Many people mistakenly think that they have to hire a hot web designer for thousands of dollars in order to create an eye-catching website. This is not true, especially for the do-it-yourselfer who wants more control over the look and feel of a website.

Most websites are based on only one web page template. That’s right, just one. This means that all you have to do in order to get started is to buy a web page template that will work well for your web business and use software such as Macromedia DreamWeaver or Microsoft FrontPage in order to modify the template to your needs.

Now, many new web entrepreneurs find even the thought of designing their own web pages to be an overwhelming task. Others do not have the time and would rather contract this work out. One thing that can save you money, though is finding a web page template to base your site on and hand this over to the web designer to modify, rather than having them create one from scratch. This alone could save you hundreds of dollars in web design costs.

There are many places all over the Internet to find web page templates. Some companies charge per template and others charge on a subscription basis, so that for one fee you can download as many web page templates as you want for this fee. For those who wish to have more choices or who intend to put up multiple websites, the subscription-based service is the way to go.

Now that you’ve bought your web page template and want to get started, how do you learn DreamWeaver or FrontPage? First, there are many good “Dummy” and “Idiot” books on the market for both of these web design software packages. Most will find FrontPage a little easier to learn when first beginning, but I recommend learning DreamWeaver from the get-go since this is a more powerful package and the standard package of the industry. The longer you are a web designer, the more you’ll want DreamWeaver so you may as well learn this package upfront.

Many web entrepreneurs who finally take the plunge and put up their first website, will eventually go on to put up additional sites as well. Why? In many web businesses, it helps to put up slightly different websites focused on a slightly different target market. For instance, you may have a website about auto parts, but wish to put up another one about customized auto parts or one about BMW accessories. In this case, you’ll need a handful of web page templates at your disposal for your different web businesses.

No matter which direction you go in hiring a web designer or doing it yourself, you can save money by picking and handful of web page templates that suit you and your business needs.

Joseph Thurmon runs a Web Page Templates site, which offers templates on a low-cost subscription basis.

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