The best way to start off on the road to being a webmaster is to use the free web space provided by your ISP (Internet
Service Provider). This will save you money while you learn the secrets of web mastery.
One drawback of the free web site is the long site address (eg: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/amcho),
The free sites may also suffer from limited functionality and limited
space. If your ISP does not provide free web space then you could try
http://www.hypermart.net who appear
to provide a full hosting service for free, but only to business sites
and you must have their banner ads on every one of your pages, check out
my site with them at http://amcho.hypermart.net.
If you want more than the free sites offer or want someone to set up your web site for you then Click
here for our pricelist.
Create Your Web Pages
First you need to create your web pages - quite easy - many word processors will now let you convert your current
marketing text to HTML, just save your document as a HTML file. There are many web page authoring packages that will
help you create a good page. If you really want to do it the difficult way you
could use the windows notepad.
It is worth spending some time on creating your web pages, especially if you want images, logos etc. Also check
to see what the pages look like in different browsers and different screen settings (size resolution colour) -
it is amazing how many pages I have seen where you cannot read the text because of some fancy background that has
taken half an hour to download!
If you are planning a commercial web site we are running a workshop on how to make your site sell.
The workshop is based on the ebook by the same name written by Ken Evoy.
Please have a look and let me have your feedback.
Set-Up your Domain Name
If you want a domain name similar to www.amcho.com then you need an IPP (internet
presence provider). You can get a list of IPPs and their charges and other details by going to hostsearch
or budgetweb or webhostlist or
hostfind . Most IPPs will do the registration for you. For a '.com' domain
you will be charged $70 for two years registration, and the IPP will charge you a set up fee and a monthly hosting
fee. Prices vary from free to $1000 per year. With the cheaper hosting you will probably find you are hosting ads for the provider,
also these services may be more crowded and slower. Before shelling out loads of money to your site provider,
run the server test provided at http://www.netmechanic.com - this will
show you how well your prospective server really performs - you can now ignore all the bumf about T1 and T3 connections
to backbones etc! (If you must know - a T3 is about 10 times better than a T1 - but it won't make any difference
if your server is handling a 1000 times more traffic!).
Getting Traffic
You have now spent lots of money, and time creating your web site (if you are in America at least you are not paying for
the telephone calls!). You sit back and wait for the calls to roll in - and keep on waiting - because no one knows
your site is there.
You need to publicise you site: tell the world that you have a web site - mention your web site address and your email
address on all your published material - letterheads, email, advertising. Give your customers a good reason to
go to your web site.
Search engines will probably be your best source of visitors. You need to submit your site to all the search engines.
But first are your pages ready to be submitted?. For a very short intro on making your page search engine friendly see
see our workshop page on META TAGS. For a small price your site could be submitted to some 500 search engines
and directories by
Traffic Boost or
Website Submit or
use one of the free submission service as listed on our tools page at
www.amcho.com/tools.htm.
After submitting your site to all the search engines use
http://www.did-it.com/
to check your ranking in the main search engine - you will get an email telling you exactly where your site ranks
on particular keywords - a very useful resource!
If you publicise your site and put something worth seeing or useful on your site you will find that visitors start
to trickle in.
Get links from other related sites. If you put a link on your site tell the webmaster of the site you have linked
to. Join one of the link exchange schemes - for example Smartclicks
or LinkExchange. You create a banner to advertise your
site - in exchange you show banners on your site - Have a look at the bottom of this page for examples.
The following sites are worth a visit for more information on promoting your web site:
Internet Marketing, Online Advertising & Search Engine Submissions
by Webster Group International
If you are trying to increase the traffic to your web site you need to improve your position with the various
search engines.
The following resources should help you achive a better position:
RankThis is an on line tool that will give you your ranking in any one of
the most used search engines for a selected list of keywords. PositionAgent, monitors where your web site is ranked on leading
search engines for selected keywords and reports all listings and positions to help you get more hits.
OK - You have created your site - You have set up lots of interesting content - You have added links to other relevant
sites - You have promoted your site with all the search engines. You are now in the maintenance phase of being
a webmaster. You are updating the content on a regular basis. And being human you are accidentally corrupting your
links and putting in invalid HTML code. This is when you need to use a service such as WebSiteGarage
or NetMechanic or SiteInspector.
These sites will allow you to check your site for broken links, check your HTML code, and check the performance
of your server. Also worth a visit is http://www.rankthis.com to check your
rating in various search engines using different key words for searching.
Visit http://www.freecode.com/ and check the FreeCode software archive for
programs that are Free for personal and commercial use.
Making Money From Your Site
You have now probably spent hundreds of hours setting up your web site and probably as much in telephone bills
- You now want to make it pay. Read the story written by Michael
Schriner of how MicroVision Computer Products used the internet to make
his business grow and become more profitable. If you are aware of any other internet success story
then let me know and I'll feature it here.
One way of getting a small income from your site is by subscribing to one of the associates programs - you send
people to a site that sells books or software and get paid a commission on anything that is bought. Check the
Associate Programs Directory for details.
For the definitive guide on how to make your site sell goto
www.sitesell.com/amcho.html - buy the book or
join up as a reseller. If you join up as a reseller you will be able to download the reseller manual,
this is packed with usefull information on how to make the most of Affiliate Programs.
I am slowly implementing some of the ideas and working through the manual.
Take a look at our page on how to
earn an income from your web site for more ideas on generating an income from your website.
If you know a site with useful content please let me know and I'll keep this page updated - so check back regularly
- there is a service that will send you an e-mail whenever a page is updated: check out the details at: http://www.netmind.com/URL-minder/.
For example you can enter your e-mail address below to receive e-mail whenever this page is updated.
Accepting Payment Over The Net
There are three reasons for having a web site - you want to tell the world about your company - you want to
communicate with your customers and suppliers - you want to sell your products over the net. Most people use their
web site to advertise their product; then make the customer deal with them in the traditional manner. But it is
now possible to take payments over the net. For details the following are a random selection - If you know of any
others please let me know:
If you are in the UK check out www.bureau.pipex.com/;
Will allow you to take payments using most credit cards, setup cost £5000
then £5000 per annum +5% - check their site for current prices and details.
The Internet Billing Company will allow
you to accept most credit cards - no set up fee but they take 15% of each
transaction.
Before accepting payment over the internet remember that the supplier as well as the client can be defrauded
- Read the article by T.J. Walker Merchants Beware - Fraud is Rampant for some tips on
how you can protect yourself from being ripped off. Also have a look at his site http://www.antifraud.com/.
It can be fun creating your web site and building traffic - the first time you check your logs to find a complete
stranger actually visited your site and had a good look around. When you find that someone else has put a link
to your site. When someone uses one of your autoresponders for the first time, or fills out your feedback form
or leaves an entry in your guestbook. But there is a down side - the time it takes is horrendous - you start to
feel that an early night is when you get to bed before 2am. So if you want to do it yourself - good luck and enjoy
it - send me an email to let me know how you get on or to ask any questions - I intend to keep this artcle up to
date so any feed back would be welcome.
On the other hand - if you decide you want to do something else but still want a web site. We specialise in small
business web site site set up and hosting so why not let us do it all for you - take a look at our
price list. If you want something different or want to ask any questions just send
us an email.
(c) Mike Choroszewski. This article may be reproduced free of charge on the condition that credit is given to
the author and a link included to this site. Please send me an email if
it is used or if you link to this page.
Thanks to the following who have linked to this page or have taken the original article
and gone their own way with it: www.irnbru.com/diy.htm
