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With so many new websites going online every day it is no wonder many of them never succeed. We all hear about the new site that has only been online less than a year and has millions of visitors each month. Why do some sites do so well and others flop? There are many reasons for this and these are just some of the more obvious and often overlooked ones.

The landing page takes too long to load. Many website designers and marketers believe everyone has a high-speed connection, which is not the case. Even with a fast connection many pages will take up to 30 seconds to load, which is just too long. Unless someone really wants what you have, and can?t get it anywhere else, they won?t wait; and forget about the person on dial-up. Unless yours is a hobby site, or sales are not important to you, forget about Flash and large fancy graphics.

Site is not finished. This may not seem like a big issue except that people who go looking for something don?t want to see an under-construction animation where the information should be. You just wasted their time and probably annoyed them ?- not a good start. Do not advertise or promote something you don?t have unless you are doing a product pre-launch, and never lead your visitor down a road to an empty page. Its one thing to upload an unfinished site for testing, however, don?t promote it.

Bad navigation. If you have ever gone to a site and got lost, then you know what I mean. You click on a link and another to the point you give up looking for the information or product and just do a re-search for another site. This type of marketing may work in an offline store but it has no place online. Offline you could keep a customer in your store by creating a maze and therefore introducing them to more of your products. Online this does not work ?- the exit is never more than a click away, and don?t forget it. Make your site easy to navigate and have links, at least to the home page, on every page. Never try to trap your visitor.

No contact information. While I am not saying you should give out your address and home phone number, you must at least have an email link on your site. Many sites do not have an email and use a contact form instead. These forms are usually to hide their identity and your visitors will pick up on that. Remember, people hide their identity for a reason. The more open you are with people, the more open they will be with you.

Old content. If you want to get repeat visitors, you need new content; it?s just that simple. Many sites never change and rely on new visitors and customers. This is the hard way to do business, as a repeat customer is much easier to sell to.

Broken Links. It is a good idea to manually check your links as often as possible. Take a run through your site on a regular basis and mainly check links heading off your site. If someone else changed their site and you are linking to them as an affiliate, for example, your link may get disabled. You internal links should not cause many problems, but it never hurts to check.

If you are expecting to get a full time income from your site expect to put some work into it. The ?build it and forget about it? idea only works for hobbyists etc.. Most people making a full-time income online work at it full-time, no matter what they would have you believe.

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Have you ever thought about working from home? If you have, you know that the majority of the so called “work at home” jobs are scams. After being laid off from my telecommuting job I found myself looking for another at home job to replace it. After you’ve worked from home for a while, it’s hard to go back to the corporate 9-5. In my experience, most of the work at home jobs out there appeared to be scams. You shouldn’t have to pay and employer to work from home.

I thought I’d be smart and sign up with a website that specialized in work at home jobs. I Googled a website that promised to give you leads from employers who were looking specifically for people to work from home. The home page listed a lot of national companies (Bank of America, American Express, etc.). It appeared that these companies routinely posted jobs on the web site. All I had to do was buy a yearly membership and I’d have access to those awesome jobs. Those national companies may have been known to hire people to work from home but I quickly found out that they did NOT post any jobs on this website. The membership was a total waste of my money. To sum it up, it was a scam. Were there jobs posted on the web site? Yes, but the jobs were for telemarketers and sales. Nothing for a computer professional. It bugged me that the same stale jobs would be listed each day as if they were fresh!

In my previous telecommuting job, I helped maintain a large intranet. I decided that I wanted to continue in this field. Website Designing is a legitimate work from home job. The beauty of this business is that it requires low start up costs. The only office equipment you would need would be a good computer, an Internet connection and website design software. The web design software I recommend are Macromedia Dreamweaver (html editor) and Macromedia Fireworks (graphics editor). Microsoft Front Page and Adobe Photoshop are also excellent choices. If you lack web site design skills, don’t fret. The Internet is jam packed with free tutorials and advice on everything you would need to know about web site design and development. You would only be limited by your desire to learn. You can also purchase professional website templates to give you a jump start on designing web sites for your customers.

That being said, web site design is a very exciting field to be in. The technology rapidly changes so there is always something new and exciting to learn, it’s a great outlet to release your creativity, you can make a lot of money quickly, and the best reason of all is that you can work from any location including at home in your PJs.

Given all of these reasons, many people wonder how to get started designing web sites for profit. As I said before, it takes very little money to start a successful online business. Once you learn how to design professional web sites (or use web templates), your only obstacle will be to market your business and win jobs. Sounds easy, but it’s not. There are many web site development firms out there who never win bids on projects. You could search the Internet for advice on winning web site design jobs. You can search for advice from business owners who are out there running successful web site design companies. This is a good approach but it does take time. I highly recommend visiting forums. Some of my favorite are Digital Point (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/) and Site Point (http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/).

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