Creating a Profitable Website – Part Two

If this is where you are starting in this tutorial, you may want to go right back to the beginning to make sure you get all the information.

Once you have the content created and ready, it’s time to think about getting the website set up and ready for publication.

Getting a Domain Name

The domain name is probably the most important part of setting up your website. It is how people will find your site and how they will tell friends to get to it. For this reason it needs to be something memorable, something brandable. Don’t go for keyword.com, think of some name which will be easy to remember and distinguish from the crowd. To make sure you get the best deal, it is best not to buy this from the same people you get your hosting deal from.

Recommended Website: GoDaddy is probably the most well known and most well praised domain registrar around..

Getting Hosting

Hosting is the next step. You need to find somewhere affordable, but of good quality hosting. Try not to buy into too expensive a deal, most hosting companies offer some kind of beginner package which is perfect for a starting out website. If you need to expand in the future, then this will most likely be catered for.

Free Hosting?

Lots of places offer some kind of free hosting service. However, this is generally not a good idea if you plan on making a profit from your website. You may save money from hosting, but most free webhosts do not allow you to have your own domain name (which is essential) and also provide a very small amount of webspace. Further, a lot of them even force you to have ads on your site and won’t allow you to have your own ads present alongside them. As such, when aiming to make a profitable website, free hosting should most definitely be avoided.

Recommended Website: There are quite a few hosting deals you can consider. My personal preference is for Hostgator, thanks to a wide range of hosting options and exceptional support when issues arise. I’ve been hosted with them for three years and have never been let down.

Getting a design

For those of you more artistically inclined, and with greater skill in regards to coding with HTML and CSS, you can simply create your own design. For those less capable, you can simply buy a template online. There are thousands of high quality templates across the internet for you to use. They come complete and ready for uploading, all you have to do is replace the placeholder text with your own.

For convenience sake, it’s best to stay away from things like Java, Javascript and Flash, as they tend to be very heavy on loading times and often can be replaced with something far simpler and more comfortable to use. Make sure your site loads quickly, as the first impression is everything. Make sure the HTML is clean and well structured, as it makes it easier for search engine bots to crawl your site and follow the links within.

You can ignore the above paragraph if you intend on just buying a template, as these are often already professionally designed with the above in mind.

Recommended Website: If you’re going to buy a template, the best website to try is 4Templates. It offers thousands of easily searchable web templates to use in almost any niche or style imaginable.

Once you have everything ready offline, it’s time to throw it all together.