Sometimes it is tough to build a website from scratch. Missing ideas, time and budget put pressure on your schedule. In this case I have a look at design templates. Existing commercial designs are available as photoshop and flash files for a low monthly subscription fee from many sources. It's usually allowed to modify them and use them on any of your websites. This shortens time frame for presentations and web development. Many sources offer templates for popular programs like blog engine Wordpress or b2evolution.

There are a lot of things a webmaster can do himself, but many simple procedures turn out to be rather bothersome for newbies. Sometimes I want to prove to myself that I am smart enough to install scripts and make modifications to them. A couple of hours later I do get it done, but it takes longer than expected as I had no clue about some very simple things like permission settings, file ownership, server paths, etc. This can be very frustrating at times. My learning experience made me come to the conclusion: it is not worth the effort to know everything and be able to do it by myself. If I don't know how to make modifications on a script or I expect problems during installation, I rather hire a coder from Scriptlance. It's a marketplace of freelancers and outsourcing companies. I just place an add and describe my project. Usually, it just takes a couple of hours to get a nice selection of offers and quotes from freelancers from all over the world. Many newbie coders on Scriplance will offer very cheap work in order to build up their ratings and there are some very well respected, trusted programmers around who will deliver quality work. Of course a lot of Indian spammers, too :-( but it's easy to find a good solution and I am always happy to outsource the tasks to a professional. It saves me so much time and headaches each and every time I post a project on Scriptlance. Of course there are a lot of similar online marketplaces around that are an alternative to SL, but I have never tried them.

Every webmaster makes his strategy a little secret. For good reason as nobody wants to give up a good idea and surrender his most important ideas for the benefit of competitors. However, many website developers agree on one basic idea: organic growth!
When starting up a new website a realistic vision for the ultimate goal and a roadmap for the development are the most crucial items. It's hard to give advice, but use of common sense is usually the best guide.

First step: registration and content guidelines
After I register or buy a domain my first task is to install a basic index page that contains relevant info about what the site is intended for. In the past this was a simple html page with a title, meta description and keywords together with 2 or 3 paragraphs of text. If possible I would ad a couple of picture with corresponding alt tags. Additionally, I would insert a handful of links to other relevant pages. Let's say I would start a site about sports shoes, links to i.e. Addidas, Nike and Puma would suit well. I would achieve the following goals: people and bots would occasionally come by the site and take note of it. Additionally, I would set one or 2 links from my own sites to the new project. Then I usually don't touch the site for awhile. My first aim is achieved: I want the search engine bots to know about the site, index and categorize it properly.
Sometimes I have a lot of ideas flying through my head and I register like 10 domains for different things, so I put up a basic page while I plan further development. To be honest I have modified that strategy a bit. I no longer use a simple html page for the initial site, but install a blog or cms script on the server, choose a neat skin and publish my first article that is pretty much containing the same things as mentioned above.

First results:
What happens next is like a miracle. The blog tool sends out ping notifications to various services. Suddenly, new sites get visits from robots and I get included in feeds and directories. I did this a few times and domains without any significant content or inbound links advanced to Google PR 2 and even 3. It seems Google is throwing around with PR rankings for nothing, but this initial PR is an excellent tool when I decide to develop a domain as it will make things very easy for a future link exchange strategy as many webmasters are more willing to trade links with high PR sites - even when they have next to none traffic. But that's just a positive side effect and not really a viable strategy without content.

Creating Content:
Ok, I have completed the first step and I develop content for the site. Let's say it is a blog. I write a couple of articles and publish them over time. The important thing for me is to have time go by between the blog posts and not throw out 10 new articles at the same time. Let's say I write 10 blog posts a day, I will schedule them for publication every 3 days or every week. Most blog tools like b2evolution and Wordpress have a feature that allows to set a date for the publishing date when you want a post to go online. I make sure the ping notifications are sent out at the same time of the publishing date by choosing asynchronus mode to make sure robots won't be confronted with a 404 error.

Chose a publishing date for each blog post and schedule your articles for days, weeks and even months in advance.

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Hi guys, this is my first post on Mides Media blog. There is nothing here, yet. I am just typing a couple of sentences for our designer. This way she can customize our little online marketing blog with new graphics and css files. Hey, you are still reading this? Are you sure you are human? hehehe. Okay, I will tell you a secret. This blog will feature tips for webmasters on how to make money online, where to find good hosting and graphic design and so on. I will tell you a couple of secrets about offshore hosting, money markets, forex and marketing in general, outsourced staffing, freelancers, coders and so on. Still reading? Hey ... I am getting some sweat on my forehead, now. I need to take a shower, brush my teeth and send a message to my graphic designer so she knows how to customize this blog. As soon as she is done with her work I will come back and publish the second article. That might be pretty soon so check back in a short while :-)