What’s the difference between a finished site and a complete site?

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Aren't they the same thing? you ask. Not really. A site can be complete without being finished.

A complete site is one that accomplishes its designer's purpose. If you build an affiliate site about model rockets, the "complete" label could be used if:

1) it provides reasonably well-rounded information about model rocketry that a visitor would need in order to make an informed purchase decision

2) offers the visitor a decent selection of model rockets to choose from

3) has the necessary features such as a contact page, a privacy policy, some sort of compensation disclosure statement, and possibly a sitemap

However, it may never be "finished." You will always be refining, tweaking, and adding information as you are able or as new products become available. Even if you never make any major additions to it, you'll still want to check on it from time to time to make sure there are no broken links or other problems.

Should your site be finished before it goes live on the Internet?

This is a question that people often have when building their first site. Understandably, they are apprehensive about visitors seeing their work in progress, especially since they're not yet confident of their site building abilities.

I remember feeling the same way about my first affiliate marketing site. Even though I knew from prior experience that just because a site is viewable on the Internet doesn't mean it will be viewed right away, but I still felt nervous about possible mistakes and a little ... well ... naked, because it was OUT THERE.

But you know how many people saw my web site during the first week? Zero. The second week? Only a handful. And those were probably my family members. So I needn't have worried. By the time I had decent traffic, I had worked through most of the design and content issues and was quite happy with it.

web-site-construction

Besides, as we've mentioned, a site is never truly finished. So if you wait until then to allow the world to see it, it will never happen. So you make a mistake—so what? Let me tell you, there are millions of sites on the web that are themselves a big mistake. Small imperfections in your site will not horrify anyone.

I also remember waiting on pins and needles for my first commission to come in. I will admit that I checked my stats many times a day at first. It seemed that if the site was Out There, somebody HAD to be looking at it and whipping out their credit card. But the first sale didn't happen until it had been up for a couple of weeks, and it took many weeks of concerted effort to get it to the point where it was generating commissions on a daily basis.

It only works for Kevin Costner...

My point is that site creation isn't a matter of "if you build it, they will come." Instead, it's "if you build it, they won't give a flying fig—until you do lots of work promoting it."

So don't hold back out of fear that it's not finished. In fact, there's no rule that says your site has to be complete before it's live, either. How far along in that process it needs to be is really up to you, but I encourage my students to allow it to be indexed by the search engines from the very beginning. The length of time a site has been indexed is a factor in its ranking as well as its value in the eyes of others, so you might as well get that process going as soon as possible.

Best thing to do is just get busy building and don't worry about making it perfect before you allow it to be seen. Raging perfectionists usually don't make great affiliate marketers.

And please...

Don't put a cute graphic on your site that says "Under Construction." That's too early-Internet-ish. (Unless it involves LOLcatz, because those are timeless. )