Successful Web Sites for Creative Professionals
Top Tools to Make Your Web Site a Success
People often ask me to recommend books, tools, web site hosts, domain registrars, ecommerce providers, and traffic-builders. There's no "one size fits all" on the web—but these tools deliver consistently enough that they come close.
Here are my top web tool picks.
How to Market Your Web Site, Your Business, and Yourself
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Dr. Ken Evoy's "Make Your Site Sell" is an Internet marketing classic, and for good reason. It is packed with clear, nuts-and-bolts insider information on how to structure your site, find your keywords, and punch up your copy to maximize sales. It's also reasonably priced, and readable. Ken's companion package, "Make Your Knowledge Sell," is equally informative, and aimed at anyone who wants to make money selling their own expertise on the net. |
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My friend Susan Harrow has written a masterpiece of inspiring guidance when it comes to, well, how to
Susan single-handedly untied the knots that bound "marketing" to "fakery" in my mind. Her integrity, insight and concrete advice continue to inspire me in my business every day. Susan also offers a great free newsletter at her site, prsecrets.com. |
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Mark Silver at Heart of Business is—IMHO!—the world's best business coach. In addition to offering private consultations, Mark tackles tough subjects like money & marketing in a series of excellent teleseminars. If your business feels stalled or blocked in any way, Mark is the person to call. Check out his web site, heartofbusiness.com, for more information, including an extremely useful free workbook on finding and speaking from the heart of what you're doing, "Getting to the Core of Your Business." |
How to Build Your Web Site
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Elizabeth Castro's
is the absolute best resource for easily teaching yourself html. Not only simple html, but introductory javascript, cascading style sheets, and streaming media are covered with elegant simplicity and clear examples. This book has been my primary coding reference since its first edition. And, because it is written so accessibly, it is the one book I always recommend to my web design students. Forget those 20-pound tomes! You don't need them if you've got this handy little volume. |
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| Lynda Weinman's classic
explains everything you'll need to know in order to tell the difference between gif, jpg and png, to handle plug-ins, create color palettes, and optimize files. Though due for an update, it's still the best and most accessible source out there on creating and optimizing web graphics. |
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| Once you know how to create graphics, you need to know what colors to select for them, and why. lets you flip through a succession of historical palettes and effortlessly choose color combinations that achieve the feeling you wish to convey. This book is the one resource I must have in order to create a web site that succeeds—in part—because of color. |
Register Your Web Domain
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Register your web domain for under $9 per year. And manage it—transfers, admin changes, redirects—painlessly. GoDaddy.com is cheap, reliable, fast and easy to use. You get no hype, no misleading bills, no complicated codes to remember. Best of all, when they send you an email that begins "In order to serve you better," it turns out they really ARE improving service. Unheard of! Unthinkable! Highly recommended. |
Hosting Your Web Site
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Westhost overcame my long-time reluctance to recommend a hosting company with their unbeatable combination of features, low price and great support. I use them for my own sites and often recommend them for clients. With Westhost you get unlimited autoresponders, subscribable mailing lists, and a full-fledged Miva Merchant shopping cart... all for your basic hosting fee of less than $10 per month. And all this without compromising service—because there's always a real person available to promptly handle your concern. The best all-around combo of price, features, reliability and service I've found. |
E-commerce, Anyone?
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"KickStartCart" is an easy set-up shopping cart that saves time and increases sales. With KickStartCart and a merchant account you can start selling anything, even your own e-book, in just a few minutes. I also use KickStartCart to send weekly messages to a client list of thousands—addressing each by name—in about ten minutes, total. This incomparable ease, and unique combination of buying/mailing tools, makes KickStartCart THE top-of-the-line cart, superior to any other I have installed or used. Free 30-day trial. |
Bring Traffic to Your Site
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Robert Woodhead's site, SelfPromotion.com, will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about major search engines and indexes and how to get your site listed with each one. Want to know how to get on Yahoo? Which pay-per-click engine to sign up with? Robert tells you, with up-to-date articles based on his vast personal experience as well as the latest findings of search industry experts. Then, try out his easy-to-use web tools, and actually get your site listed. For free. |
Motivation During Those Tough Moments
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Every so often a sappy but inspiring book with simple, down-to-earth advice is just what the doctor ordered to cut through the crap of everyday living. Lynn Grabhorn's reminds me to keep smiling and keep dreaming, even when it seems most difficult. This one's a guaranteed mood-turnaround for those moments in business—and we all have them!—when a sense of futility momentarily overwhelms. |
Copyright © Susan Pomeroy 2000-2004