We who publish articles online regularly are either mad, making money or have seen the evidence of their Google account building up and are convinced that we can. Supposing they become successful and start making the $2,000 - $4500 per month most people need to live contentedly – how do they move up another rung to make $5,000 - $10,000 per month? The obvious answer is for them to have their own websites. The problem these people find is this is far easier said than done.

Publishing on Publishing sites is easy. You really don’t have to have any skills in computers or even an understanding of the internet. Typically you cut and paste your article into a box (you can’t miss it), add a title, add some keyword tags and press a button. Sites such as Xomba do the rest for you. They have your article listed by Google with 8 hours max. The problem is, when we progress from publishing on line to having our own sites (so we can keep all the adsense revenue it generates and not whack it with our online publishers) we think it is going to be just as easy. It can be too – especially if you are willing to learn by others mistakes.

Here are the AndAnotherThing2’s team’s tips on launching your own websites:

EITHER Learn to do everything yourself – html, SEO, CMS, javascript, implementation codes, yardy, yardy, yarda, blah, blah, blah – and then proceed OR pay someone to do it. We recommend the latter.

If you decide to pay someone to develop your site – make sure they have sites up and running and that they have testimonials. Don’t part with any money until you have thoroughly checked them out and ideally until after the website is launched and proves functional. For a site that looks good – one not bunged together with tired templates, one that functions and one that is designed to be search engine friendly you will have to pay £1,000 minimum – using a reputable company.

If you decide to try and get your first website done on the cheap you will likely lose money and end up paying double what you would if you’d chosen a reputable web-design company. This is the experience of at least six people I’ve spoken to this week!

What if a family member or close friend offers to do everything? It might work but think on. How will your friend react when you call and ask when your site will be going live? You call him next week, the week after that, and every week for months – always some technical excuse you don’t understand. In many case friendships (web designer ones anyway) are often ended in this process. Our advice is keep your money and your friends and select a professional proven, web designer or company.

What about SEO? Search Engine Optimisation is extremely important if your site is to attract sufficient visitors to your site to make it profitable. One reason for using a company for the design of your site is that they will take care of this for you. The system we use was: We paid our design company to do an initial report and suggest keywords – we also added some ourselves. We then only paid when each term made Google page 1. You can enter into a monthly contract but why bother?

Make sure you are not missing out on grant funding for your site. One of our team received 70% of the costs for his website. The total cost was £5,000 but he got £3,500 in a grant. It’s a very slick site and brings in new business and sales every night while he sleeps! It’s developed an international market for him. His grant was dependent on his business location (he’s based in the Midlands) and covered his development project because it was for the development of a Business to Business website. For more information on these grants contact http://individualopportunity.co.uk

Remember, a good website development company not only employs excellent designers, but SEO experts, accredited google adwords specialists, database engineers. They produce your website and launch it in a reasonable time frame.

Good and Google Luck!