animation. This software is amazing, and if you want to learn ANY image editing software, I suggest you start with Photoshop because it has a wide range of overall… utility!
Let's get me some sales!
Kick start your new website that you've gained from your web mastering and image editing skills with some new sales... Sound like a plan? A great way to do this quickly is through pay-per-click advertising. BUT WAIT! Doesn't it cost money? Okay, yes. But with the tools brought to us by some of the biggest pay-per-click advertisers, we should be able to get a good estimate of how much profit we'll make without any upfront investment.
The big question behind pay-per-click advertising is whether it's worth the money when you can simply get traffic from regular search engine rankings (otherwise known as organic traffic). After all, there are plenty of companies out there that promise to help you get all the traffic you need by optimizing your website for eco ratings. 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 everyone can calculate exactly what their profit is after deducting the costs of PPC advertising. In my opinion, Google Adwords has the most user-friendly interface among PPC advertisers. The Google Adword interface makes it very easy to see which keywords are bringing you the most sales and which ones aren't even worth your advertising dollars.
But let's not forget that we'll need a shopping cart to make these conversions! There are lots of different software packages you can use, but I've been using Mal's E-Commerce Free Shopping Cart for many years with great success. The cart server is hosted on their machines, which means that not only do you not have to pay for the software itself, but you also don't have to buy an SSL security ticket! There's nothing better than free, right?
Getting the leads you've built to BUY!
Once you've made a few sales, it's probably a good idea to start using some kind of lead management service. I highly recommend using autoresponders for this purpose. Autoresponders are basically newsletter signups that allow you to strategically determine what you want to send to each prospect after a certain amount of time. For example, let's say someone visits your website and you offer them a free newsletter. If you were selling an e-book on some very complicated topic, you might want to consider only sending information on the most basic concepts to get them interested. Slowly but surely, you can turn those visitors who may have left your website and never returned into some serious income!
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