BEGINNING CONSIDERATIONS:
I'm going to discuss the design of the web site. Most would use this as the starting point to beginning an online business as people want to know what their site is going to look like. They're not thinking about getting people to their site time and time again. They're not thinking about a focused site. And let's face it, they're not thinking a web business with a business plan.
You should have a plan before you start your design. Ask yourself, "What am I primarily trying to accomplish with my web site?" Most business web sites try to do one or more of the following:
1. Establish a "Brand Name" (this goal is mainly for large corporate entities and doesn't necessarily bring in money online. It's the goal of Coke, Ford, etc Unfortunately, to many newbies design their sites to look corporate, thus they become one of those here we are sites)
2. Drive traffic to a sales page to promote your own product/service/online store
3. Bringing visitors to generate revenue through Adsense ads or something similar.
4. Bringing visitors to build a highly targeted, niche oriented, opt-in list.
5. To promote affiliate programs that are specific to your web site where you make money through your visitors buying others' products/services
You need to establish the goal of your web site before you begin to design it. This is very important. A web site that is intended to drive traffic to a sales page will look and feel totally different than one designed to make money through Adsense Ads.
Another huge consideration is whether the web site will be a "stand alone" or part of a larger niche network. For example: you might decide that your "travel in Colorado website will be part of a network of travel sites:
Site 1: Travel the USA
Site 2: Travel the National Parks
Site 4: Travel to Interesting State Parks
etc, etc.
I think the easiest way to begin is to create a stand alone site meant to generate Adsense income. With Adsense, you don't need to create a product or search out affiliate programs. But you can start anywhere. Just keep your goals in mind at all times.
Your web site will always reflect these goals. For instance, A web site that is trying to entice visitors to buy your product is best not containing any Adsense ads or affiliate links. These will just distract the visitor from the main goal of buying from you. You might make a few pennies to dollars with them on the pages but you will be loosing more dollars because they're not buying your more expensive product.
DESIGNING THE LOOK OF YOUR WEBSITE:
What do you want your web site to look like? One of the easiest ways to decide this is to surf the web and find sites you like the looks of. Find more than one and bookmark each of those that are particularly appealing. Click through all the pages. Is the site easy to navigate? Does it look eye-catching? Is the content placed well for the visitor, the search engines? Is the look something that you would be proud of?
All web sites are variations of certain themes or templates. If you like a particular look to a well designed site, then we'll steal their look. We'll steal their template and make it yours. For instance, say you go to my
http://www.ristvinmarketing.com web site and like the three column design. You decide you want this look. How do you steal it?
Simple! On the browser task bar you go to "view" 'source'. The html will now be displayed in a notepad window. Go to "edit" 'select all' then "copy" the text. This is then pasted into your html editor. (if you don't have an editor, I suggest googling for Eversoft 1st Page and downloading the free 1st Page 2000 html editor. I find it one of the best and it's the one I've been using since the get go. you don't need to buy a fancy Dreamweaver for hundreds of dollars that won't do anything more than this free one)
You can now view the web page in your html editor and see what it looks like. Whoa, it doesn't look anything like what you saw on the web. What's the problem? The problem is that this web page is built using CSS (cascading style sheet). Most good web sites are built entirely in CSS or have portions of the site controlled by CSS. The search engines are more friendly to your page rank if you have at least some CSS in your site. This is because there are many software generated web sites out there intended to spam the search engines and it's hard to generate them in CSS. Honest web masters use CSS.
How do you get this html that you just copied to look like the site on the web? This is simple too. Go to your "My Documents" and create a new folder. Name it to whatever you want. Then save the html code you copied to your html editor into that folder. Look at the top of the html code in the "HEAD" section. There you will find a tag: link href="styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"media="all" This tag tells the internet browser that this page is using the CSS stylesheet named "styles.css" to control the look and feel of the page.
You have no idea what that stylesheet looks like and what directions it contains. But you can get it and make it control the html you copied into your editor. Here's how you do that. Go onto the internet. Type www.ristvinmarketing.com/styles.css into the brower. The stylesheet will appear. Do the view source thing again and save that notepad document to the folder you just created in "My Documents" as styles.css. Now when you preview the original html code it should look just like what you saw on the web.
Whoops, it still doesn’t look like my web page. The logo and pictures aren’t there. For them to appear you have to right-click on each one (on the real web page) and do a "save as" to that folder in you’re "My Documents" containing the html. By being all in the same folder, they will associate right. Now you have now ripped off my ristvinmarketing.com page as html onto your hard drive.
If you wanted to use this for your own web page all you have to do is change all the text, links, etc to your own, then put it up on the web through your web host and domain name. But maybe you feel uncomfortable ripping off web sites. There are other ways.
You can start from scratch and design your own site from the get go. This takes a good knowledge of html and CSS. It won't take long to learn that but it is a learning curve.
You could have someone design the site look for you. Generally, a 3-5 page site should cost between $150 and $300. You can find someone to design your web pages at
http://www.rentacoder.com or some similar web site. Possibly, you have a friend or family member that can do this for you.
You can obtain a web site template from the internet. There are lots of them out there. Some are free and others can be bought. Don't buy one! Just google around for one that doesn't cost a dime. With a template, you just plug in your information at the appropriate places and off you go. But look for a template that is eye appealing and simplistic. You don't want to be fancy, dancy. Those fancy templates with lots of javascript and flash are for those people who want a "Here I Am" web site or those that are trying to say to the world, "Ain't I Great!" You're trying to build a business and make an income from the web. Those sites just don't sell.....