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I like the program because Jim is a down-to-earth man who shows you every step by letting you look over his shoulder as he works (plus, he cracks me up when he makes mistakes too!).
You may decide that you will learn later how to create and modify web sites and that is just fine. I personally have gone through the entire “Mini site Creator” course enough to know that I am better off by hiring a webmaster (I actually have two or three at any given time working with me).
I am glad though that I took Jim’s “Mini site Creator” course as it helps me understand all the possibilities available in web design and maintenance. Hence, I often tell my webmaster: ”Please do this and that. I don’t know how it can be done. I just know it can be done!”
A faster option is to spend some time “playing” with the possibilities of a WYSIWYG program. WYSIWYG (pronounced “weeseewig”) is short for “what you see is what you get”. I use the program called “My Free Web Site Builder” by Ewan Chia. You can download it for free and create some web pages. You will soon realize that creating a web page can be as simple as writing a word document. The cool feature is that at the end, you can click on the view function in the upper bar and then view the HTML version of what the codes of a web page coding looks like.
In fact, for any given web site, you can click on the “view” function on the upper bar and then click “source” to see the coding on that page. You can learn a lot from doing this and looking at what your competition is doing on the net. I highly encourage you to download and play with “My Free Web Site Builder” just to get more familiar with what can be done in web design.
I have long decided that I did not want to do web designing nor web maintenance as my time is very limited and I am better at getting ideas (lots and lots of them!). It then came pretty clear I needed to hire a good webmaster.
There are many ways to hire a person who will do your web design and web maintenance:
Allow me to share my own experience about all the above suggestions and you can decide for yourself. I often use www.elance.com as I find their interface easy to use. They also have an escrow function which basically helps you if the person you hired does not complete the work (which happens more time than you can imagine).
I have fellow internet marketers who prefer using guru.com or rent-a-coder.
My experience has been that finding a good reliable webmaster can be as hard as…finding your soulmate!
Although I might be a exaggerating a little, I am often surprised to hear very successful internet marketers (multi-millionaires) asking around for a webmaster.
Luckily, I have now found two very good webmasters and I am hanging on to them. Let’s hope they hang on to me!
Getting back to posting your project, here are some simple advices: Be as specific as possible in describing what you need. A posting like “I need a website” is not sufficient. Again, you need to know what kind of site you need and what you want to do with it (sell, post pictures, videos, etc). You will then decide how long the bidding will go on. Usually 7 days gives you a good sampling of what is available. Beware that many replies or bids are just text that people send you by doing a copy-paste. A good way to see if the person bidding is responsible is by asking them a simple question. By doing this you will see two things: if they are fast at answering your needs and if their comprehension of English is acceptable.
Resist the temptation to choose the lowest bid as often the person offering it may not be the best to complete your work.
I have honestly posted some works and cancelled the project by lack of getting any interesting offer.
Follow your gut feeling on this. Another very good habit is to browse the reviews these people have been given on the site. These are valuables and will save you time, money and disappointment.
Frequently, you will realize that people are very enthusiastic and literally beg you to get the project awarded to them…but then do not follow through and provide you with excuses after excuses for not delivering the goods on time.
Timothy, an experienced internet marketer, told me he often awards the project to 3 or 4 bidders and pays all the ones who finish the project and keep the best one. You would be surprised that by his method he often has only one or two person complete the task. It is the sad reality of human nature!
Howie Schwartz, a very good internet marketer often tells me: “I fire people everyday!” and you should be comfortable doing so too.
Another warning I want to give you is to stay away from people who call themselves artists and want to design your site with lots of artistic functions and charge you big bucks for it. Most of these sites are long to open, cost a fortune and cannot even be seen by the search engines robot so you are basically annoying your customer and you are invisible on the web.
Although I have done many Google searches for web designs and maintenance, I find that the most valuable options are found at Elance, guru.com and rent-a-coder. Why waste any more time elsewhere?
Ouf! That is a big page but this step is one of the most important so take your time to get it right. Good help is hard to find.
After all, most probably you will need to hire more people later on for fulfillment, copywriting, link submission and all S.E.O. functions, customer service, etc, etc.
HERE IS YOUR CALL TO ACTION:
+ Download the “My Free Web Site builder” and create web pages and see what can be done.
+ Browse the web and click on the function “view” and then “source” and see what a web page is made of.
+ Visit, Jim Edward’s mini site creator and see if this is something you watn to go through and if this would help you. Do not lose time though and come back to www.thebiginternetmarketinggame.com to continue your journey and get your web business going.
+ Figure out exactly what you want your web site to be: pages, pictures, do you want to sell products? Do you want to grow with time? etc
+ Start building your website or hire a qualified person to do it for you. My suggestion is that after trying for yourself for a day you do not have a web page uploaded and visible on the net, you need to hire someone. Time is running!
See you on the next square!
Nathalie
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