Building a Website!
 Have you ever thought about building a website? A great many model railroaders have their own websites showing off their own layouts and how they built them. Many have sites about various, particular aspects of the hobby - like how to take model railroad photographs, or how to build structures, etc. I’d thought about building a website related to model railroading several times over the last few years, but I always felt that it would be impossible for a number of reasons. I didn’t know how to go about building a website for one thing. Second, I had heard it costs thousands of dollars to learn how to do it and get help setting one up. Third, I thought that even after all that effort and money spent, it would take a miracle for it to be successful.
On the other hand, I could see lots of advantages to developing your own online web presence. For one thing, you can be your own boss. You can develop and manage your site as you wish. Second, you can use your website to make your footprint in the world – sort of like writing a book, leaving a legacy. Third, it’s a way of expressing what you want the rest of the world to know about a certain subject – something you care about, something you want to promote, to spread the word about, or teach others about; or, you may want to provide a great service or product. Fourth, and not least, building a website can potentially result in some income - and, if you do it right, maybe a lot of income - and who couldn’t use some extra money these days.Now, if you pick a topic for building a website that is really interesting to you and that is fun for you to write about, like model railroading, for example, and if you can make money doing it, I'd say you’ve got it made. It’s part of the American Dream, isn’t it? Do something that you really enjoy doing, provide a service or product to others who also enjoy it, and make an income while you’re having fun with it. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But how do you get around the fact that building a website requires knowledge of computer code, web design, how search engines work, etc. Well, actually, there is a way to do it. However, unless you’re a computer programmer or professional website designer, you will need a guide to take you into unfamiliar territory. Just like on a safari, you want to be sure you have the right guide – one who knows the territory and how to avoid the dangers. Of course there are other things that you will need to bring along on the journey as well… The first thing you need is a passion, a sincere interest, or knowledge about something – anything that you’re enthusiastic about. And you need to want to provide that knowledge or service to your viewers. It may be just the enjoyment of looking at a collection of model railroad photos that you've taken, or information about rail fanning and the prototype railroads you've learned about. You may want to start your own blog with weekly entries on how to build bridges or make trees (although if you get into it, a website with a blog is probably better). Building a website is a way of giving something of yourself to the world, and it allows you to teach thousands of others what you know, and what you've learned that can benefit them. You will feel great about yourself for providing this to others and they will be happy to learn what you know. People will come to your site looking for information. Your main goal should be to provide them with what they're looking for, and a lot more. Your loyalty and service should always be to your viewer, not to yourself.
Choosing your topic or theme for your site is a very important aspect of whether the site will be successful. As I've said, it has to be something you're very interested in or you will get tired of writing about it. It needs to be broad enough to appeal to a lot of people, but not too broad, because then your site will never be seen amongst all the others. Many model railroad clubs have built websites promoting their clubs; they contain a wealth of information about model railroading. Building a website like this could be very successful at providing the information that model railroaders enjoy, and a great way to make a significant amount of income for the club. Just think of the supplies, the locomotives and rolling stock you could buy with an extra $2000 a month going into your treasury.
If you pick the right topic and build the website properly, an individual could do the same, given the right resources and tools for the job. Those tools would have to include... • A mechanism to help you be relatively certain that your chosen topic will be successful. • Instructions on how to write content for the site that would be valuable for your viewers. • Learning how to optimize your site for your readers. • Learning about how search engines (like Google and Yahoo) work and how to use the right keywords to attract them. • Learning how to attract traffic to your site - mostly by writing good content, providing what people are looking for. • Methods of monetizing your site so you can make an income for your efforts - but only after you have built a valuable service for your readers. But, what if you "can’t write". Well, that’s probably not really true. If you can do an eighth grade book report, or if you can talk to someone and tell a story, you can almost certainly write well enough to build a website. You don’t have to do rocket science. You just have to put down on paper (or type on a keyboard) what you would say to a person about your subject if you were talking to him/her in person. You may have to clean it up a little and organize it to make it better, but that’s all there is to it. I was never much of a writer in the past. I always thought maybe I'll write a book someday, but I never thought I could write well enough to do it. I was amazed at myself, after learning a few things about writing, that I could sit down and write a lot of things fairly easily, especially when I started just writing down what I would say to someone if I were talking to him or her. Once you’ve written some good content, and used the right keywords, the search engines will begin to take note of your site. When people type in certain keywords that match yours, people start finding your site. If they like what they see, they will keep coming back. Search engines "know" how many people are visiting your site. They "know" how many other websites have links on them to your site. The better service you provide to your readers, the more popular your site becomes and the more likely the search engines will send people who type certain keywords to your site rather than to a less popular site. Once you get enough people looking at your site, then you can start putting a few ads on your site to help you make a little money for the effort you put into building a website. You can add more of these as time goes on, but I think you have to be careful not to overwhelm your reader with lots of flashy ads that detract from the content and the main purpose of your site. This is not a “get rich quick” thing because it does require a considerable amount of time, effort and motivation or your part. You have to be dedicated to it and to your readers. However, if you write great content and if you're following your guide's steps to building a website properly, you have the potential of making a significant second income.
Okay, so we have the interest, the motivation, and the writing ability. Where do we go from here? That’s where your guide comes in. It is extremely important to choose the right guide that will show you, as it did for me, the proper step-by-step process required to build a website successfully. There are many web hosting sites on the internet. Most of these just take your money and provide you with a domain name and you're on your own after that. If you're like me, you will need someone to teach you how to do it. Not only that, but also show you all the best ways to do it and provide you with all the tools you need to help you make the right decisions that you will have to make along the way. Plus, you will need someone to give you unlimited technical and instructional support as you build your site.
I learned about Site Build It! from my son who was building a website about Strength Training, about which I was fairly impressed. He actually purchased a one-year subscription to Site Build It! for me for my birthday. I received the password to access the SBI website right away by email. The Site Build It! Action Guide, a step-by-step video tutorial, made the whole process easy for me to accomplish – not that I didn’t have to put in the time and effort to do it - but I didn’t have to learn any significant complicated computer code. And, their step-by-step process of helping me learn about the Internet and about building a website made it very easy. Basically, if you can read a recipe or a cookbook, you can do this. 
The Site Build It! Forum is full of people who have built successful sites from scratch using what they learned from Site Build It!. And they are constantly helping others to achieve the same goals. They are very friendly and always ready to help if you have any questions or problems. They will review your site periodically, if you request it, for their suggestions and hints to make it better. You may visit the SBI Forum by entering the domain name of this site (building-your-model-railroad.com) as the username and also as the password on the Forum log-in page. The technical support has been excellent. The few times that I had difficulty, the support team responded within an hour to my email that got me back on the right track. I have heard about other web-building services that make you pay thousands of dollars up front and make great promises about how much money you’ll make after a year of building a website, only to fail because the site wasn’t built properly. My son went through two of these before finding this one. With Site Build It!, they show you how to optimize your site for the viewers as much as for the search engines, if not more so. Most sites just optimize for the search engines, but when visitors view the site, they don’t get much out of it, so they don’t go back. If you optimize it for the viewers first and the search engines second, your chances of developing a successful site are overwhelmingly better. The more people like your site, the more often they will come back, and search engines pick up on this fact. Then they start directing people who type certain keywords to your site rather than the others with little or no content. The bottom line... If you’ve been thinking about building a website about model railroading or anything else you might be interested in, my personal experience with “Site Build It!” tells me that’s the way to go. If you're able to provide the elements of (a)passion about your subject, and (b)motivation to succeed, and if you let SBI be your guide and follow it carefully, you have a formula for a very successful website and one you can be proud of. For more information, visit the Sitesell home page. Or if you have any specific questions about whether building a website is right for your particular situation, ask a specialist.
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