How to Create a Successful Website

You have a successful website if it's doing what you want it to do-- without lots of roadblocks and not in a costly way..

If not, lucky for you, this hub is for you! :-)

If you're into learning technical stuff however, may I suggest you visit my friend Stormy's hub.

She wrote an excellent article A List of Essential Web Design Skills

Personally, if I start trying to learn a subject I have very little clue on, it would take me a long time before I could start making a great website which means zero income for me as I learn the tricks. How long I don't know. I would rather pay $300-$400 per year to get something that won't drain my brain so that I could focus on building my business and get customers coming in as soon as possible. So, no lengthy computer books for me. Hopefully, the money coming in is enough to fund the $300-$400 I plan on spending per year. But that's a risk I'm willing to take.

If you want to make a website, ask yourself what your purpose is for making one.

If your main purpose is to store and display pictures, I would suggest you check out photobucket.com, flickr.com, dotphoto.com or Kodakgallery.com. You could upload your pictures on their site easily. Your pictures will be viewable anywhere you go. It's a safe way to access your photos wherever you are although it's still a good idea to back it up at home. Sharing your pictures with friends and relatives or with anyone is free to a certain point.

You can also order prints and albums (with your selected photos already printed inside).The price is reasonable and sometimes have promotions. Most of the companies allow you to customize calendars, albums, mugs, shirts using your pictures. These would make as wonderful gifts.Try many or all of them.

Be aware that some have certain limits on the amount of pictures or files you can store on your site. They might charge you extra if you go over it. A trick is to open different accounts with different names and you virtually have an unlimited storage.

If your main purpose is to connect with your family and friends, Instead of making a website from scratch, I would suggest you sign up with facebook.com, myspace.com or friendster.com. You invite "friends" who will be able to see your website, your blog, your pictures and everything else you do on your site, as long as they sign up too.You could set it to private if you want to so you could limit the people that have access to your site. Personally, I prefer facebook. It is easy to use and has a lot of members. You also have a lot of things you could do to customize your page.

If you plan on having an online business or want your online business to be more successful, I suggest following what many successful people have done online. They used Site Build It or SBI. This way, you skip many of the problems and roadblocks that other online business owners have experienced.

Two weeks ago, I bought SBI myself and signed up as one of their Affiliates.

Affiliates are common among web hosts. Actually, it's not just common among web hosts, it's common among ALL sorts of businesses. Amazon has them. Ebay has them. It's a way to reward people for referring their business to another individual, and I think that's just fair.

Personally, if I'm impressed with a product, I get passionate about it. I'll start talking about it. If the company rewards me for driving customers to them, so much the better! If you do sign up with SBI, I suggest you sign up as an affiliate too. It's one of the best around. They treat their affiliates fairly.

I hope to reach those who are contemplating on buying a cheap website for their business. You know those free and $4.99 ones? Those are just lures. You can't make anything useful for your business out of those sites. I've tried them myself. It's a waste of time. You'll want to upgrade, and upgrade some more...til it's no longer cheap! I also hope to reach those who are contemplating on buying expensive websites. I've had a beautiful website before. All complete. All it didn't have was traffic. It was like a big mansion in the middle of nowhere. I hope you don't start building it until you see SBI and know what it can do for you. I also hope to reach those who already have an online business but need a better way to drive traffic there. Maybe SBI can help you too.

I'm not sure how I could explain SBI clearly to you. I'm a mom and I'm definitely not a web designer. I'm not an expert w/ the terms in a way to explain things to you clearly in my own words. I'm also not as articulate as Toby and Lisa in the videos. I'm still studying SBI at the moment but I want to help you. I know that like me, many of you want success with their online businesses. I saw Lisa from youtube and she explains things very clearly. I hope that by putting these wonderful videos made by these successful SBI owners, you will have a clear picture of what the company is and what it can do for you and what you need to do to be successful.

I don't know if you could call it that way. What I know is that Ken Evoy, the President of SBI made a contest for SBI owners to make videos of how they love SBI. The winner receives $10,000.

Personally, I don't think it's wrong to reward people with something they worked hard for. I mean, making good videos take time (and time is money) and it takes the right knowledge to make it look nice.

Also, I don't think it's easy to fake love for a company. If these people are just in for the money, you won't see the love in their eyes nor the passion they have for SBI.

For infopreneurs

For students

For service sellers

For auction/ebay sellers

For affiliate marketers

Selling E-goods?

For Work at Home Moms

For Retirees

Selling Hard Goods

Webmasters

Into Real Estate

Into Network Marketing

Sales/Rentals

A Finder/ Referrer

Into Travel

Please take a moment to check out the site to see the results of hundreds of users. (Sorry, link removed) It includes thumbnails of their websites and their rank in the search engine.

Being ranked high in the search engine is very very important. If you're listed in the search engine but are low on the list, nobody will find you. Maybe they will, but only if they've exhausted the first few on the list. SBI will show you how to rank high on the search engines. That's the way to get traffic who could eventually be your customers. NO html knowledge required.

Here's what I got:

Top 10 web host from http://www.top10webhosting.com

1. Monster Host
2. Blue Hosting
3. Host Gator
4. Yahoo!Small Biz
5. IX Web Hosting
6. Lunar Pages
7. WHP
8. PowWeb
9. EasyCGI Windows
10. Starlogic

Top 10 Web Host from http://www.web-hosting-top.com

1.Host Monster

2.Blue Host

3.IX Web Hosting

4.Go Daddy

5.Lunar Pages

6.Yahoo Web Hosting

7.Mid Phase

8.Host Excellence

9.1&1 Internet Web Hosting

10.Vista Pages

Somebody from Youtube said that the top spots on these lists could be bought for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. I don't know how true it is, but I noticed SBI did not even make it to the Top 10 lists of this two companies!:-(

After looking at the lists, I went to Youtube.com to see if these Top companies have happy customers too. I wanted to compare them with those made by SBI customers.

I searched for a few minutes, typing different company names each time. After about 20 minutes of searching I could not find anything close to the videos made about SBI, so I gave up (am I impatient?)! I did not bother to look at those at the bottom of the lists anymore.

I thought, "Aren't these companies good enough? Why don't people make videos about them?"

I don't have anything against these companies. In fact I've bought several domain names from Godaddy.com. I think they are a wonderful company to buy domain names. They are there to provide services the way they know how. But to build an online business, you'll also need Traffic. You need lots of support.You need to be seen by those who need your products or services. If you have to pay a lot to get traffic to your site,it will be hard for your business to survive. What's business without traffic? A dead business!

To see a detailed comparison between Yahoo, 1&1 and SBI click HERE. (When you reach this page, you'll need to scroll down to the middle and click to where you'll see the blue highlighted words "Click here to compare SBI! with Yahoo and 1&1")

I think it's a good idea to use that table to compare SBI with others on the Top 10 web hosts on the lists or on those you're currently using or plan on using.

There are many ways of earning money online: selling on Ebay, on Amazon, becoming an affiliate of these two companies and many others, using google adsense, blogging, etc. However, in order to be successful, you need to have the right tools.Without the right tools, you'll end up like the rest of online businesses that failed or didn't grow much during their first year. How do you know you're using the right tools? If many people from different backgrounds have been successful using it, then you have the right tools. SBI is the right tool. If you don't believe it, you owe it to yourself to check them out.They show you many ways to make money on your website, so you have multiple streams of income coming in. They have so much resources, I can't even count them! Their site has a support forum so you can ask questions when needed. Those that answer you are SBI users themselves and they will talk from their experience.The forum is NOT manned by sales/customer reps. who could only give scripted answers.

I have to ask this question because I know a lot of you are thinking about this somewhere in the back of your mind.

All I can say is that SBI is not a scam. No, I haven't checked their background. I only checked http://www.ripoffreport.com. The only comment I saw for SBI(Site Build It) or Sitesell is a lady who complained of her money not being refunded to her when she asked for it. I did not read through it all since it was getting so long.

But here is what I'd suggest if you worry about refunds. This applies to any company you deal online. I'm talking from my own experience with refunds. Print the agreement. Print the guarantee and pay with your credit card. If you have to cancel a subscription or service, do it within the specified time(better still, do it 2-3 days ahead, to cushion yourself from unexpected delays , emergencies or forgetfulness), and do it via phone and in writing, make sure that you send a copy of the email to yourself too. Better still, send it through priority mail w/ return receipt. That way, you'll know if the company received your request. Follow up w/ a phone call. Jot down the date and time of the call and who you spoke with. Keep all the correspondence you have. Check to see if your credit card has been credited back. If not, contact your credit card company and dispute the charges--in writing. Make sure you keep the correspondence you have w/ them too, until you get the results you need. Usually, if they have evidence that supports your claim, they'll be able to reverse the charges.

I hope I've provided you with some valuable information you could use. If you're happy with these information and would like to give me credit for bringing it here, I hope you'd CLICK HERE or on any of the links in this site to go directly to sitesell. Entering another person's URL on the address bar however, then going to sitesell would probably give credit to the person owning that address.

PS. If you plan on using the information here, DO bookmark this page, add it to your desktop or add it to your favorites. You'll find it easier then.

(I will update this hub with a link to my SBI site when I'm done making the site. My target date is the end of April to middle of May 2007. Feel free check it out at that time)

Please feel free to post a comment, a question or send me a message. Thank you!