Don't be intimidated, know what you want and shop around until you find a designer that can do what you need.

You usually get what you pay for. The lowest price may not be best choice for you. I had someone call me today who was happy to pay my $60 an hour rate because of nightmare they were having with their current designer who charged $25 an hour.

Know what pages you want on your site and what you need it to do for you. Are you going to sell a product or service? Do you want it to be a portfolio for your artwork or photographs? Think carefully about what you want and write it out so you can give a copy to designer.

If you have a deadline, let designer know to be sure they can meet that deadline.

It can be helpful to have a list of a few websites that are similar to what you want yours to look like. This will give you a clearer picture of what you want, and designer can see what you like.

Also, read articles on my site at http://www.creativecauldron.com/WebsiteNewsletterArticles.shtml to give yourself a better understanding of basics of website design.

You are going to spend time and money creating this site, and you have a need that this site must meet, so be sure you get what you expect. Feel free to ask all questions you want and to have everything clear in your mind. Then you can make an informed decision, and soon you will be using Internet for amazing tool that it is.

http://www.CreativeCauldron.com Jeff Colburn is a website designer and writer. His goal is to make the process of creating or updating your website easy and simple for you, while creating a website that meets all your needs and expectations. Jeff can also create all of the copy for your website.

While I don't expect to make a lot of money from affiliate programs I use, last month I made $100 with website referral program. Not enough to retire on, but I did nothing to make this money.

There is a dark side to affiliate programs. In order for you to get credit for a sale person usually must buy item when they click on link you have on your site. If they click on link, bookmark site and go back later to buy item, you will not get credit for sale. This is because banner, link or button on your site has a unique number that tells vendor which affiliate sale came from. So if person buys something without using link, there's no way to tell where sale came from. It's just something you have to accept with affiliate programs. This probably explains why after more than three years I have not made any money from many books on my site that have links to Barnes and Noble.

Another thing to watch out for are affiliate programs that pay you only after you get a certain amount of money in your account. If you sell a lot of item, or it has a high-ticket price, you should be fine. But I have friends that sell things that pay a small commission, and they're lucky to get a check once a year.

Next month's newsletter will be part 2 of this article, and it will cover selling your own stuff, and what to sell.

http://www.CreativeCauldron.com Jeff Colburn is a website designer and writer. His goal is to make the process of creating or updating your website easy and simple for you, while creating a website that meets all your needs and expectations. Jeff can also create all of the copy for your website.