With the growing popularity and automation of wyswig (what you see is what you get) web site design software titles, a growing number of small business and individuals are creating their own web sites. Should you make your own web site? One school of thought is that you can save yourself some cash by making your own web site, and saving some cash is always a good thing. The other school of thought is that in order to make a top quality product equal to what you provide your customers with on a daily basis you are going to have to invest some money in some quality software.

You would need to purchase a web site design program like Macromedia's Dreamweaver and if you plan on embellishing your web site with some of your digital photography you will need some photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia's Fireworks. Even if you take fantastic pictures you will still need to optimize them for fast loading in your customers web browser. An unedited five megapixel photo takes up about a 19x19 inch screen and if you put two of those puppies on a web page and your customer does not have broadband internet access they will be nodding off before your page is viewable. And that equals bye bye visitor.

That bring us to learning about search engines which is a sceince unto itself. Am I using the right keywords? What are my best keywords? Is my keyword density right? The questions are almost limitless, definitely one of the toughest parts of the job.

There are endless tutorials on web site design available online as well as the tutorials that come with most software packages, so the tools to learn to make good web sites and edit photos are there for you as well. But wouldn't you rather be spending your time learning about the industry you have devoted your life to and making certain every customer that leaves your establishment leaves with a smile? My answer is you bet I would.

I could easily run down to my kitchen every morning and get out my flour and eggs and bake myself a loaf of bread so I can have some toast, but since the bakery does a great job and gives me quality bread at affordable prices, the baker wins my breakfast order. I've got customers to please!

Fred Ost is a writer, web designer and owner of Pocono Media web design. He is also a founder of, and staff writer at the free independent artits community at http://www.scptv.net. You may use this article for your site as long as the links remain active.