Don’t have a site? You’re not alone. For most people who have Internet access, “surfing” the Internet is much more about getting stuff (get/send email, shopping, searching) instead of gathering up and putting stuff on a web site. Too bad, because putting stuff on the Internet is the source of at least half the fun, and more importantly, the only source of whatever financial reward there is in having an Internet connection and a fancy computer in the first place.
- Build a secure, beautiful, easy to use site in minutes for free
- Publish your stories, videos and pics or sell your product or service
- Make money by displaying ads on your site
- Set up an Amazon affiliate store, make 4-11% on every product sold through your site
- Share your site with whoever you want, worldwide
- Create a secure team workspace, invite collaborators, family, etc.
You may not be unemployed (yet), but if you’re starting to feel the need for a site, read on… Most people don’t have web sites, but it’s becoming more of a necessity for lots of reasons. (Facebook and other portal pages count as web sites of a sort, but you don’t learn much about “real” web sites there.) It might be because people, such as yourself, think they don’t have the time, or a good enough reason to put one together, especially with the economic crunch. It can be pretty hard to chase a dream or tell your story when chasing the almighty dollar or euro consumes all your time. Even homeless people have blogs, perhaps because they have time and a story to tell.
You may have a job and not enough time or reason to focus on a web site. But what if you’ve just been laid off? Or what if you’re retired but still want to work at your own pace? What if you’re a stay-at-home type and looking around for Internet opportunities? What if you simply have a ton of pics and videos you’d like to share with friends and family, or a local service or some type of product to sell? Whatever you have to say, show or sell, there’s nothing stopping you from having a web site, really. It certainly isn’t because having a full blown site is an expensive proposition. Sites can be free or cost millions depending on what the objective is. The choice of how much time and money to spend creating a web site is yours.
It all starts with a choice to build a site.
Think big, but start small: You may not have a site yet, but you probably have a digital camera and thousands of images stored on your computer, along with videos you’ve shot. Maybe you’ve written stories or keep a journal on your computer for easy access. Or would like to build a family journal and share it with everyone you love.
When you want to share pics, videos and text with others you probably use email to send them to people in your address book. When you create a web site, you make it easier for people you care about reaching to find you. Online, like the Internet was meant to be.
Take a few minutes to join a photo site like Picasa and upload your pics there. Then it’s easy to inject them anywhere you want, on your site, in email, or for downloading.
Bad things can happen to your stuff if you don’t back it up. A web site is a great backup for your precious stuff, plus it lets you pick the best of the best of your media, the funny pics, the memorable images, along with videos and text and share it all with whoever you want: Only for your eyes, or with a small group of viewers and/or contributors, such as a family or a business. Or open it up to the whole world. The choice is yours.
You can build a great-looking site in a few minutes at http://www.blogger.com, or http://www.wordpress.com. Signup, choose a template, fire up the post editor and slam in some text and upload a pic or two to see how easy it is. Bam, you’re done creating your site and the first post. You now have a page on the Internet.
And to make it easy as Pi you can access the site admin section from any browser, even share the publishing with others, or restrict who can see the page. You don’t need any special software or tools, it’s a visual working environment, not unlike those Microsoft applications you probably use, so you don’t need any special technical abilities other than a bit of patience and persistence. It also helps if you have something credible to say or sell. Your site won’t last long posting cute pics of your pets…
The only downside of the free approach is that your domain name will be a part of some other domain name, such as http://yourdomain.blogspot.com or http://yourdomain.wordpress.com.
But there’s an upside with the free approach because you’re not locked in. The work you do on these free sites is easily migrated to a site running http://www.yourdomain.com.
So you may not have a web site, yet. But with or without my help and prodding, hopefully you’ll find your home on the Internet.
If you build it, you’ll find something constructive to do with it. Maybe you’ll even build multiple sites, one professional and one for you and your friends and family stuff. So don’t be a techno-wimp. Dive in and get a page built and figure out what you want to say, and to whom!
Make sure to read the site help files and search the user forums if you get stuck. Remember, there are very few unique questions about developing a site or solving problems. Somebody somewhere has doubtless asked the question burning in your mind: all you need to do is search with the exact question you want to find possible answers. If you pose the question to a search engine you’ll find yourself in answer heaven.
But if you get stuck, just ask me and I’ll do what I can to help.
Please feel free to contact me.
Good luck!
