O.K. Let's now look at perhaps your biggest decision and what I recommend that you purchase. Designing your own website scares the pants off people who have no experience in this area. Html, CSS, snippets, widgets and anchor text are all words from some elite foreign language to many people and they want nothing to do with creating the site by themselves.My advice here will be as strong as any I can give. You absolutely should know how to create your own website. That doesn't mean you have to do all the editing and updating by yourself, but you definitely should be able to perform those tasks if you have to. You get a much better feel for the site, can make changes on the fly instead of waiting for someone to do it for you and you develop a continuity on your website that is apparent to your visitors(especially for a medium or large site). And guess what? It is not that difficult! I should clarify that. Creating your website is not difficult providing you choose the right software.
What we want is a site creator that will do the things we(Internet marketers) will want to do. Managing affiliates and AdWord campaigns should be tightly integrated into the software and creating the site should be modular in nature so as to allow for very quick site designs and fast turnaround times. XSite Pro is my choice for best site creator software. It was developed especially for the internet marketing community and has many features that target the types of functions that we will need to do all the time. Working with Adsense or Affiliate code is a snap and publishing is done right within the program. It also has search engine optimization features built right into the program and the snippet utility is great when you need to add an html script within a web page. Site development is done within a modular page layout environment, making it possible to create numerous pages within a short amount of time. This is what I am personally using and I have nothing but positives to say about this software. I give this software my highest recommendation.
A very close second(I will need to explain this) is Site Build It! Site Build It!(SBI) is an all in one product that was developed by internet guru Ken Evoy. Like XSite Pro it is a website creator but it goes far beyong building a site. SBI also includes a hosting service with site statistic tracking capability that comes with the base package. A keyword research tool is also included for your Adwords and Adsense campaigns; again, as part of the base price. But there is much more. Different search engine optimization functions are neatly tied into the program and you also have submission capability to all the necessary website directories. Another great component is the autoresponder that comes with SBI with which you can set up email and newsletter campaigns. It is a great product but it is expensive. You will need to pay $299, but that is for only 1 year so, in effect, you are buying a subscription plan where each year will cost you $299. Still, if you want to have a resource that holds your hand from start to finish, Site Build It! is the one for you. I made the conscious decision to seperate the different tasks in the website design/optimization process rather than have one company handle it all for me. But you may very well decide that the all enclusive nature of this product is just right for you. It is the best all in one service that I have found.
Next time, I will talk about the best self-study courses on Internet Marketing that I have found and why I recommend that at least one course is part of your learning curve.
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