I have been designing websites for many years now, and I think that my work is pretty good.  With the steady stream of clients that I have, they must think that my work is good too.

But, I wanted to continue to grow my client base, so I thought that I could setup a website to do that for me.  It would be a great way to showcase my portfolio, and perhaps increase my sales.

I knew that I had the site design down pat, but as for the marketing, that was a different cup of tea.  I had no idea of where to begin, though I guess it was good that I knew that I did need to market the site and not just hope people would show up.

I hired an SEO firm to help me out with my SEM (search engine marketing).  They showed me what I should be doing and how to do it.  I also took advantage of some of their link building packages so that they could do the work for me.  Their help was invaluable to the success of my business.

I have just recently put together a website on simple home plumbing repairs thing you can do without calling your plumber.  I thought it was a nifty idea as there are very few books that cover that subject and even fewer websites.

It took me a few hours to get the web design all set up.  That was the easy part.

Writing the content took almost 10 hours of my time as I had to do research on the subject as well as create useful, step-by-step instructions.  Once that was done, I published the instructions onto the website and all I had left to do was to promote it.

I decided that article marketing would be the best web promotion technique that I could use to get traffic to my site.  I wrote three 500 word articles and proceeded to submit them to many article directories online.  After a couple days I noticed that my website was indexed in the search engines and traffic was coming to my site.  Though I haven’t got a sale yet, I know it is coming and I can’t wait!

When I build a website, I want it to get indexed by the search engines quickly.  My reasoning behind this philosophy is that the quicker that my site is listed in the search engines, the quicker I will get free traffic from them.

In order to do this, I make a point of submitting my site to a business directory or two that I know are high ranked sites.  I do make a point of making sure that these directories are related to the content of my own site, but usually I can find at least a couple that work out perfectly.

Another easy way to get some traffic quickly is listing my site on a link bid directory or two.  In these cases, I can easily take top spot and get even more quality traffic to my site.

Even though I do go for the quick traffic to my sites, I do have a website promotion strategy in place for the long term to ensure that I get quality traffic now and into the future.

I have created and launched many websites over the past seven years of being an entrepreneur.  I have owned everything from search engines, to content sites, as well as online stores, but I never bore of launching and promoting a new site.  To me, it is like watching a baby grow up into an adult, and I find it truly amazing.

For my site launches, I have created a system (and checklist) of steps I need to take before and after launching the site.  Currently, I am working on the last part of my new site: website marketing.

The marketing aspect of a website is very important because if no one can find your site, you can really expect little to no income from that web property.  I even have a checklist for this step that includes directory submissions, article writing, forum posting, and social bookmarking.

I usually can promote a new site in a day or two, so I expect revenue to start coming in by the end of the week.  Man, do I love making websites – it is a job that I am very passionate about.

Like many other webmasters, I find myself with just not enough time in the day.  Maybe if I didn’t have to sleep, I would be able to get everything done, but sadly, that is not really possible.  In an effort to get more work done by using less of my time, I have been looking for places to outsource some of my work to.

I figured that I could start with my search engine advertising.  I spend so much time trying to get better search engine rankings and traffic to my sites that by just outsourcing this one task, it should free up at least four hours of my time per day.

I have found an advertising company that will take care of my website marketing for me so that I can focus on the business.  Though it is too early to tell how effective this is going to be, I can already feel the stress going away.  And that alone is worth the money.

Today, I decided that I would check out Squidoo.  I have been talking to lots of my friends and I have been told what a valuable information resource it is.  So I thought that I would prove it to myself and try and find something that I was interested in.

I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to learn about what a free link directory is.  I have seen on many forums that a directory is a good place to list your website information, and I just didn’t really understand how that worked.

Thankfully, someone had created a free link directory lens that had all the information I was looking for.  Maybe this Squidoo is as good as they say…. the first impression is sure promising.