Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, the list goes on. Through YouTube, Google and Amazon.com, sites which have sprung up as if from nowhere to become integral parts of the lives of millions of people all across the planet, these regular people have come from relative obscurity to attain uberwealth, all thanks to the wonders of the net. If their cases illustrate anything, it is that while Rockefeller and Abramovich operated in an era where oil represented a rich field that could make them almost unlimited money, future riches lie inside servers and computer chips. The net commands a huge, global audience. Already, Internet advertisement has surpassed print media in terms of advertising revenue, and some television stations are already feeling the pinch, as the bigger websites start to attract more prestigious advertisers than them. Pricewaterhouse Coopers, an international auditing firm, reported this year that Internet advertising revenues were up on last year by over 18%, despite the slowing global economy.
The one conclusion to draw from all this is that if you want to get money, you need to get yourself online. "Being online" can take on several different forms, but one thing is for sure - if you really want to promote yourself, you need to get a website. In the modern age, that can take on a lot of different forms. Some successful bloggers have managed to make money by building popular blog sites that incorporate advertising. Sites like Blogger.com allow users to add programs like Google's Adsense, a tool that adds relevant advertisements to your website to promote sponsored web contents. For example, if your blog is about Korean baseball, Google will pick up on the keywords "Korea" and "baseball", and can allow advertisers to have related links to their sites on your blog. When people click on these links, this can transform into revenue for you. In Korea, big companies have even been known to get in touch with the makers of successful blogs to offer to pay to add their advertising banners to these sites.
However, if you have a business, or you are serious about promoting yourself online, many believe that you now need to think beyond the obvious limitations of a blog. A commercial service that uses a blog's web address (URL) is unlikely to get much attention from most serious customers and investors. The owners of many cottage industries and small businesses have already quickly cottoned on to the fact that the web represents a gigantic potential channel for sales and promotion. If people can get your website as an early hit on Google or Naver, you could be in line to earn a lot of money, but doing so requires a little time and effort. The idea of building your own website fills most people with a sense of dread. The thought of understanding what HTML or Javascript even are, let alone having to plough through lines of code written in those languages, can seem as daunting a task as being asked to decode Egyptian hieroglyphs as history homework.
However, Internet experts say life does not have to be so hard. In fact, a whole host of digital tools can help you to set up your own site without breaking too much of a sweat. Kevin Nulty, who runs the willvideoforfood. com website, makes videos about building your own site which he posts on the net. He says that with an investment of around $15 a month, he has sites that earn him up to $50 in monthly revenue. He says that he does not think that making a site has to be a struggle. "I use the Yahoo site builder tool that comes bundled with the Yahoo web hosting package that I sign up to. It's a little like using PowerPoint," he says, in one of his videos. Indeed, site building tools like Yahoo's are fairly common on the net. The most established software in common use is probably Adobe's Dreamweaver, which also allows users to create contents without having to use HTML, the web's most widely-used programming code.
However, a licensed copy of the latest copy of Dreamweaver will set you back a cool $399, which means that unless you are planning to take up Web Design as a serious profession, you may want to make do with free or shared software solutions. Popular free tools that do not involve having to know or learn HTML include KompoZer, a SourceForge project, which means that it was designed as part of the Open Source movement. This can be downloaded and modified freely. Bluefish is another free web editor, and web specialists say it works well for Mac and Linux users. Lee Yu-mi, a former Graphic Designer at LG Electronics and also an expert in Web Design, says that making your own website does not have to be as complicated as its sounds. She explains, "There are a lot of templates you can use to make the basic frames of your site, and if you are not too fussy about what it looks like, you really don't need much knowledge of graphics at all."
However, Lee thinks that although design does not have to be a consideration, if you want people to keep coming back to your site, you are going to have to offer them something new every time. "People get fed up with seeing the same design and layout every time they come to your site. A simple frame with easily changeable contents is the best solution. Just look at how Google do this, if you want examples. During the Olympics, the Google logo was changed every day to depict a different sport," she says. The most important thing in any website, though, is usability. If web surfers get frustrated with your site, you can be sure they will click on the red cross at the top right hand corner of the screen in a mere instant. Lee notes, "If your site is userfriendly, that is far more important than whether it has fancy graphics in it or not. If it takes too long to load, people won't be back to visit again."
Dos and Don'ts
Do
Link to other people's sites and try to get other people to create links to your sites. The whole notion of "surfing the web" is based on people clicking on links and banners. Minimise the amount of text you use on a page, and maximise other visual contents. Having funky designs and interesting pictures on a website looks good. Chunky paragraphs of unnecessary text look bad. Less text is definitely more in the modern age. Make sure that, at all costs, your page does not take too long to download. Flashy graphics and amazing artwork is all very nice, but the patience of the average Internet user is incredibly short. Try to avoid using graphics that require users to download Flash players or install Active X commands, as not everybody can be bothered to do so. Try to consider multiple platforms, if possible. In the future, we might be using all sorts of devices (television sets, mobile phones, and so on) to access the net. If possible, try to design for a variety of different user platforms to stop accessibility from becoming an issue.
Don't
Link to your competitors, or make a website domain that is too similar to that of a competitor. You might end up promoting their goods more than your own. Hire a web designer without some careful pre-planning. Most designers are great at designing, but probably have little experience in programming and vice versa. If you are really looking to dazzle your customers in the era of Web 2.0, you may need a separate programmer and web designer. People are rarely able to do both well enough to please customers who only respond to a richer Internet experience. Ask to see a portfolio before you sign on the dotted line. Forget to check your site. If a page is crashing, failing to load, or loading incompletely, it will cause great embarrassment if you are the last one to find out about it.
Build Your Own Website: A Step-By-Step Guide
Step 1 Choose a name for your site
Choosing a domain name, or a URL, for your site is possibly the trickiest part of the whole process. You will need a name that will seem both interesting and professional if you want to draw in the maximum number of visitors to your site. Unfortunately, as you will notice, many of the funkiest and most innovative names have already been taken. ".com" is by far and away the most attractive suffix to have on the end of your site's name, but most web hosts will ask for more money for ".com" and ".org" suffixes, while ".info" and ".net" are often cheaper options. Check to see if a domain name already exists by typing it into your browser. If you do not get a hit, you could be safe to use that name.
Step 2 Get Web Hosting
We are only at step two, and already the jargon has begun. But never fear, Hosting is not a complicated notion. It just means that your page needs a place to live on the Internet. You can register a site at a whole plethora of places that offer web hosting, but the bad news is that it is going to cost you. The amount you pay could be anywhere from $6 to $20, but it is worth shopping around first. Stephen Cope, of www.build-your-website.co.uk, advises users, "The object is not to choose the cheapest, or the one with the most features, but the one that best suits your needs." In Korea, the big three web hosts are Cafe24.com, ktdom.com and Gabia.com, though there are a lot of other options to choose from. Popular non-Korean web hosts include GoDaddy.com and Moniker.com, but again, the choice is broad. Do your research, check out what the sites offer you in exchange for your money, and - if you are not happy, change hosts later down the line.
Step 3 Build your site
Start making your site. Use web building tools, or hire a web designer, to make your site looks the way you want it to look. If you are selling a product that relies on visual impact, like paintings or clothes, you will need a lot of high-resolution photos. Make sure that you have the right to use all photos that you are intending to put on your site to avoid copyright issues. Certain famous individuals have image rights, so if you want to use their pictures on your site, be sure that you have permission first.
Step 4 Create revenue
If you are not selling things on your website, you might want to think about ways that your site can make you money. Google's AdSense is the obvious and most popular promotional tool, but other sites also offer attractive incentives to incorporate their advertising banners. Amazon.com offer a tool which recommends an MP3 track. If someone decides to buy that track, you could be entitled 10% of the revenue. Look into widgets, which are pieces of HTML code that you can copy and paste into your site. These can be used to create advertising banners for other sites, meaning that you could be entitled to commission on clicks and sales redirected from your site.
Step 5 Site maintenance
Having a site up on the net is all well and good, but if you really want to make it work, keep it updated with the latest changes you have made to your company, your life or your product. Leaving your website up on the net unchanged for large periods of time will not impress would-be customers. Have the latest photos and, if possible, a news or media section where you post press releases or the latest news stories about your company.
