Have you ever wondered why people are so into Create a Blog these days? Blogosphere cites the average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period as being 900,000. Perhaps even more impressive, 81 languages are represented in those posts. Wow! It may not be that apparent if you’re not a blogger yourself, but there are plenty of reasons why blogging has become so incredibly popular in today’s online culture. Money, fame, cathartic release… do YOU need a reason to become a blogger? Try these out:

Create a Blog

1. Report – Some blogs have become respected sources to get daily news and projections from trusted people.

2. Self-Promote – Let employers know you are a skilled worker looking for a job or promote your services.

3. Share – Create a blog to share photos, videos, thoughts, whatever you find amusing.

4. Profit – Make a great blog in a niche market and sell advertising to make a nice full-time or part-time income.

5. Persuade – Many bloggers write with the intention of influencing others whether it be politically or otherwise.

6. Enjoy a Pastime – Become a part of a community of people who like to spend their time doing what you do.

7. Connect – You can read your family and friends’ blogs and they can read yours. Stay tuned into each others lives in a busy world, and without paying long distance charges.

8. Voice – Some people start blogs with the intention of getting their voice heard. Discuss major or minor topics with your audience.

9. Express – Perhaps more than anything, the Internet is somewhere you can vent and feel like the entire world can hear you… but you don’t have to be “seen” doing it, unless you want to.

10. Endorse – Create a Blog for your business. All you have to do is find something people want to write and read about that relates to your business. Display your own ads on your blog or lose the subtlety and openly endorse your product within your blog.

11. Lend a Hand – Write about a topic to help others understand, do it themselves or get a question answered.

12. Sell – Many blogs are all about selling a product or service. There are subtle and not-so-subtle ways to sell in your blog.

13. Dish – Some blogs don’t make sense at all. Some bloggers just want to get their opinion out or tell a funny story. You can too.

14. Explore – Since you’re new to blogging it can be a great way to explore the variety in this world without leaving your desk.

Go to List of Website Design Tutorials | Create a Blog

From: Ingenious Web Studio - Web Design & Development Services

WordPress CMS is publishing software that was created to make the publishing experience more user-friendly for the authors of websites. It is open-source software that focuses on ease-of-use, fast uploading and posting features, and a straight-forward experience. Although WordPress CMS is great software that is easy to use, it is not for everyone. WordPress CMS is great for blogging, but may not be necessary for your website. If you are sure that you want to try WordPress CMS, then read on to see how to apply it for your website.

Using WordPress CMS

The first step is to install the WordPress CMS software on your web server. You can also install it on your home and/or office computers or an intranet. WordPress CMS gives you full control over your website content so you do not have to worry about going through a third party to make modifications to your site.

Create different levels of accessibility to your backend for different team members. For instance, give your content writer the ability to post new blog updates, but restrict their access to other features they won’t need.

Next, create different user profiles for each author on your blog. Control what contact information is displayed for each user.

You can use templates to make fast changes to web pages within your site. WordPress CMS allows you to update any part of your weblog without having to generate new pages each time.

Allow your users to subscribe to different sections of your weblog. Readers will not necessarily want to read all of your posts, but they may be interested in one category that you write about every so often. When you set up your site with different categories for your readers, they have the option to subscribe only to the categories they in which they are interested. This gives you greater opportunities for increased – and more loyal – readership.

Post to your site often using WordPress CMS. The software was specifically designed to make your job fast and easy, so take advantage of it. When you update your site frequently, your readers know that you are still actively involved in the site and they will want to hear the latest news.

Maintain your site with photos, videos, and other media that will make your site visually appealing to you readers. Use video to demonstrate certain visual aspects of your topic or to show your face to your readers to make it a more personal experience. Use audio clips and link to other websites to give your readers a rich experience.

Go to List of Website Design Tutorials | WordPress CMS

From: Ingenious Web Studio - Web Design & Development Services

If you are an aspiring affiliate marketer, designing your affiliate website is probably going to be the most difficult part of the process for you. Most affiliates are business-minded and not so technical savvy, but design doesn’t have to be a struggle for you. You could hire someone to design the website, but this can get quite expensive. Even if you choose to hire a professional for the initial creation of your site, you will probably want to learn the HTML codes for your affiliate products

so you can make small adjustments yourself. In the long run, it will get very costly to call on a professional to do every little design change for you. So, here are some basic design tips to help get your affiliate website up and to keep it working:

Affiliate Website Tips

Focus on Your Niche

You already know this, but let’s reiterate. A lot of affiliate marketers are unsuccessful because they do not implement this step correctly. You must find a niche and create your affiliate website specifically for that audience. Choose affiliate products that solve a problem for your audience. Determine all of this BEFORE you design your site. (It is difficult to solve a problem without first knowing what that problem is.)

Don’t Get Caught Up in the Design, Just Get the Job Done

Once you get comfortable designing, it can be quite fun. It’s easy to get carried away with fonts and colors, but what really matters is getting the job done. These design elements are important, but if you have nothing to base your decisions on then don’t waste time at this stage of the game. Just pick something now, get your site up and running, and test for design elements later.

Choose Simple Software

Consider using a affiliate website builder from your web hosting company. They will often offer this for free as part of your hosting package. Their software is usually very basic, (after all it is free), so you don’t get all the bells and whistles. But you don’t know how to code all the bells and whistles anyway, so don’t worry about it. Again, just get the job done and you can tweak/test it later.

Test It

That brings us to testing. Testing is absolutely crucial to your long-term affiliate marketing success. You need to know what works for which niche markets and which products. You need to change certain design aspects and test them to see what works better. Some don’t consider testing a part of website design, but the reality is that you will need to deal with the layout and format of your website (which is part of design) in order to run most of your tests. So, become familiar with design basics and you will find you have less frustration in the long run.

Go to List of Website Design Tutorials | Affiliate Website

From: Ingenious Web Studio - Web Design & Development Services

Ask any business owner and they will tell you: the latest method for generating new and repeat business is social networking Website. If you’re not already leveraging the power of social networking site for your business, here is how to get started:

Creating a Social Networking Website

Find where your target audience “hangs out” online

Just as you would find your audience in any other media, there are social networking sites that are more popular with certain groups of people. Find which sites are the most popular with your audience and make a priority list of which sites to create first.

Decide on your message

What do you want to tell your audience? Why are you creating a social networking website? Is it to promote a product or make them aware of an issue? Are you trying to establish a connection with your existing customers? Clarify your goals before you begin creating your site.

Now you are ready to begin building your Social Networking Website

The first and most obvious step is to create your profile. Include pictures of yourself and/or your staff members, your product, customers with testimonials (with their permission), anything that might help describe your business.

Make it as personal as possible

People use social networking website to bridge that gap between technology and people. So, wherever you can make your website more personal, you will see more success.

Start posting

Post comments and updates on your website regularly. You never want people to think you have stopped maintaining your site, so frequent updates are crucial. Social networking website is all about keeping people informed of the latest news about your business. You don’t have to always talk about your product, in fact it’s better that you don’t. People aren’t coming to your site to be sold; they come seeking information and perhaps entertainment. Give them additional information about your industry, how-to articles, latest news and related services.

Announce yourself

Make it known that you are a part of the network. Find people to connect with online. Social networking sites make it easy to join communities, search for specific individuals, and connect with different types of people. Just do a search and start commenting on others’ posts. Find friends of friends and encourage your existing readers to refer their friends to you.

Recommend other businesses

that may help your readers get more of what they want. When you endorse others, they will endorse you. Don’t be shy about reaching out to other business owners to create mutually beneficial partnerships.

Go to List of Website Design Tutorials | Social Networking Website

From: Ingenious Web Studio - Web Design & Development Services

Discover more about your family and connect with relatives with your personal website design you may have never contacted. Design a website focused around your family tree and see how many pieces of the puzzle you can find and put together. There are some great sites out there that can help you with this. Do a search for “family tree” and you will find a few good places to start.

Personal Website Design

Do you have a passion for your hobby? Whether it is quilting or backyard railroading, waterskiing or rock climbing, you can showcase your experience and find others who share your interest online. Creating a hobby personal website desiggn is fun and can help you appreciate your interest even more by finding out how many others share your love. You can even set up your site to include tutorials and tips for novices who are just beginning with your hobby.

Your personal website design can also be a fun tool for your family to stay connected. Create a personal website with photo albums, a family tree, a kids section, family reunion calendar, and more. It’s up to you how little or how much you want to put on your website. Encourage other family members to make their website as well or to offer up photos and stories that you can post on your website.

Create a non-profit website. You can even get a website with the .org suffix to show all of your visitors that you represent a non-profit organization. This is a great way to volunteer and help out with a favorite local organization or charity. You don’t have to travel to help out with your favorite charity – you can design a website right from your home office. Post helpful information to give others a chance to get involved. Spread the word and see how many visitors you can get to support your cause. You can even start a fundraising effort online.

Use your personal website design to teach in an area you have expertise. The Internet can be a wonderful and convenient learning tool for all ages. Even kids as young as three years old are exhibiting better computer skills than some adults! With information right at their fingertips, students of all ages are looking to the Internet to learn more about all different topics. Your website can be their avenue to gaining better knowledge in your field.

Go to List of Website Design Tutorials | Personal Website Design

From: Ingenious Web Studio - Web Design & Development Services

Website Development is a process in and of itself. Once you have a real, live website, you may feel as though you can sit back and watch the traffic come in. Wrong. There is a lot involved in actually getting your website Development to function as an effective selling tool for your business.

Successful Website Development

Marketing

Like any other part of your business, you must market your website. You have to get the word out there in order for people to be aware of your website. Then, you must give them a reason to visit your website. What do you have to offer? Is your product going to solve a problem for them? How are you different than your competition? Like your brick and mortar business, you must get people in the door before you can sell anything.

There are hundreds of ways to market your online business; online marketing is a topic that is ever changing and evolving. Just a few examples include Google Adwords, banner ads, affiliate marketing, enewsletters, ebooks, ezines and articles, and social networking sites. You can even market your online business using offline methods. Choose the methods that make the most sense for your business.

Tracking

Regardless of which methods you choose to market your online business through Website Development, it is absolutely crucial to track your marketing. Without a clear picture of what is happening in your business, you will not be able to determine what is bringing the most leads and which leads actually produce the highest profits for your business. Luckily, online marketing is fairly automatic when it comes to tracking. You just have to make sure you use a good tracking method that you can use to easily make sense of your results.

Testing

What do you do with the results of your tracking? The next step is to test your marketing. Drop what doesn’t work or tweak it to see what does work. If one method isn’t working, consider a different channel. Remember to give your online marketing enough time to test each version of an ad. Also, remember that quantity (or amount of traffic) is not the entire picture. Just because a certain marketing method drives a great deal of traffic to your site does not necessarily mean that the traffic is profit generating. Be sure to test your marketing with your final ROI in mind.

Repeat

To grow your business, marketing must be constant and repetitive. Remember that sending out one email blast will not do justice to your business. Marketing is all about consistency and performance. Repeat that which performs and stop doing (or test differently) that which does not perform.

Go to List of Website Design Tutorials|Website Development

From: Ingenious Web Studio - Web Design & Development Services

When creating website and to make it successful, you must always keep in mind what your visitor wants. Keeping them happy and entertained is going to determine how much text to put on your website. Here are some general rules of thumb for the amount of text for your type of website:

Creating Website

The Information-Packed Website

If information is what your customer has come seeking, (i.e. a blog, a how-to site, etc.) then that’s what you give them. However, this does not mean that you need a great deal of text on the home page of your website. You can provide a great deal of information without scaring off your visitor with a thesis-length welcome statement.

Offer them information, little by little. Creating Website headlines and short paragraphs on your home page that give them a taste of the information they’re looking for. Tease them. Include a link to read more at the bottom of your paragraph. If they truly want more, they can click and read the entire article on that topic. This is good for search engine optimization as well, if you do it correctly and link using your target keywords. Generally, the deeper your visitors go into your website, the more they are interested, and the high ranking your website will achieve with the search engines.

The Store

If your website is your online store, then you need to be careful about how much and how little text you display. Give your customers a few sentences at a time. Think of it as a magazine that sits on a shelf at the checkout stand. Your visitor will pick it up and thumb through it, and possibly purchase it, if your cover is designed correctly. If there is too much text on your cover (i.e., your homepage) then you will lose a potential sale. Pictures are a must for selling most tangible – and even many tangible – items. Use a balance of eye-catching pictures and clever, descriptive text for your online store website.

The Social Networking Site

When trying to determine how much text to put on your social networking site, compare it to an email forward: If you open the forwarded email and begin reading, it is at that point that stop and think to yourself, “I don’t care what the punch line is; I’ve wasted too many seconds of my life reading this email.” Whatever the amount of text you’ve read at that exact breaking point is about three times the ideal amount for your social networking site. Hint: People visit your social networking site to do three things. First, to be amused. Second, to catch up with your latest life happenings. Third, to check out what you have to offer (if you are a business or organization). You must keep their attention for each of these purposes.

When in Doubt, Test

If you’re unsure as to what is too much or too little text in Creating website, then test it. Create two versions of the same page with the same purpose, one with lengthy text and one with shorter text. Track your results to see which one outperforms the other.

Go to List of Website Design Tutorials|Creating Website

From: Ingenious Web Studio - Web Design & Development Services

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different kinds of websites out there on the World Wide Web. Think you don’t need one? Consider these scenarios to create website:

Scenarios to Create website

I’m an established business owner with a small business in a small town

Creating an online storefront can boost your business by allowing your customers to view your product or read about your services before they visit your brick-and-mortar store. It can also be a means for your business to grow outside of your local area.

I’m a person who wants his voice heard, but doesn’t have the means to campaign for change

Create a blog or social networking site and speak to the world! Use online tools to drive traffic to your site, campaign for change, or simply write an online diary of your deepest thoughts.

 It’s been years since I’ve seen some of my closest friends from school. I wish I could find them and just catch up

Use the Internet to pick a social networking site (or several) that meet your needs. Create your own page (or “profile”) and begin searching for your old classmates. Update your page often with content and photos so they know what is going on in your life.

I’m an entrepreneur who wants a fast and low-cost way to start my business

The Internet is perhaps the least costly way to launch a business in the world today. Go online to research some create website and design tools that are free or very low cost. Get the advice you need to market your new business online as well.

I’m a stay-at-home mom who wants to contribute to my household financially, but I don’t want to leave my kids at childcare while I work at a traditional job

Many moms and dads alike are discovering the power of telecommuting. Create a career profile of yourself on a social networking site that highlights your skills. Or create website of your own and give your web address out to potential employers. Better yet, create website of your own online business and work from home to create supplemental income for your family.

My husband and I started a non-profit but we have had little luck getting the resources we need to make it work

Create website online and use it as an informational tool. Make others aware of your cause and the need for funding, lobby for funds, and find volunteers all via the Web.

Go to List of Website Design Tutorials|create website

From: Ingenious Web Studio - Web Design & Development Services

A user-friendly website is a successful website. Here are a few tips to get yours going:

Steps to get User-Friendly Website

Search Feature

Provide a search feature so your users can easily find what they’re looking for. This is especially important for weblogs with archived articles. Archives are usually sorted by date, so having a search box saves your user time. Also consider categorizing your blog posts by topic instead of by date for this same reason.

Light vs. Dark Contrast

For your overall User-Friendly Website, it is best to use a light-colored background with dark text for the body of articles. Dark backgrounds and lighter text should be reserved for small feature boxes (i.e., sidebar features) or ads. White text on black background is eye catching, but nobody wants to read pages of it.

Consistent, Clear Navigation

Keep your navigation the same across all pages within your website. It should be clear to your users when they click a link whether they are being taken to another page within your site or if they are exiting your site altogether. (Also see below regarding link titles.)

Copy what Works

When in doubt concerning the design of your User-Friendly Website, take a hint from your competition. Find someone who is successful in the same or similar industry as you and copy their design. This doesn’t mean copy it exactly. If the structure and layout of their site makes sense, then use that as a foundation. Do not copy colors, fonts, and other signature or branding aspects. You want to stand out in the crowd. Once you’ve copied what works, then one-up the competition with better service, more eye-catching design, and richer content.

Contact, Help & Feedback

Your users should easily be able to access your contact information, your help desk, and easily give feedback. If there is a problem with your site or if the user has a question, they want help now. Consider using live chat help or giving your users a toll-free number to call for 24/7 support.

Faster Page Loading

Try to use smaller image files whenever possible. It will help your page load faster and will avoid turning off your visitor. (If users have to wait for your page to load, they will most likely click the back button and explore another website to find what they’re looking for.) Also avoid slow-loading flash presentations before entering your site; although they are pretty, these too are offensive to your user.

Don’t Annoy Your Users

Avoid pop-ups and other distracting annoyances that may turn visitors off of your page. It is annoying to find a page, start reading, and then get a window popping up in your face. Some businesses may use this tactic as a means to get users to fill out a form or buy a product, but if it offends the user they are not going to take the desired action anyway. Instead, consider creating an eye-catching box on your sidebar that asks them to fill out a form or that promotes a certain product. This is much less intrusive than a pop up window. Other annoyances to avoid include abrupt background music, flashing advertisements, ugly color schemes, and too much text.

Use Link Titles

Links titles are brief descriptions that pop up when the user scrolls over a link on your web page. It should clearly describe in a few words the page they will find themselves on if they were to click on that link. (Note: The text in the link itself should also be descriptive, but if it is within an article sometimes it is not enough to give the user an idea of where that link will take them. Use link titles to give them supplemental information for the page they will be viewing.)

Open In-Text Links in New Window

Design your website so that your in-text links open a new window instead of taking your users away from the page they are viewing. This way, it is easy for your user to follow that new link, get the information they need, and then click back to the original page when they are ready to

return. This avoids them having to click the “back” button several times to return to the article they were reading or the product page they were viewing.

Go to List of Website Design Tutorials|User-Friendly Website

From: Ingenious Web Studio - Web Design & Development Services

Designing an internet business website is something you’ve always wanted to do. But what product or service can you promote online? There are endless ideas for creating an internet business website. Here are just a few to get your mind thinking…

Internet Business Ideas

Create Income from Your Hobby

Do you have a hobby? Are you an expert at something? Consider turning your expertise into income by creating an online business website promoting your skills. For example, if you are great at wood carving and have a bunch of beautiful pieces lying around the garage, why not sell them online!

Perhaps you have expertise in an area, but have no tangible product related to it. For example, you are a black belt in Karate. You have no tangible product to sell online, but you can promote your skills in martial arts. Perhaps you can create an ebook and promote it online. Offer up your expertise to others who may need your help. Once you gain a trusting and loyal following online, develop your ebook and sell it for profit. When people see you as an expert in your field, they will want to buy what you offer.

Offline Business Owners, Expand Online

If you are a business owner and are not already promoting your business online, now is the time to do it! Almost every business can be enhanced with a web presence. Consider creating an online storefront to sell your products; the internet allows you to reach many potential customers that you otherwise would have no way of marketing to.

If you’re not ready to sell your services or goods online, you can always start with creating a simple blog about your industry. Develop a community of people who are interested in your industry and then consider launching your internet business website.

Inventors or Entrepreneurs

Maybe you are an inventor with an idea or a product that alone does not justify a traditional store. This is a perfect opportunity to make money from your invention. There are hundreds and thousands of websites which promote just one or two products. It is cost effective and easy to begin, which makes an internet business website a low risk way to try out your new invention in the marketplace.

For entrepreneurs, you may consider creating an affiliate marketing website. To do this, you choose an industry and a specific niche market. Seek out products and services that cater to that industry and ask them about their affiliate program. Once you determine which products you want to promote, design your website around that audience. Make your goal to drive traffic to your partners’ websites and get paid from your partners for each lead or sale you provide them.

Go to List of Website Design Tutorials|Internet business

From: Ingenious Web Studio - Web Design & Development Services