That is an excellent question for you to ask. Some people do build their own web sites. There are all kinds of product reviews in almost every computer magazine for new web development / construction tools. It is really so tempting! How hard can this be? 

  Well, the answer depends on how professional you would like the finished product to be, how much money you're willing to spend, and how long you're willing to wait for you dreams / business to be on the Internet. A combination of the best software tools alone will cost you close to $1250. Then you'll either need a training course or two on how to use them all, and use them together to achieve the desired results, or you need to spend at least a few dozen hours with trial and error. A course on your image editing package is a must! You'll also need to read a book on good site design to avoid "beginner" mistakes. Another book on HTML coding... you'll need one that covers how to design web pages that look good on any browser, on any platform, in any resolution. And don't forget to build a few sites for practice... there's no substitute for hands on experience! With at least four to five months of your time and several thousand of your dollars spent, you'll finally be ready to begin building your own "professional-looking" Internet based web site. Although we might exaggerate certain elements a little bit here, it is intended to show you that you need to spend lot of effort and money before you are able to lay out design and build your very own web site graphics and html codes. Don't forget CGI and Java scripting.