You might be tempted to jump in and start creating your website without any planning.

But let me say from experience that planning your website will more than make up for the time and aggravation you’ll have if you don’t plan, especially if your intentions are to make money with your website.

I didn’t plan my websites at first either.  I just wanted to start creating and get my site ‘on the air‘ assuming everything would fall together on its own.

That’s exactly when you’ll look back and say “Why didn’t I plan?”

Planning your website will help you know your overall objectives and will save you a ton of time and aggravation as you move forward.

Here 6 planning tips to get you started…

Tip #1: Plan Your Monetization

How do you plan to make money online?  Will you be selling tangible goods or electronic information.  Will you promote other people’s items or services for a share of the profits as with affiliate marketing?  Will you make money advertising?  Will you consider donations?  etc.

It will be these kinds of objectives that will help you determine the type of website  you’ll create.

Tip #2 What Type of Website Will You Create?

For creating sites that you’ll be making money with, you’ll need to choose the best platform for your goals.

For example creating a blog or traditional html website works well if you’ll want to create an informational website and monetize the site using affiliate marketing, advertising or selling information products, but that may not be suitable for an e-commerce business.

An e-commerce website would require programming technology like shopping carts and merchant accounting software, things not s easy to obtain with a blog or many other html site builders.

For informational and interactive websites like blogs, knowing what your monetization goals are will help you determine things like whether or not you’ll have a 2 column website or 3 columns. For example, you’ll need to plan out where to put your advertisements, product promotions and opt-in boxes should you choose to use email marketing. 

ip #3 What Will You Deliver?

Keeping in tune with your monetization what types of information and products will you deliver?

Do some keyword research on the topic of your website to see what people are really looking for when it comes to your site’s topic.  For example, if your topic is ‘exotic Chinese cooking’, what things interest people when they’re on the web looking for  Chinese cooking?

Going to Google keyword tool, I can see that the topics with the most searches include:

• Chinese cooking  utensils
• Chinese cooking knives
• Chinese cooking lessons
• Chinese cooking free Low Calories recipes
• Chinese cookbooks

Those are the things  you’ll want to include in your site’s categories.  You can also get some great information by researching topic related forums and posing questions on sites like ask.com.

Tip #4 Pick Your Website Colors

Picking your website colors might seem easy enough, after all you’ll be inspired to use colors  you like that you think will stand out and create interest.

But keep in mind that color also has emotional and psychological meaning.  So just finding colors that you like or may be what you think will help you stand may not be enough.  You want a nice balance of colors that look well together, are colors that you like but also provide an emotional or psychological boost.

To demonstrate what I mean here’s a recent post I did called choosing y our website color palette.  You’ll also get some ideas of where to find good color combination ideas.

Tip#5 Choose Your Domain name

Finding the perfect domain name is what everyone wants but getting too hung up on just the perfect name can be a show stopper for some.   Choosing a domain name that is easy to remember, describes your website and one that is available can be tricky.

Start by using your site’s main keywords in the domain and keep it as short as possible.  Also don’t box yourself in.  For example, walkingshoes.com is a great domain name but what if you want to expand to running shoes at some point.

Tip #6  Find Your Brand

What are you about?   What’s your personality?  What’s voice do you want to use?   Do you want to be the “cool” site.  Do  you want to be folksy? Are  you humorous?   Are you about being simple and down to earth? Are  you energetic?

Your brand will be the emotional and psychological connection you create with your readers, so find your voice and keep it the theme of your site.

Tip#7  Your Content

Your content can make or break  your website, so you have to go into this with the intention of bringing quality, useful content to your readers.

So before getting started plan the kind of content you’ll be offering for example, here are some ideas:

• Post ‘How to’ information
• Solicit and add Guest Posts from other industry experts
• Post some Q&A on some of the most popular questions that come up, again use your keyword research tool to help you with that.
• Post occasional Industry News
• Publish Useful resources and links

Do you have to create new content every day?  No, but you do want to keep your site current, interesting and useful.  That’s what keeps visitors and the search search engines returning to your site.

Final Thoughts

The little bit of effort it takes to do this planning in the beginning is worth it to the success of  your business.

Your site will probably take on a slightly different look and feel before it’s all over, but that’s OK, as long as you know what your goals are and plan accordingly, you’re a lot more likely to stay in tune with your objectives.

Have you ever gotten stuck  choosing what colors to use on your website?  And just how important is your website color palette anyway?

Experts believe that certain colors can have an impact on visitors to your site, so there is some Psychology at play there.

However it’s not likely that the colors you choose will make or break  the success of your site, but having said that, certain colors could possibly sway a visitors buying mood.

So when you’re planning your website, it can’t hurt to give some thought to the colors you’ll use and try to fit the colors of your site to the mood and flavor of  your site’s topic.

Here’s a quick run down of how the basic colors relate to mood, topics and emotions.

GREEN – Health, Nature and energy saving, and of course money.

RED –   Red is an impulsive, powerful color.  Often used in association with love, passion, romance.  Can also indicate energy, danger, excitement, action and adventure.

BLUE – Calmness and serenity. Blue indicates professionalism and is most preferred by men. Often signifies trustworthiness,  success. It also encourages productivity.  It’s also been known to suppress the appetite.

ORANGE –  Orange incites creativity. It can be aggressive and is used in celebration and excitement.  Orange can also stimulate appetite.  Also a good color for emphasizing a call to action.

PURPLE -  Calming. Used in fantasy.  Often implies royalty, passion,  luxury and wisdom.  Often seen when marketing anti-aging products.   Purple extends a sense of spirituality and encourages creativity.

WHITE – Encourages mental clarity.  Promotes simple and fresh.  Implies happiness, brightness and peace.  Used to describe clean.  Encourages order and being clutter free.

YELLOW –Youth, playfulness and fun.  Mentally stimulating and encourages communication.

PINK – A Feminine fashion color.  Also used for romance.  Often associated with infants and youth.   Pink is a very soothing color and often used to calm aggressions.

BLACK – Decisive, mysterious, unwavering. Can stimulate a sense of possibility or potential.

BROWN – Gives off a feeling of stability and wholesomeness.  Is used in connection with the earth and being natural.  Gives a sense of being orderly.

GRAY – Associated with maturity, security, reliability.  Also associated with loss or depression.

Another thing you can do is take take a look at other websites and examine the colors they’ve chosen.   How do the colors affect your emotions, attitude and decisions about the website?

A few tips for when Using  color on your website

- Be sure to use a high contrast between a page’s background and the text color.

- Pick 3 colors for your website and use them consistently throughout your site.

- Use Contrasting colors when attracting attention.

Resources for help choosing your website color palette:

- Help for choosing complementary color combinations:  http://www.colorcombos.com/

- Hex color codes and coordination guide:  http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/design/color_combinations.php3

- Color palette generator is a cool tool if you have an image and need to know the best colors to complement it.

http://jrm.cc/color-palette-generator/?image=rec%2Fgrass-tile.jpg&steps=3

How did  you decide on the colors for your website?

From my experience, the easiest way to make money with a website is through advertising. It’s how I can take a targeted niche website and turn it into making several hundred dollars a month.

I currently do that with a few of my niche sites and I don’t even promote them, I also don’t get a ton of traffic to the sites either.

Now a few hundred dollars a month doesn’t sound like much, but use this strategy to create several websites and that’s a significant chunk of change every month

But before you take off and run with that, there are a few things that will make a difference in the amount of money you make with an advertising site.

• The niche topic of the site
• The amount of traffic the site gets
• The amount and quality of the content on the site
• How you place your ads and what the ads contain

Creating your website, adding content and getting traffic to your website will be the most critical parts to making the most money.  But I’m not into making things any harder than they need to be,  so at the very least, creating my website has to be easy.  That’s why I use Xsitepro for this type of online business.

I personally love the Xsitepro software and have used it for many years for several of my own sites.  Just take a look at my Xsitepro 2 Review to see why I say that.

One of the things that makes Xsitepro unique, among a ton of other things, is that it comes with advertising wizards that make adding advertising Super easy and effective.

The Xsitepro Adsense feature for instance, makes adding a wide variety of different-sized Google AdSense ads as easy as right-clicking your mouse and selecting your choice menu option…

Of course Xsitepro offers other advertising options including adding Amazon ads, Clickbank  products and adding a PayPal product.

Depending on the topic of your site it is well worth considering the Amazon Ads feature…

What’s even better is that the more popular your site gets, you could also start to see  individual advertisers coming to you with money in hand to post ads on your site.

Here’s a plan of attack for setting up your Advertising Website:

1. Create your niche site using Xsitepro.  If you need niche ideas here’s a free guide I put together that will help:

http://www.homenotion.com/pdfs/nichefinder.pdf

Xsitepro does not come with a hosting service or domain name, you’ll need to get those things before going live with your site, but Xsitepro helps you with all of this and if you get stuck, they have a super forum where the experts are always available to help.

2. Create a professional header for your website.  Grab the  Free Xheaderpro tool.  You’ll get 500 free website headers to choose from.  And in case  you don’t find anything you like, there’s also a free header creation tool that lets you create your own header.  By the way, you can grab the  Xheaderpro headers whether you use Xsitepro or not, it’s free for anyone to use.

3. Start adding content.   Xsitepro makes it easy to add content, so in just a few minutes a day you can add content that will start helping you get noticed.

The best content to add is always your own, but if you need help, you can buy PLR content to make the job a little easier.  Just make sure you add a few of your own ideas to the content to make it unique and interesting.

4. Start promoting your site.   Create a twitter id and  Facebook Wall for your site along with an RSS feed.

Every time you add new content,  shoot it out to Facebook and Twitter.  Your RSS feed will help syndicate your content and keeps others informed of any new content you add.  Here’s how to set  up an RSS feed.

With just 20-30 minutes a day over the course of a month, you should start seeing traffic and clicks on your ads.

Oh …and another great feature of Xsitepro is they have an optimization engine for optimizing your site pages for greater search engine exposure.  That will help you a lot in terms of increasing traffic to your website.

To me, creating an advertising site is by far the easiest way to make money with a website, and using Xsitepro is the easiest way to get set up and maintain your site.   There’s really no excuse to get started

I no longer use Dreamweaver, today I use Xsitepro instead and still consider it the best alternative to Dreamweaver.

Here’s why I say that, or you can simply review my latest Xsitepro Review

Dreamweaver has a fairly steep learning curve and I experienced that just trying to add a few simple graphics to a web page.

One wrong move and my page, that took me 20 minutes to create, was messed up in just a few seconds.  Frustrating.

The Dreamweaver features and tools aren’t easy to figure out. Learning them and applying them took more time and patience than I had.  I needed a better alternative to Dreamweaver, and it had to be quicker and easier to use.

That’s when I got Xsitepro. I was very impressed with the awesome job Xsitepro did of building my first website. The tools were easy to use and my site looks professional.  The price was also right since I’d just paid $400 for Dreamweaver.  Xsitepro is about half the cost.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t looking for a cheap site builder, my online business relies on creating websites that look good and are functional,  so while cheaper was a benefit, I still needed a quality site builder.

Xsitepro is cheaper because it’s not as robust as Dreamweaver, but I don’t need a robust tool.   I don’t develop custom websites that requires advanced web development software.  I simply need an easy website creation tool that builds a professional, quality looking site that users find easy to navigate for my personal business.

What Types of Websites can you Create with Xsitepro?

I’m an internet marketer and I build websites that help me earn an income online, so the types of websites that I build with Xsitepro are:

• Affiliate websites - Build a Content website for your affiliate products
• Business Websites - Build a unique website for your professional or home business
• Personal websites
  
• Informational Niche websites
• Article websites for use with Adsense
• Squeeze page websites for collecting email addresses

Creating Your Webite

The Xsitepro user interface is so much easier than Dreamweaver’s user interface.   There are lots of technical terms and concepts to figure out in Dreamweaver that aren’t as confusing with Xsitepro.

For example, you start by selecting a site template like below…

Once you decide on a site there are hundreds of templates to choose from to suit just about any need.  Just point and click.

Next you’re ready to customize your pages using the page settings

Dreamweaver is for the Pros and Xsitepro makes you look like one.

My objective is to build professional looking websites that won’t take me weeks to complete.  Using Xsitepro I can quickly:

• Create Web pages and graphics or choose from hundreds of website templates
• Insert Tables, videos, audio, advertising, forms, site search, RSS feeds, page breaks etc.
• Add  Meta data for title, keywords and descriptions
• Create Functional Navigation, headers and footers, info bars.
• Add 2 columns or 3 columns

I can even change out a header, sidebar, colors or footers, change fonts, or add graphics with just a few clicks of my mouse. Super easy.

You can add RSS feeds and datafeeds all with a few clicks, and it’s not hard to figure out.

Here’s an example of one of my first websites I built with Xsitepro

http://www.fine-skin-care-products.com

In fact the sister site to this blog was built with Xsitepro

http://www.homenotion.com

The Xsitepro Features that Make it the Best Alternative To Dreamweaver

- The snippet tool makes it super easy to add code without knowing HTML. For example I can quickly plug in code for things like Youtube videos, affiliate links,  articles from article directories, basically any code that I want to plug in without having to know HTML.

- The Search Engine Optimization tool – As I build webpages in Xsitepro I can run the Xsitepro Search engine optimization tool and it will tell me what I need to do to better optimize the page for the search engines.

Dreamweaver still does not have this feature, you’ll need to use external SEO tools to optimize your Dreamweaver website.

- Advertising plug-ins. I can easily add my Google Adsense advertiser code right into Xsitepro.  Doing this lets me simply point and click to get my Adsense ads into my website without coding them in each time.

- Updating or making changes to your website is super easy because you don’t need to use any file transfer or FTP software, Xsitepro uploads your website and any changes you make right from the the Xsitepro application.

With Dreamweaver I was always afraid to touch something because every time I did I’d mess my site up.

- Cool, Easy to use Wizards - Xsitepro comes standard with wizards that do:

- Banner rotator. Add any number of banners to your website and each time your webpage is viewed a new banner will display.

- Image rollover. Choose two images and the first one is displayed while the second is displayed when a visitors mouse cursor moves over the image.

- Add quotes. You can add quotes that will randomly appear on your webpage

- Status countdown. This widget will countdown to a specified date.  For example if you are conducting a sale you can post a display message notifying of the number of days left for the sale.

- Email cloaker. This widget lets you display your email address  on your webpages but cloaks it so it won’t get picked up by the spambots that scan web pages for email addresses.

There are lots  more wizards but the point is that these things would be much harder to figure out and use in Dreamweaver, in Xsitepro they are a lot more straightforward and much easier to implement.

As a side note, if you ever decide to go with Dreamweaver,  you can easily export your Xsitepro website right into Dreamweaver.

If you appreciate video instruction and can follow a tutorial and simple  instructions, you can use Xsitepro to get a website live on the web in about 2-3 hours, minus the content.

The Xsitepro Accolades are Impressive

• Rated “Five Stars” by About.com
• The “Editor’s Pick Award” by Software Informer
• Recommended by PC Advisor

I’ve been using Xsitepro for almost seven years now and I still consider it to be the best alternative to Dreamweaver and I think you will too, especially if you’re not tech savvy but want to create a professional looking websites that ranks well in the search engines.

Here’s why Xsitepro 2  is my best website software of choice, and has been for years.

Here are a few more xsitepro reviews from real users:

http://moneyclicking.net/xsitepro-review.htm

http://www.marketingprofessor.com/reviews/review-of-xsitepro-the-latest-release/

http://www.xsitepro-websites.com/

Choosing a keyword domain name is certainly a sound, logical choice when it comes to helping with search engine ranking but is it really better?

Not necessarily.   I’m not saying that a keyword domain name isn’t worthwhile?  Not at all, it certainly makes perfect logical sense to have your keywords in the URL address of your website, but as more and more websites hit the Web, there will be fewer domain names available for high ranking keywords.

So how important is it to have a keyword domain name?

From my experience a non keyword domain name is not a show stopper .  After all I use ‘Homenotion’, there are no valuable keywords there, yet I do fairly well when it comes to ranking.  For optimal search engine ranking there are far more important strategies that will help you rank well.

Should You Use a  keyword domain name or your Business Name

When choosing a domain name it’s important to first think about your business.  For example, if you’re trying to brand your business it might be wise for you to use a more memorable or brandable name.   On the other hand a keyword domain name may be more descriptive of your website or products.

Don’t be misled into believing that one is better for your website than the other. The ranking success of your website is the effective use of your keywords within your website and web pages.

The second part of the equation  is the number of websites that use keyword backlinks to your site and the third thing, probably the most important, is content.  Including quality content, good keyword optimization and employing the right search engine copywriting techniques are the real backbone of higher rankings.  Without those things it doesn’t matter what your domain name is or even how well you rank in the search engines, if no one finds your site worthwhile you won’t sustain visitors or sales.

Let’s look,  for example, at my Homenotion.com website.  The site comes up on the first page of Google for ‘internet home business ideas’ despite the fact that the word ‘Homenotion’ isn’t a keyword domain name.

Now take a look at the website www.internethomebusinessideas.com.  It’s nowhere to be found for the keywords ‘internet home business ideas’.  To rank well in the search engines your domain name has to have quality, unique content and keyword text links in order to rank well for  your chosen keywords.

Here’s Where the Keyword Domain Name Debate Gets Interesting

With all things being equal, (a site with great content, keyword links, effective SEO, etc.)  would a keyword domain name significantly boost ranking versus a non keyword rich domain name?

It might , but the truth is your domain name is just a name, and in the grand scheme of things a domain name isn’t going to make or break the success of your website, in fact it’s a really small part of what the search engines look at in evaluating your site, in fact according to Matt Cutts,  it’s likely to get even smaller…

Those are my thoughts, now what are yours?

If you haven’t got your website created yet, this may be your best opportunity.

Paul Smithson of  Xsitepro is holding a free webinar tomorrow, Thursday Feb.24 for the new 2.5 version of  Xsitepro.

I’ve been using the pre-released copy of the new version and I’ve got to say it’s taking web site development to a whole new level.

Besides being super easy to use the new version includes of 200 brand-new, professionally-designed
templates, as well as a whole bunch of cool new features.

Before releasing the new 2.5 version to the rest of the world there will be one last webinar tomorrow where they’ll also be offering a discount coupon during the webinar,  so won’t want to miss it.

Check here for the free webinar details.

If you’ve been wanting to get a professional, money making website built that isn’t complicated and will have your site up quickly, head on over to get in on this webinar and discount

One of the things people almost always ask when starting an internet home business is:

“Do I create a blog or website?  How do I decide what is the best platform for my business?

I have my own thoughts on the topic but to be objective I spent some time reviewing three internet home business forums where members asked those very questions.

This is what I found out…

Roughly 7 out of 10 commenters preferred creating a blog over a traditional website.

Personally I own both WordPress blogs and traditional websites.  I like them both, but neither one is perfect.

You can pretty much create any type of online business with either a static website or a blog. The reason you might choose one over the other depends on the type of business you are creating, what you hope to accomplish with your website, how you expect to make money and how technically challenged you are.

If you’re trying to figure out which is the better decision for you, let’s first look at the differences and similarities of why you might choose one over the other.

Reasons for Choosing to Create a Blog

Blogs are typically created by people that have something to say.  They are often experts in their topic of interest or are striving to become one.  Bloggers typically like to write and are creative with their information.

If you’re an expert in your niche topic and love writing, sharing news, ideas and ‘how to’ information, then creating a blog may be right up your alley.

Keep in mind though, that blogs are only as successful as the content they provide.  A successful blogger will go the extra mile to provide unique viewpoints, creative ideas and effective strategies that other blogs don’t provide.

The more a blogger posts to their blog with quality, creative, useful information, the more successful  it is.

Blog owners will typically earn money directly from their blogs through adverting, affiliate commissions or paid reviews. They might also earn indirectly from things like consulting, writing contracts or speaking engagements.

Reasons for choosing to create a traditional website

Traditional websites have become more of a place to describe and sell products or services.  You might think of a website like a storefront.   Although websites are often used for creating squeeze pages, sales letters and for featuring and demonstrating informational products.

A website owner will typically create a home page as an introduction to the rest of the site, then add pages as needed to reflect new products, product changes, company news, sales information, etc.  Websites are not typically interactive, although they can be with the right software.

One big difference with creating a traditional website is that the webmaster won’t be committed to creating daily or weekly content or posts as bloggers do.  Once a website is created a webmaster will focus more on adding occasional content, adding new products, updating products and promotion.

But let’s look a little closer…

Blogs are designed primarily for content management so adding fancy scripts, heavy design and custom shopping carts aren’t as easy to set up on blogs, they require more work and technical skill.

Blogs can be a challenge to set up but once created they are super easy to use and update. You can also easily customize a blog’s functionality with software plug-ins that are easy to install or de-install.

As for traditional website software, they’ve come a long way since I first began online.  I wish I still had my first site, we’d all have a good laugh, LOL. At that time I used a product called Cool page to create my site.  It wasn’t expensive, I think I paid about $25 for it or something close to that, but boy was it cumbersome. It was great if you simply wanted to create a 3 or 4 page website but for anything more it was horrible

After Coolpage I purchased Dreamweaver; talk about going from simplicity to super complex. Dreamweaver is a top contender in quality website design but unfortunately I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone just starting out online. The product has a bit of a learning curve and it took me longer to create my sites than I had expected.

On the recommendation of a friend I switched to Xsitepro, which is considered one of the best alternatives to Dreamweaver, and is what I still use today for my traditional websites.  The product is super easy to install, very easy to use and understand. I can create a new site in about a day, minus the content.

In Short, creating a traditional website today using a reputable website builder can be fairly easy, even for a beginner.

What about performance in the Search Engines, which is better?

A lot of blog owners and forum commenters say that blogs outperform traditional websites when it comes to search engine traffic and ranking.  I have not seen evidence of that.  No doubt, there are blogs that do very well in the search engines but for me personally I have static websites that perform better in the search engines than some of my blogs.

It is true that the search engines will index blog posts faster than static website pages however that does not mean they will perform better.

The truth is your site isn’t going to perform better in the search engines simply because it’s a blog or a static website.  How well your website or blog ranks depends on how you optimize each of your pages, that includes your SEO strategies, your content, your links and how you connect with your target market socially.

One of the nice benefits of the WordPress blogging software is that it has several optimization and promotional plug-ins that you can easily install depending on what your needs are.  To be fair, a quality website building software will offer effective search engine optimization tools as well.

Still Undecided?

A tie breaker might be the cost.  The WordPress.org blogging software is free and anyone can easily learn how to create a blog and get set up quickly.  In fact a good hosting service like Hostgator, which BTW has a Hostgator coupon code for one month free service, will provide free tutorials and unlimited support.

Or you can go with a remotely hosted blogging platform like blogger.com or WordPress.com and you can be blogging within minutes of signing up.

On the other hand, creating a traditional website using a quality site builder, is not free, however you will be able to create an unlimited number of websites.

For those of you still undecided on whether to create a blog or a website, let’s hear from our audience

If you have a blog or a website, what are your thoughts on functionality, ease of use and benefits?  What are your likes and dislikes.

What would you recommend?

A quick heads up: During this last week of 2010, you can get a rare Xsitepro discount which includes my personal favorite, the Xsitepro site builder and The Complete Guide To Website Building, for $100 off! 

Normally each of these products sells separately for $197 each, together they cost $394, but this week BOTH these products are bundled together for $294. 

To get the discount you can simply click the link below which will take you directly to the shopping cart with the coupon already applied:

Xsitepro and Website Building Guide 

This Xsitepro discount coupon offer is good for the rest of this week but ends at Midnight January 1, 2011.

Consider these 3 questions:

• How do I easily create a website when I have not prior experience?
• How do I find an affordable, easy to use website creation software?
• How do I quickly and easily learn how to plan, build and publish a professional website?

If you’ve been asking yourself any of these questions this may be the opportunity you're looking for to help you get started online with a website that is super easy to use and has a step-by-step training guide that will make it even easier for you to create a professional and profitable website.  

If you’ve had your eye on Xsitepro, today is a good day to get both the site builder and training guide at this super discounted offer  

Here's that link again:

Xsitepro and Website Building Guide