I am a 48 year old male. I have a reasonable knowledge of computers and software but I am definitely not a computer jock. I am writing this to tell of my experiences in starting and developing this web-site. Hopefully this will be helpful to others who are thinking of starting their own site.
April 19, 2000. On this night, I had a horrible dream that caused me to go into a "Mid-Life Crisis". This Mid-Life Crisis and the knowledge that my employer would soon shut down and leave me unemployed made me do a lot of soul searching and thinking about life in general.
Late April 2000. On a lark, I decide to buy the book The Neatest Little Guide to Making Money Online by Jason Kelly. This book talks about the business aspects of starting and running a web-site. This book was an easy read and got me very excited.
May 17, 2000. I decide to take a "Web-Site Design and Management" course from the local Community College.
May 18, 2000. I sign up for the above mentioned course at the Community College.
May 20, 2000. I order the text books for the "Web-Site Design and
Management" course.
Sams' Teach Yourself Microsoft FrontPage
98 in 24 hours by Andy Shafran
New Perspectives on Microsoft FrontPage
98 by Roger Hayden
May 30, 2000. The course starts.
May 31, 2000. I order Microsoft FrontPage 2000 software on the
internet. Officially, the course is taught in FrontPage 98 but when the
instructor is asked what software to buy, he recommends purchasing FrontPage
2000. These programs are very similar with FrontPage 2000 being the more
recent release.
Late June 2000. I ordered a reference book for FrontPage 2000 on the
internet. Running
Microsoft FrontPage 2000 by Jim Buyens. The course's text books were
pretty good as text books, but they were lacking as reference works.
August 13, 2000. Although the course was going to end on the 15th, I just could not wait anymore. I started building my web-site. It felt very strange building a site when I did not yet have a name. It is especially strange in that I do not have more than a seat of the pants idea about what I want to do. The books are right, you should do some planning before you begin!
August 15, 2000. At last the web-site course was over. In some ways I felt that I could have learned this on my own (with occasional help from a savvy friend). However, I'm glad I took the course because I may have quit if I worked on my own. Shelling out money for the course insured that I would complete the project.
August 16, 2000. It felt strange not having a domain name and seemed to be hindering the site's development, so I signed up for a Domain Name and a Web Site Provider. I tried to choose a name that 1) did not mean anything (so that the site could go in any direction) and 2) people would know how to spell the address just from hearing the name. In addition "station hill" is the name of the hill that I live on.
August 17, 2000. I felt that giving away free calendar pages with an interesting picture, might help to promote and publicize my site so I bought a Digital Camera.
August 23, 2000. I published the 1st version of my Web-Site onto the Web.
August 25, 2000. I signed up with Commission Junction. My site is free to all users, whether submitting material or just surfing. I have to have a way to defray my expenses. An Affiliate program is similar to advertising that is paid by commission rather than by a flat fee. When a surfer links to a merchant's site from my site, I earn a commission if the surfer makes a purchase from the merchant's site. Commission Junction is an Affiliate Network. They make business very easy for site developers by acting as middle-men between the web-sites and the merchants. Many people consider the term 'middle-men' to be a negative but in reality Commission Junction provides a huge service to both parties. Signing up with Commission Junction is very easy and it is FREE!
Pay-for-Performance drives results.August 29, 2000. I figured out how to link together Hotmail and Outlook Express so that I could read and write my Email while offline.
August 29, 2000. While demonstrating my "web-site skill" to my daughter, we have a huge laugh when we realize that half of my links are going to the wrong places. The links are quickly repaired.
August 31, 2000. I put the first Commission Junction link on my site.
September 1, 2000. My employer shuts down.
September 1, 2000. The first sale is made through a Commission Junction link.
September 4, 2000. I purchase some special paper to make iron on imprints on T-shirts for publicity.
September 5, 2000. I return from Labor Day weekend in Maine. This is the first day that I can spend lots of hours working on my site due to being unemployed.
September 7, 2000. MicroSoft Image Composer came bundled with my FrontPage 2000 software. The help files with Image Composer are ok but could be a lot better. I wanted something better and I just plainly prefer to use a book!
September 13, 2000. I began the process of registering with the Search Engines and Indexes. I used selfpromotion.com to help me in the registering process. This is a great site. They describe themselves as a "shareservice that automatically registers your site at major search engines. Use it for free, pay only if satisfied!"
March 21, 2002. After a long period of not paying attention to the site, I Emily, nag Roger (aka Dad) into letting me help get things going again. The first step is to see to our calendars, which haven't been updated since January 2001.
May 8, 2003. I install the FrontPage 2002 upgrade.
July 3, 2003. I decide to check my search engine rankings by doing a search for "amateur writers". On Google, out of 5690 sites, Stationhill.com is ranked 7th on the first page. On MSN, Stationhill.com is ranked 8th on the first page out of 4366 sites. On Excite, Stationhill.com is ranked first on the first page. Yahoo.com, Search.com, AltaVista, FindLink and Overture all have Stationhill.com ranked on the first page. How did this happen? I do not know. I'd like to thank the writers, poets and readers for making stationhill.com one of the best sites on the internet for amateur writers. Thank you!!
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