HOW TO PLAN A WEBSITE (Step 1)

If you are planning to making money online then you do need to plan a website before you build.

You need to be planning your work and working your plan.

Plan for Building a Website

Your site planning tools will consist of:

a small paper notebook to carry - you can write down ideas as they pop into your head
OR
Create a website planning worksheet and store on your computer

Who: will be your visitors? What are they searching for.. information, products to buy or maybe both.
Take a look at your competition, did they do a good job in the planning?
- Is their site user friendly?
- How would you improve it?
- Are you able to easily find information you are seeking?
- How is their design? - is it difficult to read? to many graphics?

What: are you going to write about? Even though content is king, you need to make sure it is relevant. For most people, writing the content is a difficult task.

As you build, plan on writting down your keywords and a couple of sentences to start you out.

NOTE: If you try to build a site with limited knowledge on the theme, you need to do a lot of research for content. By building a site around a theme you have a lot of knowledge in, you won't have any problems filling up many pages with relevant content.

Where: are you going to host your site?

If you plan to build a site to make money online, using a free host can be very unprofessional as visitors won't take you seriously.

Even though the packages are very cheap, don't buy a hosting plan until you make sure the package fits your needs.

Disadvantages of Free Hosting:

- Ads on your web pages
- Not search engine friendly
- Lack of support - since you are not paying they are not concerned
- Very little bandwidth (if you plan on very little traffic, then ok)
- Many do not let you sell any advertising space or use Google Adsense
- URL's are long and difficult to remember (http://janesmithshop.freewebs.com)
- The host could be selling your e-mail address to make money
- Your hard work can disappear quickly
- Web pages to build may be limited

If you would like to look into free hosting, check out www.free-webhosts.com . They have a searchable database with reviews of close to 300 free companies.

Paid Plans - Plans are available to pay monthly, quarterly or yearly. Many times a yearly plan you can get a free domain name for life as long as you stay with that company. Take a look at this hosting comparison chart to see which hosting company would be right for you.

When: do you plan on having it built? Set a realistic goal and try to stick with it. If you set a goal of 30 days to get your planning and building completed and are getting close to that time, don't publish if still under construction. The traffic that finds you could be lost since your pages are lacking information and many times, they won't return.
- How often are you planning on updating? Some information can change quickly, you might want to update it weekly or monthly.

Why: do you want to build a site?

- Keep family and friends updated?
- For your Church
- Your a teacher - plan to teach students about web design
- For your kids (or with them)
- Sell your own products?
- Make money online?
- Retired and take all the knowledge you learned over the years to help other people?
- A medical condition that other people are also suffering with and found information that has helped you?
- Planning a wedding and want to keep everyone informed?

Make Money Online - This is the biggest motivator when people want to build their own website. You need a topic you are interested in. When you build your site with something you are interested in, it won't become stale with outdated information.