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.

I am rather new to the world of the Internet. I am not sure where I have been for the past ten years, but it certainly was not at a computer. Although, I am new, I  think that I am a very fast learner and I am just drinking in the knowledge of everything that I am learning. I just learned about electronic books and I am completely fascinated because books have always been my first love, ever since I can remember.

I found a site that has a whole bunch of downloadable ebooks and it is not odd for me to sit at the computer for hours, just looking. I am absolutely in my glory. This is even better than the library, as I can find a book on absolutely anything that pops into my mind. And the books are usually free or very cheap.

I think I have a new love. I mentioned that books were my first love. But, downloadable books are my new love. I cannot imagine a life without words and the Internet gives us billions upon billions of words. I am now quite sold and I wish I had gotten in with it ten years ago when I first had the chance.

My husband has been building websites for a few years now. I have never taken much interest in it, as it has never really mattered to me. That is, until now. It has now become our source of income, so I find that I am starting to take a vested interest in everything that he is doing.

He taught me of a good place to go to register domain names. He wanted me to be able to run all aspects of the business, should something ever happen to him. He thought it would be a good idea if I could sustain the family in case he was not able to. I had to agree that this was a smart business decision.

This week, he is teaching me all about search engine advertising. It is not as difficult as it sounds and I am catching on quite quickly. I never thought that I would enjoy it as much as I do, and I can really see myself doing this for a living. I am glad that he is so smart and I am glad to become his partner in business. He is awesome.

I have talked in the past about using web directories to promote both this site and other sites that I own.  Not only have they been very effective, but it is one of my secret weapons in my Internet marketing arsenal.

One of my biggest challenges is to keep up with the new web directories that are coming out all the time.  It seems that there are many new ones that come out everyday, and I need to know about them – they are places just screaming to advertise my website.

I used to check out a web directory list that I had found online, but it was getting updated less regularly than I would have liked.  While I was looking for a new resource for new web directories, I found a web directory blog – which added new content each day.

Thanks to the blog, I am able to find new places to advertise my website each and every day.  By keeping up with this regular promotion, I have found that my traffic and income have been steadily increasing – which is just what I wanted.