OK, you have your own website, and some great opportunities, but you’re not making any sales at all.

Why?

First of all, it’s because your website really sucks. In fact, it stinks so bad it’s driving people away!

A billboard or banner farm does not make a website. If all your website is, is a page full of banners and a bit of a “Please click on my banners” blurb, you’ll never get one click, even if by some miracle you get found. You could manual surf all day to promote your site, but it will never get one actual visitor.

The first thing you need to do is to clear everything off your page, and pretend to be the prospective customer coming to your site for the first time. What would stop YOU and get your attention?

Are you thinking about it?

Still?

Still?

That’s good, because if you skip this step, you’re already finished and might as well close up shop!

What are you really interested in? What can you write about in a way that will grab the attention of someone who thinks like you? Now open up a text file and start writing a story. Tell yourself the benefits to YOU, the customer, of possessing the product or service you’re going to market.

When you’re writing, appeal to your own emotions. How will this product make you feel? What will it DO for you? Why do you WANT it?

Once you’ve written your article, read it. Does it hold your attention? Does it grab you and charge your emotions? Are you more excited than ever about the product?

No?

Then delete the whole thing and start over again. Keep repeating the process until you have an article that gets you excited. If it’s the idea of all the money you’re going to make selling the product that’s getting you excited, take a break. The product has to be what has you excited, not the money you’re going to make. Remember, YOU are the customer. You need to sell it to yourself, first, or you’ll never sell it to anyone else.

If you CAN’T get excited, dump the product and try another. Keep doing this until you have a product or service that you can sell yourself on. Then, and only then, are you ready to start building your website. Your final copy of your article will be the main focus of page one of your website.

Keep your website simple. You can find a lot of templates online, you can create your own if you know how, or you can hire someone to do it for you. The important thing is that it will look nice, be uncluttered, and help focus your visitor’s attention on the great message you’re sharing with them. Remember, it’s the message that has to speak for you, not a lot of fancy and distracting graphics.

Next, make sure the links to the product, contact information, faqs, privacy information, etc., are neat, easily found, and get to the buy now button in as few clicks as possible.

When you reach this point, you now have your basic site. Now you can start to fine tune it for marketing.

Fine tuning is worth many more articles. You really need to do the fine tuning before you submit your site to the search engines. It’s important to do it carefully and to keep doing it as times go on and the rules change.

For some really excellent tips on fine tuning, I recommend you start by visiting Peter Browne’s forum on Site Design and Search Engine Optimization at http://community.adlandpro.com/forumShow.aspx?ForumID=7227 Consider this your homework and make sure you do it! Peter is a master, so pay attention. You can see examples of his work at: http://www.soy-simple.com/ andhttp://www.bengalmarketing.com Above all, remember, this life is short. Don’t do now to enjoy later, but enjoy what you’re doing now.

Dave Cottrell is opinionated, compassionate, and passionate about people, marketing and online business. He does a lot of digging, experimenting and research, and writes like crazy about a wide variety of topics and subjects. He is the owner of many websites and blogs; you can read his rants and find out more about him at http://westcoastopinion.com This article can be shared freely as long as this box remains intact. Copyright © 2011 David H. Cottrell. All rights reserved.