topr8 - 10:15 pm on Jan 13, 2011 (gmt 0)

be aware that building a good (or bad) website is of course not a guarantee that anyone will find you using google.

although you do mention advertising, but also be aware that there is a significant skill level in making the most of your money when buying adwords ads from google too.

IMHO unless you want to be a cutting edge developer (whatever that means) i don't believe you need to hand code or have that much knowledge.

you do need some though.

the de fecto website editor for the mac is dreamweaver and you can buy ready made website templates from 100s of sites online, these you can load into dreamweaver and change pictures and text and stuff.

alternatively something like Yahoo Sitebuilder is very easy to use and requires little experience - i would suggest looking into it, it requires hosting with yahoo i think, but you've got to host somewhere anyway.

i'm pretty sure microsoft have a similar product but i'm not sure what it's called.

alternatively many of the big hosting companies have got 'site builder' type products which are designed to be idiot proof and i suspect would suit you.