Internet Home Business

Step By Step Guide to Establishing Your Own Domain & Website

As you know, establishing your own website is highly recommended for your  Internet Home Business.  The potential for growth is endless and if you wish to grow your home business opportunity and wealth for long-term success, then having your own website is very necessary.   

Establishing a website is the starting point of establishing a profitable Income Online business, and most folks new to the Internet find this very stressful.  The questions are endless: Where do I host my website? What does "host" mean anyway? What will my web address be?  Exactly how do I go about this?  Where do I begin?  And often the answers aren't clear.  Well, here we will try our best to clear up as much of the confusion as possible.   

Step 1:

First, Decide The Theme Of Your Internet Home Business or Your Home Business Opportunity Website!

This is the number one most important step besides deciding on your domain name.  Actually, knowing the theme of your website will help determine your domain name, so they go hand in hand.  I'll explain about domain names in the next step but you must decide on the theme or essence of your website before you should go any further.

The theme of your website is what it's about.  The best way to do this is determine your long term plans.  What is it you want from your online business and what is your focus going to be?
Is it you want to tell your visitors about your Internet Home Based Business or your Work-At-Home business or even your Make Money Online proposal?   Once you know this, it's then time to determine what your website is going to offer its visitors and how it will effect your bottom line (your income).  Take ownership of your business.

To see an example visit:- Six Figure Income Marketing Group

Many folks never really put themselves in the "driver's seat" when selling or promoting someone else's product, service or opportunity.  They promote but don't feel in control.  With affiliate promotion, of course you don't have control of the products themselves but you DO have control of your own website which IS your product and your business.  Don't look so much at what you can make from your products, but what you can do for your visitors by showing them these great products.  Your website is the vehicle to run your Online business

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Below is an example of the thought process behind determining the theme or essence of a website:

John wants to earn money online.  His desire is to quit his public job so he'll have more time to do the things he loves.  One of his passions is caring for his rose garden.  He would love to work from home and have more time to enjoy his roses.

He doesn't have a product nor an idea for one therefore affiliate promotion is very appealing to him.  He can simply promote someone else's products or services and earn a commission.  Very appealing!  Since he loves roses, he decides he's going to promote rose/garden products.

He thinks about how to bring traffic to these products to earn sales.  He knows that many of his favorite sites are loaded with content and things of interest.  So he figures if he creates a site loaded with rose gardening content, that his site will automatically attract targeted visitors.  He's right!

John knows his goals for his business are to earn enough income that will permit him to quit his job.  Therefore his goals are long term goals.  In order to build a long term, easy to maintain business, he is going to choose long term strategies.

This is how he goes about it:  He decides he will create an informative website about roses. Since he knows quite a bit about them, he will write tutorials and articles explaining everything he knows about them.  Such as: when and how to plant them, when to trim them, what type of soils and climates they do best in, the types of roses that exist and how to find them, discuss the different parasites that attack the rose plant, what to spray on them to get rid of and prevent further infestation of parasites etc.  In general, he plans to have a website loaded with information pertaining to roses.

In addition to this information, John will make recommendations to products he has found to work well for various care.  He'll place his affiliate links for his visitors to click through and when they buy, he'll earn a commission.  Though it doesn't appear this way to the visitor, John is really setting up a sales process.

What is the essence of his website?  The essence of his website will be rose care.  It will provide folks who are wanting to learn about roses a very comprehensive resource.

What will his website do for him?  His website will provide income by filtering visitors through to the companies he's promoting where he'll earn commissions.  Also, the value of his website will be very enticing to other websites to link to him.

Now he needs to decide on a domain.

What You Need To Do

As an affiliate promoter, you will need to do what John is going to do.  You'll need to decide what your goals are and what the theme or essence of your website will be.

You may be wondering why John needs to go through the trouble of having such a robust website.  You may also be wondering since he's going to be promoting his website, why can't he simply promote his affiliate links and send traffic directly?  Let me explain why his plan will work.

1. The content adds value to his business and his site.  Other websites will be far more inclined to link to him as a resource for their visitors.  Quality websites generally look for other websites of quality to offer as a resource to their visitors.  Since John's website is valuable, he'll more easily gain links from other sites.  This will provide him with long term FREE targeted traffic.  This will affect his bottom line, thus add value to his business.

He has learn many new things from the Six Income Figure Marketing Group

2. John is positioning himself as the expert by focusing on one topic and teaching about it.  He knows loads about roses and he will portray this to his visitors.  Thus, they will trust his opinion of the recommended products and be far more likely to buy.  Again, affecting his bottom line.

3. John is taking ownership of his business.  He is not simply doing leg work, his business is working for him instead of the other way around.

Do as John has done.  Choose a topic for your website that interests you.  Then decide what the essence of your website will be and how it will effect your bottom line (your income).  Once you're through Step 1 then move on to Step 2.

Step 2:

Choose An Appropriate Domain Name

Choosing the right domain name is the second most important step to creating your website.  Your domain name is part of your advertising.  It is the first impression folks will have of your website before they even click on your ads, your search engine listings, your links on other websites etc.  It is extremely important to spend enough time to debate with yourself on your domain name before you go any further.

Just in case you don't know what a domain name is, it is the part between the www. and the .com.  In our case, 'moneymaking-home-business' is our domain name. Also, some domains will have other endings such as .net, .org, .edu etc.  I personally prefer to use .com due to the fact it is more common. If a prior visitor to your website is trying to remember your web address, they will more likely assume it ends with a “.com.”

The number one most important thing to remember, is your domain name needs to be specific and capture the theme or essence of what your site is about.  I recommend writing dozens  domain names that best describe your site until you can't think of any more.  Also, it's very important that your domain name is easy for folks to remember.

With your list, you can easily begin to "weed" out the ones that are not available (ones that other folks have already claimed) or ones that you just don't like.  The longer your list, the better your selection will be.  Even write ones that are silly.  You're brain storming here and sometimes the best ideas are the silly ones.  So write down any that come to your mind.

Millions of domains are already taken.  You'll likely sort through quite a few before finding one you really like that is still available.  To quickly find out if a particular domain name is available, we have provided a simple to use domain name checker for your convenience.  Click Here to use the domain checker!

Now, let's go back to John (in the example above):

John thought of a long list of potential domain names.  Here is a short list of them (these are just examples and do not intentionally represent real sites on the net):

rosecare.com
rosegardening.com
allaboutroses.com
rosemania.com
gardeningroses.com
growingroses.com
perfectroses.com
healthyroses.com
 

and the list goes on and on.

John made a list of domains that he felt captured as close to the purpose of his website as possible.  He also thought of names that should be easy to remember.  Now all he needs to do is eliminate the ones that aren't available and then choose from the ones that are.

To have an easy way of building your website, visit the Six Figure Marketing Group by clicking on it.  

Step 3:

Registering Your Domain Name

Before your domain name can be used on your website, it must first be registered to you.  This will give you rights to the domain and prevent anyone else from getting it later.  The registration process classifies you as the owner.

There are a couple of ways to do this.  You can either register your domain directly with companies that specifically provide this service or you can choose a hosting company (which you'll need anyway) and they can register it for you.   

Depending on the company you use, there are fees involved with registering a domain name.  Generally speaking, the price for registering a domain name is $70 (for 2 years).  I have seen it as low as $9.50.  Note:  Make sure whoever registers your domain puts YOU as the registrar.  Otherwise you are not "technically" the owner and this may cause problems later.

 Step 4:

Choose a Quality Hosting Company to Host Your Site

Before anyone can download your website on their computer, it needs to be hosted with a hosting company.   

What is a hosting company?  A hosting company is a business that has the equipment (called a server) to "store" your website on.  They simply allow you to use their server for a monthly fee.

How does a web server work?  The server contains hard disk drives that store your website files.  Anytime someone requests your site by clicking on your link or typing your web address in a browser, the server will retrieve the requested page and send it to their computer for viewing.  Thus the name "server", it serves websites.

Hosting companies generally have several servers, each hosting many accounts.  Though an individual could own their own server, a hosting company is the best route to take for hosting your website.  Servers (the equipment itself) can be very expensive and hosting companies already have the infrastructure in place to guarantee your website is available 99% of the time.  They do daily data backups (or should), have electrical backups (to ensure your site doesn't go down due to a power outage), and many larger companies have buildings designed to withstand most natural disasters. Therefore it only makes sense to use a hosting company to host your website.

To have an easy way of building your website, you can visit the Six Figure Income Marketing Group by clicking on it.

Deciding On a Hosting Company

There are so many hosting companies available that it can make your head spin. Thousands of packages, thousands of options and thousands of prices.  No wonder folks get confused or end up signing with a company that only has their own best interests in mind.  And often, new folks don't know what options they need or even what some of them mean.  I hope to clarify that here.

If your goal is to have a website that will someday earn thousands per month, then you will need to be able to implement certain marketing strategies.  You will need the ability to run CGI scripts.  Though most do, some hosting plans don't support CGI. So make sure you know if the plan you choose offers it or not.

Also, if you're planning to use Microsoft FrontPage to design your website, you'll need to make sure that your hosting provider offers FrontPage Extensions.  This is necessary so that FrontPage will function properly.  If you sign up for a plan that you later need to upgrade, it's really not a big deal, but it may cause some down time with your site and a little hassle on your part.