limey

I am in the process of constructing a web site and I need some help in finding some resources. The site is mainly going to offer information and resources for parents and families living in a small town, so I will not be really selling anything. I would like to generate enough interest to be able to make a decent income from it. I am able to code the site myself but I would really appreciate any help or suggestions on how to;
1. Generate traffic.
2. How to attract people or copmpanies to advertise on my site and how much to charge.
3. Any legalities I should be aware of for Canada.
4. Any other suggestions.

If anyone knows of any web sites or books that may help, it would be greatly appreciated. Would I need to sell things in order to make a decent income.
Thanks everyone.

numist

1) Traffic frequently entails advertising; the method is up to you.
2) Ads on your site can be sold in person by you, if you want to take that route, or the easier (and lower income) way is to use a service online. I dont have any links for them (I dont use ads) but they do exist.
3) Being the internet, and being in Canada, there arent really any legalities to worry about short of blatant copyright infringement, so keep that always in mind when paraphrasing or citing works, just as you would in a thesis paper.
4) Dont use just html, html is flat, and provides no interactive content. Learn and use some javascript and php, and use it liberally.

Crack

I refer to Strongbad in all matters of website:
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html
~Crack

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From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

sailor

Gotta love the Strongbad...

Personally Limey, I think that yes, you would need to sell things in order to make a decent income off of a webpage. Getting traffic cost money (advertising), and you arent going to get many advertisers on your site (and those rarely pay that much) until you have enough traffic. Remember, those people advertising on your site are doing so because they think that enough visitors to your site will click on the ad and buy something from them.

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"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
--Plato

cowudders14

Yes, but also remember that some people browse with java and javascript disabled. Ditto ActiveX etc, so, while I have no problems with people using it, please be aware of these users and use javascript etc for site enhancement only, NOT site navigation. Use it for site navigation and users will look at your site and leave again. This also goes for flash - please use flash either very little or not at all - I've yet to see a flash based site that actually is user friendly...

Utils for you:
1stpage, from http://www.evrsoft.com/ - it's a great HTML authoring program that lets you write in raw HTML without adding any shite, but just helps you along the way - better than notepad!
Once you've read it, view it in a standards compliant browser, such as Opera. IE is most definately NOT standards compliant!

Once you've got it written, put it up and run http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp. Also, have a read of http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/.

Finally, if you have any thoughts about using Micro$$oft Frontpage, kill them now, unless you want to force every user who ever visits your webpage to use IE! All opera/firebird/mozilla etc users will simply go away again...

HTH!

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Moo! I'm mooey!