How to Write a Website...
The WRONG Way

On how to write a website

The lengthy essay I'm penning right now is intended as a history - the history of this website. I'm going to do it in two pages. This first page is essentially the pre-history.

It's the story of how I came to decide to write a children's books site but initially went about it the wrong way. (Before I found a service called SiteBuildIt.)

The second page is the continuing story of how I came to write this website.

I think you'll enjoy the 2nd page more if you start with this one.

(But they're both kind of long, so you might want to.)

Write a website? But I don't have the faintest idea how you go about slapping all that stuff up on the internet."

I have two goals with this two-part essay:

1. To let you know there are more ways to write an unsuccessful website than there are to write a successful one, and
2. To let you know that building a successful website is extremely doable - you don't have to know computer code, you just have to like to write.

Make no mistake about it: this site is comprised almost entirely of writing. My writing...and some writing by others. And know this: 90% of the effort I've put into this site has been about writing...not about tech.

I say that because of my belief that fear of tech is what keeps people from thinking that they can write a website. I know, because I'm a writer and that's exactly how I used to feel!

Well, don't worry - building a website is a breeze, or at least it is when you use the service I did, a service called Site Build It. It's a combination of software, webhosting, easy interfaces and understandable how-to that allows just about anyone to write a website successfully.

Read one page, read both...it's up to you. The point of each is this:

(On this third page on my site, you can read about what it would look like if you were to write a website using Site Build It. Or, if you're already getting tired of listening to me, you could visit Site Build It for yourself.)

This children's books website started with...a child

My beloved foster daughter was struggling with a behavior. Like all children, she had to learn to share. On play dates, she was struggling to do so.

It was sweet and sad. She wasn't the least bit bratty about it. It was just that no matter what the other child was playing with, my foster daughter found herself wanting it. She didn't demand the other thing; she was just simply heartbroken that the other girl was playing with it and she couldn't!

I tried to help her with this emotion, but nothing I offered was working. Then one day, in the car, I had a moment of inspiration. That moment of inspiration went something like this:

"Hey, moron - you're a writer. Make up a story."

So I did. On the spot, I made up the story of Balooga. Balooga just happened to be another little girl who had trouble sharing.

My daughter was immediately drawn to this story. She wanted to hear it over and over! It spoke to her. She recognized that Balooga was a little girl like her, with a problem like hers. And in the story, Balooga manages to solve her own problem!

(You can read The Time Balooga Forgot Other People's Feelings on this site.)

One thing my daughter and I decided to do with Balooga was turn it into a book. I typed the words on pages, and she illustrated them. And with all this repeated reinforcement of the story's lesson - reinforcement that my daughter was choosing for herself - her problem behavior quickly became a thing of the past.

I started to think I might be on to something

You see, without realizing it I'd created a work of bibliotherapy. And I'd done it pretty easily! Suddenly I began to see myself as a children's book writer, writing books about problem behaviors. And here was my angle...

The books didn't need illustrating. The child would illustrate them.

But frankly, I also knew that I didn't want to go the traditional route in trying to get my books published. I was sick of working with Hollywood producers, and I had no interest in replacing them with New York children's book publishers. I could just see myself trying to explain that my picture books shouldn't have pictures!

Instead, I saw myself selling my pictureless picture books on the net, bypassing traditional publishers. But this raised the question...

How the heck do I do that?

Well, I did some research, and then I started to write a website the wrong way. (A way that didn't involve SiteBuildIt.)

What the wrong way to write a website looks like

I started with software. Expensive website-writing Microsoft software called Front Page...along with the encyclodpedia-sized manual I would clearly need in order to understand what I had just bought.

I started reading the manual. Highlighters, Post-It notes. Some of the content was way above my head, but some of it I was able to at least partially comprehend.

I got to the point where I could start, through trial and error, designing some web pages. And after a couple months, I got to this point:

Not bad, huh? It actually looks better than this website. It looks more like what we've come to think of a website as looking like - loads of links, broken up into sections, not so much text.

So why was it the wrong way to write a website? Keep reading...

Okay, I'd designed my first website

It was about 10 pages. (This one is about 175 as I write this on 2/4/08.)

My home internet service came with a number of free web pages. I figured I'd use those for my web site. Just slap them up there and wait for the sales to start rolling in! Here's where I asked for money:

Do I need to tell you what happened?

Nobody bought anything. I suspect that nobody found my site or my books. Google and the other search engines certainly didn't.

If you were looking for ways to improve your child's behavior, would you type

into your browser?

I still believed in my idea

I decided I needed a real domain name in order to make my website a real website. I did the research and found behaviorbooks.com was available. I grabbed it!

Now I found out I needed a "webhost." (That's a company that will host the "server" your website will be on - where the rest of the web will be able to access it.)

I'd heard there were free web hosts. "Free" is practically my middle name! I started researching the hundreds - maybe thousands - of webhosts that were out there, promising "free"!

That's when I got lucky. I was just getting ready to sign up with one of the free web hosts when I stumbled across a webpage that caused me to question my biggest assumptions.

Assumption #1: If I build it, they will come

I know of many people who think that if they just write a website, the search engines will bring people to it. I was one of them. But this webpage I found caused me to question that.

I Googled behavior books. I don't remember how many search results came back, but when I do it today it brings back 8,820,000 webpages. That's 882,000 pages of Google search results.

Have you ever looked at nearly a million pages of search results? Or do you normally stop at one?

I started to realize there was a hidden web, an internet made up of all the sites you don't find. I also started to realize that the overwhelming majority of websites were part of this hidden, invisible web.

I also realized that I had no idea how to become part of the visible web. How do you write a website and keep it from disappearing???

Assumption #2: People will buy from me

What the heck was I thinking? Even if people did come to my site, they wouldn't know me. All they would see is this guy saying, "I sell books that'll improve your child's behavior."

I might as well say, "I sell magic wands that'll make you lose a hundred pounds."

People would have no reason to believe me, no reason to trust me. When was the last time you went to a website you'd never been to and bought a product you'd never heard of from a man you'd never met?

The notion that the website I'd written would succeed was absurd!

I was thankful

I'd been spared pouring any more time into a concept that wouldn't work. I didn't even know how to tell the search engines I had written a website! Forget being on page 1,000,000; the way I was going, Google wouldn't even know I existed.

Let me tell you: once you start comprehending what doesn't make sense, you get a lot better at understanding what does make sense.

I quickly learned that before I could sell anyone anything, I would need to attract traffic. I also learned that even once I had the traffic, I shouldn't expect anyone to buy from me just because they'd found my site.

No, people are like me. They come to the internet (most of the time) looking for information that's free. And if they want a product, they're going to click directly to a company they know.

Once you accept that particular reality, you realize that making money on the internet is going to require some knowledge and some tools that you don't already have.

The good news? That knowledge and those tools are easy (and affordable) to get...

Demystify how to write a website by reading the continuing history of this website.

Read (on this site) how you can write a website for yourself.

Go directly to Site Build It's site and read (or watch) what they have to offer.

There are so many undiscovered websites out there. Is (was) one of them yours?

Tell us the story!

What others have said about this person's experience.

Shelagh Watkins - Mr. Planemaker's Flying Machine 
I read this on your page Selling Books Online :

Search engines drive most of the traffic. If search engines aren't driving traffic to your site, then ...

Can't say - it was my company's site 
Somehow I got assigned the job of writing a website for my company's product. (I can't name the company and I can't name the product. I can't even name ...