When I describe what I do to folks who are not business owners or who don’t operate on the Internet, they’re baffled. “There are plenty of free website templates out there: do you have customers for what you do?”

Yes, absolutely. If you’ve spent any time on the Internet trying to attract customers, you quickly discover that simply putting a website up is not enough. You can set up a website or a blog and have it live in relative obscurity for months, even years. I know this from personal experience…!

“You don’t need to learn HTML to have a website.” That’s true as long as you don’t have a preference as to whether the website is blue or brown or purple. Perhaps you don’t mind that your website looks like the 762 other websites using the same template. However, when you begin to develop a brand for your business and you want your sites to reflect your brand, your colors, your logo, you will start to care very much.

“Have your web designer add this, (and this, and this) to your site.” Why do the experts say use this phrase? Because the assumption is that you as website or blog owner are not willing to learn HTML or Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) skills necessary to make the changes yourself. Perhaps not at first; but as time passes and your sites sit in cyber-obscurity, your priorities change. You can certainly choose to depend on your web designer to make updates, but why not learn how to do the simple things? It makes fiscal sense, and your site updates will certainly move along a lot faster. And on the Internet, fast updates are the name of the game.

When it comes to marketing over the Internet, you need more than just a website or a blog. You’re going to want to create squeeze/opt-in pages, confirmation and thank-you pages, custom HTML for the top and bottom of your shopping cart pages, and of course, pages where you post downloads or giveaways. You can certainly copy and paste from existing pages, but are you confident that you know what to add and what to remove without breaking the template?

There are plenty of things you can do to attract traffic to your site. And what do they usually involve? More often than not, it’s jumping into the HTML or CSS to make changes. The good news is that HTML and CSS are a lot simpler than you think. They’re detailed, but they are not difficult. And that’s where my business is: showing entrepreneurs, virtual assistants, and small business owners a simple method for learning the HTML and CSS they need to feel confident and be competent to work on their own sites.

I’ll have more to say on this subject in the weeks to come. Stay tuned for more of my gentle truth-telling…

Meanwhile, be sure to sign up for Thursday night’s Free Website and Blog Makeover Webinar.

Next Monday Night, February 16th at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern, we’ll
have a “Plan My Website Strategy Session” for 90 minutes. This is a
free webinar where I’ll first talk about how to plan an effective
website, and then we’ll for an on-the-spot brainstorming session for
attendees who request one. If you’re thinking about making changes to
your website, or you want to start an articles directory, or you want
to add a blog to your business, this is the session to attend.

The following Monday Night, February 23rd at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm
Eastern, we’ll have a “Fix My Website, Please!” session where you can
bring your website questions and get them answered. If you have a
broken page or a fuzzy photo, or you need to update your website’s
menu, or you want to change the color scheme on a blog or website,
we’ll dig into the pages and figure out how to make them work.

It’s easy to sign up for one or both webinars: just visit
http://www.fixmywebsiteplease.com/webclassfreepreview.html, and you’ll
immediately receive the GoToWebinar invitation links. Just click on
the links to register for one or both webinars.

Be sure to read all about my PC Power Tips: Create Your Own Website
Course at http://www.pcpowertips.com/webclass. Learning how to create
and manage a website that you truly understand does NOT have to be
expensive! Have the website you want the way YOU want it.

I’ll see you next Monday night!

Toolie®