Most people think that I create wonderful websites and web designs all by hand.  Sure, I could code everything from scratch, and it would work, but quite frankly, it would just take too much time.

So, I have relied on tools over the years to help me get the same amount of work done without spending too much time on any one task.  These tools have helped me to speed up my website creation process and have made it so I can also have some time off from work.

I mainly rely on my color picker software to find out what a particular color is if I find a site that has great colors.  The software package is instrumental in saving me time from trying to guess what color I am looking at - instead I know what it is in just a click or two.

I also like to use AMeta which is software that helps me to get my meta tags on my site done properly.  I tried once to do it by hand, but it was just too much work - the software makes it much easier for me.

Though I don’t use elaborate tools to design my websites, they do help me to get the work done and are essential for what I do for a living.

For the longest time, I have been looking for a way to start a business without a lot of work.  I guess, I am in the market for a franchise type of business, but I have been unable to find anything like that online.  So, since there doesn’t seem to be anything available, I think that I will create my own type of service that offers the full meal deal for people who wish to start an online business.

So what I have done is lined up a bunch of content writers, a site design firm, a professional logo design service, and a marketing firm.  By putting these pieces together, we will have a killer web "franchise" available to anyone that wants to start out online.  We have also done as much work as possible to help anyone succeed to make their first money online.

Now, all we have to do is come up with the price and launch the site and watch people succeed online.

Now, I don’t want to brag here, but I just setup a website a couple of weeks ago and it is profitable already.  Sure, it hasn’t made a bunch of money by any means, but it definitely looks like I made some good choices when I set it up.

You see, instead of just rushing out to buy the domain name that I wanted, I shopped around a little bit to find a registrar that had a good price.  I think that this was my first good choice, since I didn’t have a lot of funds to work with anyway.

Secondly, I passed on getting paid hosting.  I just couldn’t find a hosting company that would fit my price range and budget, so instead I found some free MySql hosting that would work perfectly.  The best part is that it didn’t add any costs to my business, so we were operating at the lowest expense level possible.

And it worked.  It looks like we will be profitable after just a couple of days into the second month which makes me happy.

I have been using some quick and easy website design software for many years now, and it has been great.  I mean, when you can whip up a new design in an hour or less, you have a lot of time to create a lot of sites.

But I have always wondered if I would be able to make a website on my own.  I figured that since I have looked at code so many times that it should be pretty easy to code one from scratch, so I thought that I would give it a try.

Boy was I wrong.

Let me put it this way.  The DHTML menu builder included in the software I use can make a menu in about five minutes.  But, when I tried, after two hours, I still couldn’t get it to work.

So, I guess I will stick with the software - designing them from scratch just isn’t as easy as I thought.

If you don’t know me personally, you may not know about my fascination with music.  Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved music and it has been a very big part of my life.  Not only is it a part of each day, but I have started to compose my own music.

Instead of spending a lot of time creating large masterpieces, I have decided that my time would better be spent creating ringtones for my cell phone.  These short and sweet pieces have had my friends get really excited about my creations and they want more.

What I have been doing is taking advantage of a mobile file sharing site to share my creations with my friends.  This mobile site has allowed me to share my love of music with others.  Speaking of that… I think I will go write a new tune…

Over the years, I have only had my websites hosted with one company.  The service was great, the price was perfect, and the uptime was almost 100%.  But, earlier this year, things changed and I was in a position where I needed to change web hosts because there was a slew of problems.

It made me a little sad that I needed to move my website, but if there was going to be persistent problems, there would be a lot of interruptions in my income.  Since I depend on my sites to feed our family, this was not going to be something that I could live with.

So, I decided that I could find another asp.net web hosting provider that would be more reliable, and that it was time to put my business first, instead of keeping my loyalty to just one hosting company.

Needless to say, I found a better company, and my business has never done better.  Maybe it was a good thing that I had hosting problems.

While it would be cool to be a leader, sometimes it pays to follow the well worn trail of someone who knows what they are doing.  Not only does this save time, but it means that I can skip all the testing phases and just focus on what works.

For me, when I am going to market a new website, I make sure to check the latest SEO news so that I am aware of any new ways to market a site.  For example, had I not read the latest news, I would never have learned that you can use video to effectively market a website.

I would have to say that keeping up with the latest marketing methods has proven to be the most profitable path for my website and e-business, and without it, I wouldn’t be here, writing to you today.

In fact, part of the success of this blog is due to the feed submission that I did a number of months ago - these post are picked up almost as soon as I write them.

When I was looking to setup a shop online to sell hockey cards, I had just two criteria: simplicity and reliability.  I was looking for an ecommerce storefront that would be easy enough for me to use once it was setup as well as reliable enough to handle my business operations without any worries.

Now, I looked at many review websites in my quest for the best ecommerce software on the market.  There were definitely a lot of good contenders and I made the point of reading reviews on each one.  Now, I took the best of those reviews and put them into one big pile so that I could compare and eliminate them to find the best.

The one that I ended up selecting offered a complete package including aspdotnetstorefront hosting, which was something that I needed anyway.  Besides, their package definitely was a better deal in terms of the capabilities and ease of use of their product.

My site has been in need of a new look for way too long and it is time that I do something about it.  I know that my web design skills are not at a level that I would need to make the site the way I would like it to be so I will have to hire a web design firm to do it for me.

Since I am currently living in New York and I decided that it would be best if I found a firm in the same city that I was living.  I went online and did a search for "web design New York", and came up with some candidates for companies that may be able to help me out.

Now what I am doing, is looking through their portfolios to see the quality of their design is while as if they of design sites that are related to my industry.  From what I see, some of the design firms do very good work while others of them do substandard designs.

I’m going to make a short list of companies that I would consider doing business with and get in contact with them to see if they would be interested in doing a site design for me.  From there, I will have to choose a company of those who respond and get the work underway.

I just recently started a new website about locations where you can fill your car tires with nitrogen.  If you are unfamiliar the benefits of using nitrogen in your tires, you really need to visit my site.

Needless to say, there are not many websites that discuss the benefits of having nitrogen filled tires and I’ve been watching my site changing its’ search engine positioning multiple times each day.  Though we haven’t gone any lower in our rankings yet, I know that this trend of increasing our search engine positions cannot continue forever.

I just checked on the search engines and I see that were now number three.  I’m going to have to do a little happy dance to celebrate and then I think I’ll have to work on promoting the site so that I can squeak my way up to number one.  Though it may take some time, I know that the traffic and sales that I will generate to the site will be worth it.