How To Build And Run

A Successful Website

Anyone can throw together and publish a website. How to build and run a successful website is another story. Here I hope to give you some shortcuts to achieving that story for yourself.

At the time of this writing, this website is one year old. And in that year I have invested untold hours, late nights and endured burning sensation from my fingertips to my elbows from carpal tunnel syndrome.

Suffice it to say that I have learned a lot. Perhaps due to my age and experience in both life and the computer field I am happy to say that I haven't really wasted all that much effort going down the wrong path on anything.

Probably the only real mistake I made was inadequate research early on. But that's ok in my case because I had an agenda; get as much info out of my head and into the site as quickly as possible. Your agenda might be to make money, and in that case, don't shortchange research!

Let's begin with a topic

First off, you have to pick a topic. I won't go deep into that here, but picking the topic involves several keys:

1. Something you have an existing business, hobby or interest in
2. A topic that others have an interest in
3. Plenty of quality, relevant content available or that you can create
4. Keyword research that ties in with that content to verify demand

The only comment I will make here is one that is worth repeating: Don't shortchange the research! You can waste a lot of time building a website that will not receive traffic.

Choose & Register a domain

When choosing a domain, there are a lot of things to consider. One overriding rule to remember is to have the domain name be consistent with your website theme AND include a major keyword (from your research) for your site. In a popular area, that may not always be easy; at least not if you want the domain name to be reasonably short.

I highly recommend registering your domain, with the privacy option, at www.GoDaddy.com.

Find a reliable web host

The host is the company that physically maintains the server that contains your website pages and serves them up to the world. GoDaddy provides this service, but it's not my first recommendation. Likewise, the host I am going to recommend offers domain registration, but I like GoDaddy (and their prices) better for registration.

The hosting service that I now use and highly recommend is Host Gator.

They have various hosting plans, I would start with the simplest, cheapest plan until you know you need otherwise.

The primary reason I recommend Host Gator over GoDaddy or someone else is not only price and service, but most importantly, Host Gator utilizes a standard "cpanel" for site administration. This cpanel not only gives you full control over your site, but includes "fantastico" which gives you one click addition of services such as a WordPress blog.

It just doesn't get any easier than Host Gator's cpanel and fantastico.

Create your content with the right software

If you are an html expert and can create pages in your sleep with a program like Dreamweaver, go knock yourself out. But if you want to create a successful and/or profitable website quickly, then look no further than XSitePro. See my complete review of XSitePro here.

Email lists

This is one area you want to get right from the start. Once you have a good opt-in email list, you prefer not to change list hosts because they will likely require you to have everyone opt-in again; this risks losing valued names.

The pros use Aweber.com. Why not follow their lead and start right the first time?

Aweber has videos and other helps to get you on your way to building successful email lists quickly and efficiently. They even provide the code so you don't need to know how to make those fancy pop-in's!