work-at-home-answers.com/website

For those of you who are experienced web designers, or graphics designers, you probably don't need any of the
information on this page.

For the rest of the world, the information here will save you a lot of time and money.

You have a few choices with regard to your website. The choices you
make will affect how much the site costs you in time and money before it
earns you anything.

That is why I recommend writing your content before you think about
designing the actual site and paying for web hosting etc. If you cant get
your content down in document form, you wont do any better after you
have spent hours and dollars creating a fantastic looking web page. You
still need content.

From here on I will assume you have your 20 - 30 pages of content sitting
quietly waiting to be presented to the world.

You need a website to send your work into the world - well actually you
don't (you can earn from your content by selling articles, or placing
free articles with affiliate links that will earn you money - more about
this in marketing page). In the long run you will need a website.

You can sign up with a free web hosting service like webs.com and
create your site using their great range of templates, which you simply
cut and paste your content into.

The downside of this is the free sites have their ads on making them
money not you. Currently (2009) you can pay $14.95 US per year to
get rid of their ads so you can put yours up. Most free hosting runs
along the same lines.

The downside is the free domain you get is not a true domain but a sub
domain of theirs. For example, if your topic was fishing then your
domain name might be www.fishing-facts.com if owned the domain, but
on a free sever it would be www.fishing-facts.webs.com for example.
Usually you can pay a small amount to purchase your own domain that
they will host (expect anything from $10 - 25 US per year).

Alternatively you can purchase your own web hosting and domain name. Some hosting plans come as cheap as $5
US a month, and let you register a domain name through them for a small amount as well (usually in the $5 - $20 US
range). With hosting plans you get what you pay for, so if you have little or no experience in running a hosted site you
might need help to get your site up and running.

Of course usually with hosted plans you have to upload your own site - that means making one yourself. If you have no
experience with this it can be a frightening, frustrating and expensive experience. You can try and use programs like
Dreamweaver, FrontPage etc, you can code it yourself in notepad from scratch or you can use a program designed
for creating web pages visually with little or no coding required.

There are many out there, and I have wasted hours and lots of dollars
looking for one that does what I want with no coding required. I found a
great solution that I recommend to all learners, and which I used to
create this site, and most of my others.

Its called CoffeeCup Visual Site designer. There is a link to their website
at the bottom of every one of my pages. Not because its required but
because I think it is such a great product for learners.

It is free to download and use for 30 days (approx). You get a fully
functioning program as the evaluation, and you get to keep whatever you
design on it - no restrictions. That is such a great offer I recommend you
all give it a go.

There are limitations - but for the beginner it's a perfect start.

So now you have your hosting, and a site design application its time to
put the two (or three) together.