Domains and Web Hosting

it’s finally time to take our business idea and turn it into a reality. You’ve narrowed down your niche, you’ve figured out how much competition you have, how many monthly searches you have and you have a pretty good idea of what kind of traffic you can expect. The only thing left is to actually create your business.

We’re going to have to take a few liberties with this series if we’re going to have any chance of getting it off the ground. So, these articles will be geared towards people who have decided to put up their own site and promote either their own products and services or promote other products and services as an affiliate.

Okay, let’s begin.The first thing you’re going to need is to find a domain name for your business. This is where you’re going to have to use a little imagination. Let’s say you decided to sell CDs through Amazon and you decide to focus on the ones that are sold at a big discount, which is usually the older stuff. You might want to get a domain name like www.cheapcds.com, or something like that. You want the domain name to be as descriptive of what your business is as possible. If it’s a band review site then maybe you might choose something like www.rockbandreviews.com or something like that. I seriously doubt either of those domains are available, but you get the picture.

To get your domain, simply go to Google and type in "Domains." You’ll find about 95 million places to get domains. Lots of people use Go Daddy.

Domains are cheap for the first year, about $8 or so. But after that, they get very expensive if you renew on a yearly basis, so it’s a good idea to get your domain for a number of years if you’re sure you’re going to be keeping it.After you get your domain, the next thing you’re going to need is hosting.

There are a number of hosting companies around that you can use. My personal favourite is Vodahost.

Vodahost has some excellent webdesign software that is a breeze to use and upload to the Vodahost Servers. If you sign up they will throw in a free domain name.

Tomorrow we will look at creating your Website