There are lots of ways promoting your site using different means online. As we all know, internet has become a virtual place for millions of people to interact. And the best way to reach those internet users is to go to the place or use the tool that they are using.

1. Instant Messaging. Who else don’t have any Yahoo, AOL, Google or Hotmail account? Almost everyone has and they use this tool for chatting and connecting with the people they know. For your friends and relatives, you can just send them the link of your website and ask them to visit it. Since they know you, for sure they will visit your site. Another thing you can do is post the link of you site on your status. That way, your online friends will be able to see it and eventually some will dare to click it.

2. Social Networking Site. The rise of Facebook and Twitter become one of the significant changes that changed the face of the internet. As of now, Facebook population exceeds the total population of USA. No wonder, social community sites such as these are the most ideal way of reaching out with your potential online visitors. Do it right and you’ll see the rise of your website. Do it wrong, and you’ll never get anything. Before you offer your link to people you don’t really know, try to build relationship first. Try to gain their trust in the process then offer them your website link in the end.

3. Forums. This can be a good place to promote your site. If they allow link signature, try to put your link address on it. Participate in posts and reply to those topics that you are of great interest or familiar with. Of course, you still need to build relationship with other forumers.

4. Blog. There are lots of blog sites in the internet, mostly hosted by Blogger and Wordpress. Try to visit those blogs that are somehow with familiar topics as your site and participate in the comment section. You will have a chance to promote your site there as most of the comment section allows you to put your website address.

Here is the list of top FREE Opensource Templates website available on the internet. Feel free to browse each sites and see if you can get the best template for your site. Take now, its FREE.

http://opensourcetemplates.org/

Probably the best on open source templates on the internet.

http://www.opendesigns.org/

They have 1527 free open source designs available for download.

http://www.openwebdesign.org/

Open Web Design is a community of designers and site owners sharing free web design templates as well as web design information. Helping to make the internet a prettier place!

http://www.free-css.com/

They have the best CSS templates available for download.

There are lots of money that we can generate from the internet if we only knew how to make money. But sad to say, only few people in the world is making big out of it. For most, they don’t even know how to do it. Others are even struggling how to start from scratch. Now I’m going to show you where and how to start.

First, try to define what site you want to make. The purpose, the audience and the contents that you want to put. Online readers are more inclined to visit sites that can give them something whether its information or other free stuff. If you want to make money out of it, try to move out from your personal agenda and try to discuss something else. Try to project your target audience, their location, age and gender. This will help you choose what platform to use for your site. If you want to have a blog, you can choose Wordpress. If you want to create online community, you can use Forum or Social networking platform. Most of them are free and very easy to implement. Once you are ready for your site ideas, you can now move to the next stage.

Domain name. It is the address that online users need to type on their web browser to visit your site. This may cost you few bucks depending on the domain name you want to use. Visit Godaddy site and try to search the availability of it. Try to use the name that would also best represent the content of your site.

Webhost. Somebody has to host your site if you don’t have your personal server. I also recommend Godaddy web host service. After you purchase your own domain, try to purchase their hosting package.

There are several sites offering free subdomain and hosting packages, but most of them comes with annoying advertisements. If you really want to have a nice site to make money online, then invest.

Promote your site. You need online audience to visit on your site. The more, the better. Once you setup your site, you need to inform other’s that it exist or they may not know it exist at all. There are lots of way how to promote it. The most common one is thru the use of Social networking site like Facebook and Twitter. From there, you can inform your friends to visit your site. If you are done with your friends, you can move to other crowds. Joining forums, visiting other sites and leaving comments are some ways that you can use. It’s like leaving your tracks everywhere that people next to you will follow.

Monetize your site. This is the last part I recommend you to do after you follow the above steps. If everything goes well, then you should move on to the best part, monetizing your site. You need to learn how to turn those online audiences to a revenue stream. There are several ways to do it, and the most common way is thru Google Adsense. It displays ads related to your contents by the giant Google. There are also lots of affiliates program that you can find in the internet, each of them offering you few bucks. You can also put some space in your site for rent. The more visitors you have on your site, the more chance of earning on this entire program.

Before you create a website, make sure you know what is your purpose in putting up the website. Is it for your personal, for your company, for your group, for your organization, etc? Bear in mind that different purpose needs different design that fits to it.

First, choose your desired template. Template is a ready made website published online. Thou some are premium with price tag, there are lots of FREE templates to choose from. Don’t bother yourself creating your site from scratch when you have a ready made one.

By typing the word “free open source template”, you’ll get a lot of results. You can view all the results one by one, or go to this site directly http://opensourcetemplates.org/.

From there, you have lots of web templates to choose from. Choose which one best suits your website, then hit the download button. Save a copy to your computer and we’ll start working on it.

Adobe Photoshop – for picture editing and logo creation
Adobe Dreamweaver – used for editing website
MS Paint – the very basic for picture editing
Notepad – this one comes very useful in coding

I guess this are all the basic softwares that you must have. It’s the same software installed in my computer right now while pursuing my online passion.