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A couple of years ago, I decided to retire from my hectic business life and venture into Internet marketing. Well, needless to say the steps taken were definitely very painful despite all the advises and tips that I can find over the Internet and forums.

I first stated by joining some seminar sessions which cost me an arm and a leg. I was given a full box of CDs, DVDs, manuals and videos. That, I believe is to make sure the package cost looks good because I can tell you that no matter how much time on hand you have, you will never ever be able to go through all those materials in a few months and be up and running for your business. As it is, the money spent was wasted and I had no returns.

After months of despair, I finally sat down and re-looked at everything and it finally dawn on me that what I truly need was a good website of my own. But how to start and where to start? Hiring someone to do it for me was expensive and beyond my budget. Doing it myself was the beginning of a nightmare that I had wanted to avoid when I retired!

So, I looked for other alternatives. I started by signing up for a program that gave me a website. Yes, the site was fantastic but there was no way I could make any change to it. Soon, everyone who signed up for that program would be showing the same identical page. People would get tired of it and who would sign up with me?

The solution, I felt was to get my own website. But again I am stumped by my past experiences in the design. Where do I begin? Which is the best software? What content should I put in? The questions was endless until I found this 'miracle' service.

The best thing is that this service provided me with a FREE web site designed for me and was made available to me within 24 hours. I was able to start business almost immediately. Of course, this is not to say that I do not have to pay for anything. Let me be very frank, every FREE deal has something in it. NO ONE who is in business gives everything away for FREE.

What I had to pay was for my domain registration (because I did not have one domain name at that point) and the hosting for my site and for a month of powerful training and tools that will help me in my business. Due to my limited spare cash available for these investment, I must say that the value received was indeed a worthy amount spent.

Having my own website now gives me the freedom to make changes as per my needs. I can now have my own opt-in and start to build my own subscriber lists. That is the next challenge I now have in front of me. But that is another story altogether.

In the meantime, with my own website, I found that I could now add new affiliates or ideas that I have. Since the ground work has been done for me, I need not be a genius to figure out what to do. The tools that comes with it was sufficient for me to make the changes that I require. And the beauty of it all was that while I am trying out new things on the design of the site, the current site is already selling for me. The first difficult step was taken and my next step is just improvement and concentrating on how to get more customers - which is ultimately all our targets.

There may be some of us who thinks that it is better to design from scratch by ourselves. While that may give us uniqueness in the design, it may take us many months before we get any returns if we are not a web programmer. Being a software programmer myself, I know how difficult it can be to try and learn all those html, flash, xml etc languages. Hence, I feel that it would be wiser and more cost savings if we leave what we do not know best to others and then concentrate on what we know best (or the easier task - which in this case is marketing and not technical designs).

Learn more about this author, Judy Khoo.
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