So I have read dozens of web pages about the subject of submitting a sitemap to google, but I am still getting frustrated. I wonder if anyone here can tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Google oofers a Google Sitemap Generator, which forced me to read several poorly written pages that, in the end, offered no real guidance on what to do. Instead of creating a file that is a sitemap, it wants me to load some software somewhere in order to do something. I'm not sure if I load the software on my computer, or my website, of if its something that only the operators of servers can do. I abandoned that project.

So instead, I went to a website that offered to make a sitemap of my website and create an xml file that I could load onto the top level of my website server. Which I did. But then when I went to Google webmaster tools and tried to tell the sitemap submitter where my sitemap was, it only gave me this error message:

General HTTP error: 404 not found
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit.

Well, their "guidelines" are obscure and spread out over at least five pages of "instructions", and I have no idea why there should be a problem because I did it exactly as the sitemap generator instructions told me to. I tried again with two other sitemap generators, but got the same result every time.

Is there something I'm not getting? Why won't Google accept my sitemap? Are there clear, English instructions for this process out there?