We all come to the information product marketing business from different backgrounds. Some of us are writers, some are marketers, many are just passionate about our chosen market and have learned enough to package our information for profit. What we typically are not experts in is website development.

So, when you are ready to setup your website for your niche market minisite, you typically run into the challenge of finding the best website development software without spending a small fortune.

True enough, the choices can be mind-boggling. Do you use products that let you hand-code html such as NotePad or Trellix, or do you go to a full website development package such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver with many other choices in the middle.

Now, I'm not naive enough to assume there is only one solution here, I use 3 different ones myself on a weekly basis, so there is no single right or wrong answer. To make a first decision though, here are some tools with some of the reasons you may want to use them for your own information product minisite.

1. Text Editors With HTML Hand Coding Assistance

There are several text editors and word processors that include html "helper" functions and allow you to produce the content for your website within the editor hand-coding the html as you go.

If you understand html coding, or are willing to spending a few days learning, then you may want to use hand-coding tools from this point forward.

Your information product marketing minisite should be simple, a single table design with a strong headline, sub-headings, bulleted lists and perhaps some graphics that are added as images to your page.

Tools that fall into this category are: NoteTab Standard or Pro ($9.95 or $19.95 respectively) at http://www.notetab.com and Crimson Editor over at http://www.crimsoneditor.com/

Even if you decide to go with a more elaborate website builder, you will likely always find the simplicity and hand-coding capabilities of text editors useful with your infoproduct marketing business.

2. WYSIWYG Web Editors

WYSIWYG is an anacronym for "What You See Is What You Get" representing a line of html editors that allow you to design your website based on objects you see on the screen while the editing software creates the more complex html in the background.

WYSIWYG Web editors are certainly useful tools for those of you who do not have a strong grasp of html and for pages that require more elaborate design elements where design based on visualization assists greatly.

Some of the best WYSIWYG editors on the market are:

- Coffee Cup (http://www.coffeecup.com/html-editor/) $49 This is a great entry-level WYSIWYG editor that has a very strong following with very devoted users. For most information product minisites, Coffee Cup is a great tool.

- Macromedia Dreamweaver (http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/) $399, now owned by Adobe, Macromedia still is one of the leading web development platforms out there extremely rich in functionality with lots of tutorials and training to get you up to speed. Its definitely overkill for most of the infoproduct minisites you will be producing, but if you want the whole enchilada, that's what you get with Dreamweaver.

- Macromedia HomeSite, (http://www.macromedia.com) another HTML editor with combination of hand-coding and WYSIWYG features at a lower price point that Dreamweaver - coming in at $99. You can also give this one a try and see if it meets your needs.

3. Automated Site Builders

Even with some superb WYSIWYG and hand-coding HTML editors, there still was a gap for those who wanted yet more automation and some additional help with designing their site in line with the best search engine optimization practices.

A new category of site builders have emerged called Automated Site Builders. New software comes out almost each month in this category and you must be careful as many automated software builders are aimed at "fooling" the search engines and may hurt your search engine ranking in the long run due to deceptive practices that end up being flagged by Google.

An entire line of automated site builders aimed at creating "scrubbed" directory sites, for example, have proven to not hold their search engine advantage in the longer term.

However, there are a few promising automated site building platforms that make the job of building your site very painless AND do a great job of guiding you to the best structure to attract almost insant search engine attention.

My favorite by a mile is called XSitePro. You'll find it over at: http://www.highertrustmarketing.com/part/xsitepro

XSitePro is a complete automated website builder with several single, double and triple column templates, automated article import, and built-in search engine optimization techniques. Its very intuitive to learn and can certainly speed up your infoproduct minisite creation.

The best part about my experience with XSitePro is that my sites get listed faster and they get higher rankings in the search engines - this alone is worth using this great software.

As you can see, there are many options at all different price ranges for you to start development of your information product minisite.

Most of the platforms above have 30-day, full version trial periods that you can take advantage of. So start by giving a couple a try when designing your next information product minisite - you'll quickly get a feel for the one that you feel most comfortable with.