Ravi’s Gadgets

Last year around Christmas I had a stressful time making decisions. It seemed like each day when I went outside to collect my mail I received more party invitations requesting the presence of my family at holiday events. At first I found it flattering that my family and I were being thought about by our friends and family and that they all desired our company during the holiday season. It wasn’t long, however, before the flattery turned into frustration as the party invitations kept arriving and as our calendar began to fill up with event after event.

It got to the point where our family had to sit down with the party invitations and do something very important: choose. There was no way that we could accept all of the party invitations and remain sane through the month of December. We had to begin declining party invitations and narrowing our schedule down to include only the events we really wished to attend. It might sound simple, but when you sit down to choose between attending your grandmother’s yearly holiday brunch or your best friend’s annual reunion party for all of your college friends, choosing is not so easy.

Our family quickly came up with a way to sift through the small mountain of party invitations and choose the ones we wished to attend. The first and most important way that we narrowed our list was by thinking about the relationships we had with the people throwing each party. We made the decision to separate the party invitations we had received into piles based on our closeness to the hosts of the parties. This made it easy to see where we could decline a few party invitations simply by choosing close family and friends over people we didn’t know so well. A party hosted by a parent or sibling took precedence over party invitations we received from a co-worker or former neighbor.

We also decided to narrow down party invitations by only allowing ourselves to schedule a certain number of events each week. We limited our family to accepting party invitations to one party during each week and one party each weekend during the entire month. This way we were not so busy with parties that we were unable to continue doing other important things.

If you find yourself receiving too many party invitaions this holiday season, or at any point throughout the year, look for ways to narrow it down and only accept party invitations to events being held by people you love the most.

There are so many ways to build a website that sometimes it can be confusing.

The first thing you need to decide when building a website is, what is its primary purpose?

Will you use your site only to build a list, will you provide content, do you want to generate passive income?

These are all questions you want to answer before you begin to build your website.

Once you decide what type of website you want to build, then choose the right tools. This will save you a lot of frustration in building a new website, and it’s not really necessary for your to understand HTML in order to build an effective website.

1. Landing Pages
Landing page builders are effective if you want to build a list. You can also use them to help you promote on sites like Google Adwords or Overture.

Most of these sites require some type of landing page now because they won’t allow you send your traffic directly to an affiliate program.

You can use these tools to help you build landing pages for your pay per click campaigns.

Landing Page Builder – http://www.landingpagebuilder.com – Free tool to help you build landing pages.

Google Publisher – http://www.googlepublisher.com/index.html – Offers a free and paid version. The paid version allows you to create unlimited pages and add your Google Adsense publisher ID.

2. Content Pages
Content will make your site sticky. This is especially effective if you choose to use some type of program like Google Adsense to monetize your site.

The easiest way to make your site sticky is to use articles. Make sure that the articles you choose are valuable to your readers and solve a problem.

You also want to choose keyword rich articles targeted to your market.

Orwell – http://www.portalfeeder.com/blog/ – Use this tool to search the article directories. It will also format the articles in HTML for you, saving you hours of coding.

3. HTML Editors
Choosing the right editor will determine how quickly you can get your site online.

If you don’t know how to write HTML, there are editors available to you that will do this for you.

NVU – http://www.nvu.com – This site building tool is similar to Dreamweaver or Front Page. You don’t need to know HTML to use it. Since it’s open source, it’s free. You can also use it on MAC and PC.

Easy Web Page Creator – http://www.easy-web-page-creator.com/ – This free tool will allow you to create web pages with a few clicks of your mouse.

4. Content Management Systems
If you plan to build a content rich website, you will find a content management system to be the best choice. With a few clicks of your mouse you can totally change the look of your site.

It’s also much easier to add and organize content.

The most important aspects of a content management system are ease of use and search engine friendly.

Open Source CMS – http://www.opensourcecms.com – This site allows you to try out all types of content management systems including blogs before you use them.

Since it’s open source, they’re all free to install and use.

5. Other Scripts
If the thought of creating or writing content makes you crazy, let others create it for you.

The easiest way to add content to your site is to offer an article directory. Then all you have to do is monetize and promote your new site.

Article Dashboard – http://www.articledashboard.com – is a free article script you can use to create your own article directory. It’s very easy to customize, and very search engine friendly. It also incorporates RSS, as well as email, allowing you to build a list, as well as promote in RSS directories.

Regardless of what solution you choose for building your website, make it search engine friendly, well organized, and rich in content and resources.

Choose your tools before you build your website, and you’ll build a better website.