Creating your own website used to be considered difficult, people had to know HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) and if you didn't have a degree in web design then it just didn't seem plausible.

This has all changed, now - website design has got cheaper and cheaper and one reason for this is because people are designing and building their own sites.

Now whether this is to build your own fan website or to build a website to make money, never has their been a better time to get cracking in this fun and somewhat lucrative pass-time.

Everyone wants to show off their online skills, showing their cool photo's, video's articles and stuff, where better to display what you do or know, than on your own website?

Now I have to admit something to you - when it comes to design, I cringe at the word, as my design skills are practically zero but even I can make great looking web pages designed to THRILL!! simply by following a few simple steps.

If you don't know your ftp from your http, don't worry you soon will.

Now I use a little free html editor called "Komposer" this handy tool is what I design my web pages in - you can write text, import photo's and even upload everything (barring e-books) to the web all in a few strokes, so your first task is to download Komposer, next you will need a domain name this is the web address your website sits on - this you can get from Go Daddy for a yearly fee of about $9, make the domain name relevant to what your website is about.

Next you will need a hosting account - Hostgator is good as you can host unlimited web pages for about $10 a month. A hosting account is necessary as you will be renting space (like real estate) to park your website.

Now, is this a fan site or are you wanting to make money with this site? If you want to make money, you are going to need to create your own list of prospects to market to, and you will need to send emails to your list of prospects using an autoresponder. An autoresponder is a piece of software that lets you submit emails to your potential customers in sequence, all on auto pilot - I can recommend Aweber, this is the same one I use myself.