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Thanks to easy availability of software and service provider, it is not difficult to start a website. If you have ever dropped some food particles in a pond full of fishes, you'd have seen the hustle among them rushing in to wherever their foods float. It's a near-similar scene in website launching.

Just drop a faint hint that you need a website, and there will be no dearth of 'experts' coming to your 'rescue'. There are just too many web designers, content writers (like me) and search-engine-optimizers, each of whom claiming he knows all there is to know. The crowd is so thick that you'll soon be sucked into a vortex of suggestions and opinions, and before you know what it is that you really want, you'd have in all probability written your advance check to one or more experts for your website.

Lest you start thinking that I'm a typical skeptic, let me come clean. It's not that you don't need a web designer, a content writer or a search-engine-optimizer. But before you need any of them, you need to know what your website will be. In other words, the first step before you start a website is to understand why you need it anyway, and how you are going to give it the shape that fulfills your requirement for it.

Sounds confusing? But it is not. Too many websites start without a good amount of homework only to fail unnoticed and unceremoniously. If you feel your website must have a well-formulated direction to thrive and grow, you'll appreciate the need for what I call 'pre-research' before you plunge into actually starting your website.

Okay, so where do you start? I've with me a video action guide (rest assured, it's FREE of cost) that will take you through the steps of knowing why you need a website and what steps you ought to take to make it a success. What does the guide say? Here they are in brief.

Why you need a website?

In most cases, the short answer is you want to earn money by offering product or service through your website. It's lot simple said than done. Why? Since your earning can only come from expenses made by visitors who will come to your site, isn't it natural that your website is able to attract them in the first place? Which means your website must have something in it so that visitors feel compelled to come, and then again feel compelled to buy your product or service.

That something is 'content' that makes up your website, and the underlying concept is called 'pre-selling'. It means your content should be such that it is able to convince your prospective buyer that he would stand to benefit by buying your product or service. Clearly therefore, content - sufficient amount of it - comes first before any attempt to even think of monetization. Here we go to the next step.

What will be your contents?

Let's appreciate that the fundamental reality of people using the net is that they are constantly looking for information. If you cannot provide it, someone else will, and people will go to other websites, not yours.

Once you recognize the need of lot of contents, comes the next step - what your contents will be? Remember, your target is to attract large number of visitors, while at the same time, your content has to reflect your core expertise, your niche ability. You therefore need to unearth keywords or key-phrases that not only belong to your core ability, but also have enough popularity (and therefore, profitability) among web-searchers.

Develop your site concept

Once you've brainstormed your keywords (yes I call it brainstorming, because it's not only finding keywords as many excellent tools like Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker offer you, it's about making a connect between keywords, profitability and relevance for your site), you need to advance to the next step - developing your site concept.

A host of issues comes here. You have to define your site structure like an inverted tree. The home page will have the most relevant keyword, branching thereafter to next level of say 8 to 12 pages, each of which will further branch off to several pages, and so on. While each page has a unique keyword, the focus will be to maintain relevance with next higher level. If needed, you may have to brainstorm your keywords again so that your site structure gets a wholesome shape.

Work out monetization plan

You may wonder, why this now! The point is your website has to earn money at the end of the day. So even though you do not launch any monetization effort until you've sufficient content, you need to have clear idea as to how your content will deliver cash as and when the time comes.

There can be many ways of monetization, for example, selling product/service, being affiliate, hawking site-space to advertisers, email marketing, and so on. Depending on which ones you choose, your site structure will accordingly re-orient/modify. Remember, content always precedes monetization for the simple reason that it is the content that attracts your visitors and then compels them to part with money.

Conclusion

If you're overawed and feel deterred by whatever is told above, I've only this to say - Get Real. If you do not have endless supply of money to splurge on costly ads, the only way is to plan things out. Let's recall the famous equation:

Actual Income = Total Income - All Expenditure

But suppose you do have pots of money for ads. In that case too, you need planning, for ads will only fetch your visitors to your website's doorstep, not compel him to do you favor. For that once again, you need to plan your website.

Coming back to where I started, if you are intent that your website must succeed, begin by seeing this free video action guide now to get going. You'll be glad you did.

Article Source: http://wah-articles.work-from-home-directory.com/

About the Author

Partha Bhattacharya is an experienced web content provider. He suggests referring successful case-studies, which will help you achieve success with your website.