Blogs are also easier to setup than websites, and because of this reason people are often lured into thinking blogs are a better option than websites.

But don’t be fooled.

That doesn’t mean they are easier to promote, build traffic and generate a profit (if that’s your goal).

Both websites and blogs require work, patience, an understanding of Internet marketing and search engine optimization (the process of getting ranked high in Google, Yahoo, etc.)

So please don’t go into this thinking that creating a blog is an easier way to make money online. Even bloggers making a lot of money have put in their share of time and effort.

Another thing you should know is that blogs can be somewhat limiting compared to a website (in terms of design and data manipulation) until you learn more about how blogs are coded.

However, if you use WordPress, you’ll have the flexibility to do so much with your blog’s content and layout. (More on that in a sec.)

Blog or Website? Can’t Decide?

A lot of people get confused and wonder if they should create a blog, website or both?

Watch the video below to get my take on the subject.

WordPress? Blogger? Which is Best?

WordPress and Blogger are hands down the two most popular blogging platforms. I honestly see no reason to consider any of the others.

I started with Blogger, but when I started learning about the flexibility WordPress provided, I switched over in December 2007 and I’m so glad I did.

Blogger is great because it’s super easy to use. However, WordPress has a lot more features and plug-ins that will allow you to enhance your blog.

And even though setting up a WordPress blog is slightly more involved, it’s well worth it in the long run.

Remotely Hosted Blog or Self Hosted Blog?

Remotely Hosted

There are two ways to host a blog. The first way is to remotely host it– which means your content/files literally sit on the server of the blogging platform (WordPress.com, Blogger.com, etc.)

There’s always a risk involved with doing it this way because if Blogger or WordPress decide to shut your blog down (for whatever reason), you would lose all your content.

It also doesn’t look as professional to have a blog address like http://yourblog.blogspot.com or http://yourblog.wordpress.com. And if you want to make money, first impressions mean a lot.

For the record, I don’t endorse remotely hosted blogs. I think hosting is so cheap these days that it’s worth spending a few extra dollars to own your content and have a real blog address like http://yourblog.com — especially if you want to make money.

Self Hosted

With a self hosted blog, all your content sits on the hosting account that you own. Your blog address is more professional and easy to remember because you can have a true domain like http://yourblog.com.

That is right this is the right place for you to learn how to make a website.
The site is open to the public, you will be able to see every content of this site and you can join and ask any question you would like to ask there.
If you are interested in learning how to make a website you don’t need to join the list of people who receive the newsletter every week to learn exactly how to become involve with any other sites.

You do not have to be an Internet marketer to join this site; it is okay if you have never even had your own website before. The most important attribute you must have to join this site is a desire to first have fun and second succeed in you Internet ventures. Believe me when I say that having fun is the most important part, because when it isn’t fun anymore then there is no chance of success. There will never be a fee in learning how to make a website, and it’s open to everyone.

These what you’ll got if you’re learning on how to make a website here

This site will take you through the entire process of making a website:
1. Finding a Domain Name – Domain name registration

2. Choosing a web hosting company – Choose web hosting service

3. Setting web hosting account- Setting Up a Hosting Account

4. Making a website – How to make a website step by step tutorial

How to make your own website

Links are “buttons,” or jumps, to other WWW documents. They may also take you to another section in the current WWW document. WWW documents may contain both textual and graphical links. Textual links are text which are emphazied by being a different color than the rest of the text, and may be underlined. Once a textual link is used, it will become another color, indicating it was used.

Graphical links are graphics which serve as links, or buttons, to other sections or documents. For example, the buttons on the left are graphical links. You can determine a graphical links two different ways. First, the mouse arrow will turn into a hand with a finger pointing towards the top of the screen. Graphcial links may also contain a colored “boxed” border arround it, which should be the same color as the textual links.

Introduction to links and anchors

HTML offers many of the conventional publishing idioms for rich text and structured documents, but what separates it from most other markup languages is its features for hypertext and interactive documents. This section introduces the link (or hyperlink, or Web link), the basic hypertext construct. A link is a connection from one Web resource to another. Although a simple concept, the link has been one of the primary forces driving the success of the Web.

A link has two ends — called anchors — and a direction. The link starts at the “source” anchor and points to the “destination” anchor, which may be any Web resource (e.g., an image, a video clip, a sound bite, a program, an HTML document, an element within an HTML document, etc.).

Visiting a linked resource

The default behavior associated with a link is the retrieval of another Web resource. This behavior is commonly and implicitly obtained by selecting the link (e.g., by clicking, through keyboard input, etc.).

...some text...

By activating these links (by clicking with the mouse, through keyboard input, voice commands, etc.), users may visit these resources. Note that the href attribute in each source anchor specifies the address of the destination anchor with a URI.

The destination anchor of a link may be an element within an HTML document. The destination anchor must be given an anchor name and any URI addressing this anchor must include the name as its fragment identifier.

Destination anchors in HTML documents may be specified either by the A element (naming it with the name attribute), or by any other element (naming with the id attribute).

A link is the “address” to a document (or aresource) on the web.

HTML links

This example demonstrates how to create links in an HTML document.

Open a link in a new browser window

This example demonstrates how to link to another page by opening a new window, so that the visitor does not have to leave your Web site.

Hyperlinks, Anchors, and Links

In web terms, a hyperlink is a reference (an address) to a resource on the web.

Hyperlinks can point to any resource on the web: an HTML page, an image, a sound file, a movie, etc.

An anchor is a term used to define a hyperlink destination inside a document.

The HTML anchor element <a>, is used to define both hyperlinks
and anchors.

We will use the term HTML link when the <a> element points to a resource, and the term HTML anchor when the <a> elements defines an address inside a document..

An HTML Link

Link syntax:

<a href=”url”>Link text</a>

The start tag contains attributes about the link.

The element content (Link text) defines the part to be displayed.

Note: The element content doesn’t have to be text. You can link

from an image or any other HTML element.

The href Attribute

The href attribute defines the link “address”.

This <a> element defines a link to my blog:

<a href=”http://howtomakeafreewebsiteeasy.blogspot.com/”>Visit
My Blog!</a>

The code above will display like this in a browser:

Visit My Blog!

The target Attribute

The target attribute defines where the linked document will be opened.

The code below will open the document in a new browser window:

Example

<a href=”http://howtomakeafreewebsiteeasy.blogspot.com/”

target=”_blank”>Visit My Blog</a>

The name Attribute

When the name attribute is used, the <a> element defines a named anchor inside a HTML document.

Named anchor are not displayed in any special way. They are invisible to the reader.

Named anchor syntax:

<a name=”label”>Any content</a>

The link syntax to a named anchor:

<a href=”#label”>Any content</a>

The # in the href attribute defines a link to a named anchor.

Example:

A named anchor inside an HTML document:

<a name=”tips”>Useful Tips Section</a>

A link to the Useful Tips Section from the same document:

<a href=”#tips”>

Jump to the Useful Tips Section</a>

A link to the Useful Tips Section from another document:

<a
href=”http://howtomakeafreewebsiteeasy.blogspot.com/#tips”>

Jump to the Useful Tips Section</a>

Basic Notes – Useful Tips

Always add a trailing slash to subfolder references. If you link like this: href=”http://howtomakeafreewebsiteeasy.blogspot.com/”, you will generate two HTTP requests to the server, because the server will add a slash to the address and create a new request like this: href=”http://howtomakeafreewebsiteeasy.blogspot.com/”

Named anchors are often used to create “table of contents” at the beginning of a large document. Each chapter within the document is given a named anchor, and links to each of these anchors are put at the top of the document.

If a browser cannot find a named anchor that has been specified, it goes to the top of the document. No error occurs.

Choosing a reliable, yet cheap website hosting can be one of the most important decisions you make for your online business and is not something that should be taken lightly. Hosting providers offer you different types of packages…

• Free hosting is for fun. If you want to experiment with a site or put up a small, personal site for the fun of it, a free package will suffice. See Free Website Hosting.
• Shared hosting is suitable in most cases. A few tens of sites are housed on one server. Choose it if you are serious about doing some business and want to have a professional website.
• Dedicated hosting is typically used for sites that need to handle a high level of traffic, need a higher degree of security, or sites that run their own customized software. Choose it if you want to be the only user of that physical machine.

Web hosting services offer you the wide range of features. Be sure to focus on the essentials that are required to launch your website. Will you use all the nice extras? It’s a good idea to choose an initially cheap website hosting and expand your plan as and when your site grows.

For example, you may not need a database solution now, but you may need one in the future. So, when choosing a host, keep in mind your possible future needs, and whether it will be able to accommodate them.

Cheap WebSite Hosting

Here are a few cheap hosting services (under $10 per month) to start…

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div class=”frm1″&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; Your browser doesn’t support floating frames.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”../resources/hosttable.html” target=”_blank”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Click here too see the list of cheap website hosting providers&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;. &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

In my opinion, the best inexpensive hosting deal for standard sites is IXWebHosting. They provide unlimited disk space and bandwidth, Site Studio website builder, free domain name, dedicated IP address and strong uptime guarantee.

For more details, see Resources: Inexpensive Web Hosting

To make a decision, you should understand all the basic features of hosting services. Below are the descriptions of them…

Disk space

This refers to the amount of hard disk space the provider sets aside for your exclusive use. Hard disk space is cheap these days. Even free accounts routinely offer 20-50MB of space. Most websites only use 2-3MB of space if they are not offering movies, sound, and files for download.

Transfer / Bandwidth

Bandwidth, traffic, data transfer refer to the same thing – the amount of data transferred to visitors as they view your Web pages. The vast majority (some estimates are as high as 99%) of the sites on the Web never come close to generating 2GB a month of traffic.

Some cheap website hosting services offer you a limited amount of transfer per month as part of your package and then charge you an extra fee for any traffic over your limit. Others offer unlimited bandwidth as part of your package. They know that most sites don’t generate much traffic, and the odd site, one that is the exception to the rule, will be more than balanced by all their other customers.

If, however, your site becomes extremely popular and generates enormous traffic that swamps the provider’s resources, it may force you to move or pay more by invoking an escape clause found in all contracts. The clause says that if you do something that “threatens” their operations, they can yank your service.

Another point to consider is that cheap website hosting services that offer unlimited traffic may actually attract more high bandwidth sites than the statistical norm. This could result in network congestion that will make your pages harder to reach or slow to load.

Subdomains

A subdomain is shown as subdomain.domain.ext, where domain.ext is the primary domain. A subdomain displays the default page located within any directory in your Web space.

Parked domains

One or more additional domains can point to your main domain. For example, you already have a hosting account and the domain name “domain.com.” You may register “domain.net” and “domain.org” and park them to your main account, so that no matter which one you typed in, it would still go to the same site.

Add-on domains (domain pointers)

They allow you to share your disk space and bandwidth with more than one domain name. The additional domain name (pointer) can point to to a subdirectory of your main site, so the add-on domain can have its own home page and content.

FTP access

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is used to transfer documents from your hard drive to a remote server. FTP is the easiest way to upload and download files between you and your Web host.

Dedicated IP address

Most cheap website hosting services host multiple domains on the same IP address. But it’s recommended (not absolutely essential, just recommended) to get you unique (dedicated) IP address. If you don’t have a dedicated IP, there is a small possibility that if other sites who share your IP address use dubious search engine positioning techniques, search engines may block all of the Web sites hosted on that IP address. This is the IP equivalent of bad neighborhoods.

So, when selecting a Web host, see whether they give you dedicated IP address. If it means that you have to pay a bit more for your hosting, the extra cost is worth it. See Articles: Dedicated IP hosting for more information.

POP3 email accounts

Even with cheap website hosting accounts, you usually get multiple email addresses. You can check your email using different email software packages from anywhere in the world. You can easily set up your email addresses or change them.

Catch All Email Address
Suppose, you get five email addresses with your hosting account, but what if someone emails you at an address that doesn’t exist? With the catch-all email feature, anything that is emailed to your domain name is automatically forwarded to an email address that you specify.

Email Forwarding
Maybe you have a large number of email addresses and don’t want to check all of them separately. With the email forwarding feature, you can forward all your incoming email to another email address that you specify.

Email Autoresponder
An autoresponder is a specific email address that has two functions. First, any user sending an email to that address will re
ceive an automated response. Second, the original incoming message is forwarded to another specified email address.

Personal CGI directory

Almost all hosts allow you to have your own personal CGI (common gateway interface) directory where you can place your CGI scripts. CGI scripts are small programs on the server that can provide your site with interactivity.

Predefined CGI scripts

Almost all free and cheap website hosting providers give you access to centralized CGI scripts…

Counter
You may place a counter on your website so that you can count your visitors.

Form to Email
This is a form on your site that allows your visitors to contact you. The submitted information will be emailed to an address that you specify.

Guest Book
You may place a guest book on your site if you want to know who is visiting your site, and what their comments are about it.

Server Side Includes (SSI)

This is a group of functions that can be included directly in your HTML so that a server can include variable values in the HTML file before it sends it to the requester. SSI commands allow you to perform functions not available through HTML.

For example, with SSI you can include running CGI scripts and post the results on the Web page, embed the current time and date or the date of the last update, etc.

Detailed website statistics

Many cheap website hosting services provide all clients with detailed graphical site statistics. You can see how many people are visiting your site, what pages they are looking at, when they visit, and much more.

Access to raw log files

The log files store the information of all requests made to your website. They are the files used to calculate the site statistics. Having access to the raw log files allows you to download them for archiving and allows you to run your own statistics software package on your own computer so that you can get more detailed information about your visitors.

Frontpage extensions

Many hosts allow FrontPage extensions so that you can create and publish your site using Microsoft Frontpage without learning how to program.

Uptime guarantee

It’s vitally important that your site is never inaccessible. Look for a host that offers a 99.5% or a 99.9% on-line guarantee.

This is important for both the search engines and your human visitors. If a search engine spider comes to visit your site when it’s inaccessible, it’s quite likely that it will drop your site from its index.

Additional features

Many cheap website hosting services offer an astounding array of additional features that go beyond the basic features. Some of them you may never use, and some will be must-haves.

For example, if you’re building a store, you probably will need database services to update your catalog, secure pages (SSL) and digital certificates, a shopping basket program, and the ability to accept credit cards.

But if you’re building a technical support site, the most important to you may be chat or forum software, the ability to post how-to movies for download or to stream them to your visitors, mailing lists, lots of email addresses, and password protected FTP transfers.

Price

You can get excellent or lousy hosting service for the same price. But finding value is not as simple as going with the cheapest package. Some of those cheap website hosting services get very pricey when you add not-so-optional services such as access to log files, password protection, or security. Conversely, some of those expensive packages might actually be cheap because they truly do provide all the services and features you need now, or will need soon.

Find out the real cost of the cheap website hosting. Count all the prices for each service. Don’t forget to include all of the various setup fees along with monthly fees. Also find out what the provider will charge you to upgrade your service package in the future.

You may also use the tool to plan the layout of an upcoming site or for generating the sitemap of an existing website as in this example.

The tool has a very intuitive interface and the favorite feature is that you can share sitemaps online (each sitemap gets a unique URL) or you edit them with co-workers.

Now unlike your WordPress plugins that create sitemaps exclusively for search engines, the sitemap written inside Writemap is fit both for human and search engine consumption.

The downside is that this tool may not be fit for large websites as you have to create pages (nodes) manually.

1) Website Design – The website design must be neat meaning that everything looks like where it is meant to be (nothing out of place or out of proportion). Also your sites design is related to the topic of your website e.g. your site is about flowers then your design must have flowers.

2) Site Navigation – Visitors must be able to get where they want to go without going through a maze a good way of putting it if you can get there in 3 clicks it should be fine. Also it helps when search engine spiders go through your site since it makes it easy for the spiders to index the site.

3) Domain Name – Domain name is important since it is one of the first thing that your visitors will see. Your domain should relate to your site topic or business name. Length of the domain usually 6-8 characters is a good length and easy for visitors to type.

4) Scroll Bars – don’t make your website pages too long so your visitors have to scroll for hours it is also a good option to just create another page and don’t make people scroll side to side.
5) Returning Visitors – make your visitors return to your site by adding one or all to your site:

- Email Newsletter (Ezine)
- Community Forums
- Online Tools
- Online Games
- Useful Content
- Competitions and Prizes
- and so on

5) Website Logo – Make your logo unique and brandable so that people will remember your logo and then will remember your site and products.

These are some simple points that you may take into consideration when you build your website if you need some further assistance have a look at your competitors website and see what they have done. Remember what you put in is what you get out of your website and on that note GOOD LUCK and enjoy the whole process of building your very own virtual property.

Martin has been making a living with affiliate revenue for the past couple of years you can by joining Martin’s Webmasters Newsletter for free.

Add your website links for free to Sorve.com Directory and also Search Engine Directory

There are many simple things that make your website interesting and make your visitors return to your website. You need to learn these simple techniques and tips to make your website sticky and interesting so that you get massive web traffic.

Some of the techniques of making the website content attractive are having special web pages for “Daily News” and “What’s New” in your website. “What’s New” page can simply consist of anything new that you have added to your website which will update the users with interesting information. It is important that the “What’s New” page should be accessed through the homepage of your website. So, when the visitors come to your site, they don’t have to go through the whole site to check out “What’s New”.

Hereafter, you can influence repeat-traffic by sending out e-mail campaign to your regular website visitors with notifications of the latest additions to your “What’s New” section. If you are successful in doing this, you can send them the latest information via e-mail and, therefore, make your visitors return to your website and be a part of it.

Giving Away Gifts On Your Website

All website visitors are always looking for free gifts and awards. While giving away gifts like free e-books, coupons, and softwares, make sure that you are offering something interesting to the visitors you are targeting. Once you have the freebies to give away, your website also gets linked and listed on various sites on the Internet that suggests the people where they can get attractive gifts and goodies.

You need not give away gifts to each visitor to your site. You can have a lucky draw, may be once in a week. You can also give away some good and famous restaurant’s free coupons. Also, keep an expiration date on the coupons, so the visitors use it without any delay and comeback to your site for more coupons. This will attract more web traffic to your website. If possible, change the gifts that you give away after a specific period and let the visitors know about it.

You can also add some interesting trivia, calendar of events, and special news about the latest topics in your niche. You can even add blogs, podcasts, and RSS feeds to your website which makes it more interesting.

Advertising Your Products

Once people like your website and visit it more often, you can advertise your products. More the visitors, then more are the chances of them buying these products. Also, the brand that you are advertising gets reinforced more. The visitors also feel that they are a part of your website.

Once your visitors trust you and your website, they do business with you freely. They are more likely to advertise your website and the brands that you sell. This makes your website and products viral. Thus, your website will be most likely to be remembered when these visitors decide to buy products and become your loyal customers.

Contests And Competitions On Your Website

Adding a good an interesting competition or a contest on your website will boost your chances of getting more quality traffic. Keep a contest on your website once a week, or a month to get repeat visitors.

It is a good idea of giving out one of your products or a valuable subscription to your ezine with the gift to the winner. This will also advertise your product and if the customers like it, then they will definitely buy more products again. Keep your contest open to anyone and everyone. There should also not be any limit for number of times a visitor can take part.

Make sure, that there are no legal issues that may concern you in future. For example, you may not be allowed to hold lotteries on the website, even if your website originates in a country where it could be legal to have lotteries on your site. If you wish to target the US and UK readers, then you must follow the law of these countries. If you do not, then your website could get banned in these countries.

So, before continuing with anything, just research on the internet and be on the safe side while holding contests. If possible, notify every participant about the result of the contest and add a link to your website in the same e-mail about the latest news or new contests of the future. Therefore, the visitors return to your website again with great expectations.

Putting Proper Links On Your Website

You have to be careful about how to add and where to add links on your website. Any outbound links should not be placed on the homepage of your website. Place them in such a way, that the visitors cannot get to those link unless they see all the information on your webpage. Make your website’s own hyperlinks more prominent and include such internal links in the content.

High-Quality Website Content

Once you make visitors return to your website using several options listed above, the next step is to make your website sticky and convert them from visitors to customers. For this, you need to have high-quality content on your website as the first criteria. After all, a great website is something which exceeds the visitor’s expectations.

If your website has high-quality content, then your website visitors will see you as an expert leader in that niche topic. High-quality content will keep your visitors on your website for a longer time. The longer they stay, the more they trust you and your website, and more are the chances that they do more business with you. High quality content converts into high profits!

Images Sell Products

You need to show the images of your products on your web pages. You should have all the details of the products that you want to sell. These details will help your visitors understand the product, why do they need your product, and how your product can save their money and time.

Hence, you must always concentrate on not just getting visitors, but getting them to revisit your website more! Then, focus on converting them into repeat customers! Remember to do everything to make your visitors return to your website more often. If you have great content and help your visitors to get solutions to their problems, then making them return to your website more often will be an easy task!

“Online user experience is now more important than ever to stand out in a harsh landscape. “
Times are undeniably tough and businesses are looking for a much-needed edge to survive. Recent research shows that lower prices aren’t necessarily the answer and may end up doing more harm than good. Customer service, on the other hand, is a great way to distinguish your business from your competitors’. Understandably service levels are improving in the UK and possibly worldwide during this period of hardship.

This together with the fact that the web’s providing a platform for success – Woolies is coming back as an e-commerce only proposition – means the online user experience is now more important than ever to stand out in a harsh landscape. But can you create a good user experience (UX) without breaking the bank? Let’s look at some user experience ‘wise buys’ to be had in today’s cash-strapped economy.

Yet, with the market and technology forever evolving, how does a small to medium sized business make sure that their website remains competitive?

Recently launched business, Lydie-Design Studio Ltd, has devised ten top tips on how you can maximise your website chances to achieve great success for 2008.

1. Have a plan.

Establish what the main purpose is for the website. Set out your main goals and make sure that they are fulfilled.

2. Establish measures of success.

Is your website driving enough traffic? Check accurate measurements of visitor usage and interactions regularly.

3. Promote yourselves!

A website can be used as an online brochure. Update your clients and customers as to your recent success and testimonials. If you don’t tell them no one else will!

4. Introduce your brand.

Have a unique logo and slogan for your product’s brand. Make it eye-catching yet easy to read. Complicated brands will make the website look crowded.

5. Deliver valuable content and keep it fresh.

Updating your website regularly will keep clients coming back for a visit.

6. Make your website easy to use for the general public.

Make a simple click-away home page that is consistent with the other pages of the site. The easier it is to navigate the more likely they are to stay and browse through your website.

7. Allow e-commerce sales.

The proportion of businesses that sold over the internet doubled between 2002 and 2005. Make sure your website provides easy to find buttons for your customers to purchase products from your site.

8. Build a customer list and use it.

Create a database of possible clients and use to keep an on-going communication relationship.

9. Regularly promote your website!

No one will look at your website unless you make them aware of it! Make sure that your website is on various search engines and on all your Marketing literature.

10. Don’t overload your website with too much copy.

Less is more as they say. Try to avoid large amounts of text on your website; it can often turn the customer off. Break it up into small amounts, which is easy to read.