After planning the design and content of your website, it’s time to actually physically set up your website. This is the step where you put all your designs and plans into action, creating a website that will attract visitors and earn income.

a) WEBHOSTING

A webhost is a company that stores the pages and pictures and other files of your website. When a person visits your website, they will request these files from your webhost’s server so they can view the website. When choosing a webhost, be careful to choose one that is reliable. After all, if your webhost has problems for any reason, people won’t be able to visit your website, and you won’t be earning any money.

In addition, different webhosts have varying services and tools that they offer. Some of the more important points to consider when choosing a webhost are as follows:

SPACE AND BANDWIDTH – Space refers to how much file storage space is available for your website. For a standard website with about 20 pages with graphics, 30MB is plenty. Online stores might require more space depending on how many products and pictures you have. Bandwidth refers to how many files can be downloaded and viewed by visitors per month. A normal website with reasonable traffic (200 visitors a day) will need about 2GB bandwidth. Again, if you own a business with lots of products and webpages, you might need more bandwidth.
DOMAINS AND SUBDOMAINS – Usually, webhosting accounts are charged per domain, with $10 per domain being a reasonable price. However, you can buy larger hosting packages that allow you to host multiple domains and websites on the same account. Subdomains are just different sections of your website’s domain, with 5 subdomains the rough standard. You will need to make sure how many domains your account entitles you for, in order to calculate which is the better webhosting package.
EMAILS AND AUTORESPONDERS – Emails are the various email addresses that visitors can write to you. Most websites will use about 2 or 3 emails (maybe a webmaster email and a support email). Autoresponders are email addresses that will reply someone with an automatic email. You will only need autoresponders if you are on vacation and wish to leave an automated reply in case anybody emails you.
SCRIPTS – If you want to add extra functionality (such as forums or polls), you will need to be able to run scripts. Make sure your webhost allows you to run scripts for your website. The more common scripts are Java, PHP, Perl and CGI.
There are a number of companies out there that offer free webhosting, but they usually have severe limitations, and might place their own ads on your website. If you are serious in building your internet business, it is recommended to sign up for a proper webhosting service. We recommend HostGator, which provides different levels of webhosting depending on your requirements and budget, with various useful tools as well. In any case, you shouldn’t be paying more than $10 a month per domain for basic webhosting services.

b) PROGRAMMING

Some people with sufficient HTML knowledge use word processing programs to directly code the HTML for their websites. For the rest of us who don’t have such skill, we recommend one of the popular graphical programs like Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage. These programs allow you to create your webpages with mouse clicks with little need for knowledge in HTML.

If you want to make your website look like another website, you can “copy” their HTML and modify it to fit your website. In Internet Explorer, click the “View” menu, then click the “Source” option. This will show you the HTML code for the website. You will need some HTML knowledge to make sense of this and use it on your website.

If you need more information and examples on the many things that HTML can do, you can visit the online tutorial at W3Schools.

c) FILE ORGANIZATION AND TRANSFER

Once you have your webhosting set up and your webpages completed, you need to transfer the completed pages to your webhosting server. If you are using a graphical program like Dreamweaver to work on your webpages, you can configure Dreamweaver to transfer the files for you.

If you are doing it manually, you need to transfer the files via FTP. Your webhost will provide you with an FTP server, with a user id and password for you to access your account on the webhost. Once you connect to the account via FTP, you will be able to upload (transfer files from your computer to the server) or download (transfer files from the server to your computer) or modify files as required.

You can FTP to the server using your computer’s Windows Explorer, by entering the FTP server’s address in your explorer’s Address Toolbar. Or you can use specialized FTP programs such as AceFTP.

d) ADDITIONAL SCRIPTS

If you want to add extra functionality to your website, such as polls, newsletter subscription forms and other interactive programs, you will need to install scripts onto your website.

If you are looking for scripts to create a newsletter mailing list, do note that some webhosting services also provide mailing list scripts. If your webhost doesn’t provide it, BigNoseBird has a good email list management software.

For other scripts and functionality, you can check out the popular scripts at websites such as BigNoseBird and HotScripts.

When you’ve finished setting up your website and getting it launched, the next step will be to start looking at the various means to attract visitors at:
http://www.onlinebiz-help.com/step4.html

About The Author

Steven is the webmaster of http://www.onlinebiz-help.com. His website contains various resources on affiliate programs and internet marketing advice to help you succeed in your internet business, including a Step-By-Step Guide to get you started.

webmaster@onlinebiz-help.com

Most new websites tend to look for a domain name with a .com or .net tld (Top Level Domain). They feel this gives the site a more professional appearance and will appeal to a more international audience and in many cases this is true. However, it can also be beneficial to look at purchasing a domain name with a country specific tld.

There are a number of benefits that can be gained from choosing a domain name with a country specific tld, especially if you conduct your business primarily in one particular country.

Search Engine Benefits

Most of the large search engines will give you a higher search ranking for a site that has the tld of the searchers country. For example, if someone from the United Kingdom is performing a search for widgets, a search engine will often rank widgets.co.uk higher than other sites selling the same product but only have a .com tld.

Having a country specific tld will also allow you to be included in a lot of great country directories that stipulate that your domain name has a certain tld. Getting your site into these directories can be a great way of improving your search engine ranking as these are 1 way links from authority sites for your chosen subject. These kind of links are graded much higher than reciprocal linking.

Buyer Confidence

Having a domain tld will often give the buyer more confidence when making a purchase as they consider the site to be local, therefore governed under the same laws as the buyer. This makes it easier to follow up and sales and make complaints if any problems occur during the purchase of the product. It also helps to settle any nerves if the buyer is able to see a street address that they recognize, rather than a foreign address.

Sometimes the best policy is to purchase both a .com and a country tld. This allows you to appeal to both international and national customers. The potential sales that you can get with a country domain tld should not be overlooked as a small investment in an extra domain can bring big returns for you and your business.

Gather information about your customer before they start browsing

Another benefit of having a country domain name is that you already know where your customer is likely to be from. This means that you can display products for that particular customers region without having to ask the customer to select which geographic area they are in. When a customer types in their country domain, you can forward them to your main domain name but display only products that will be of interest to them and have all the prices in their own currency. This gives the site a local feel and will again bring that buying confidence that is so important when trying to make a sale.

Summary

I hope you’ve seen the importance of not overlooking this great opportunity to bring in extra customers, simply by choosing a country domain name or simply adding as an extra name that points to your main domain name.

About the Author
Steve Ashton is a programmer and web developer. He runs two popular websites, Web Hosting Guide and Domain Names Center.

Over the last seven years, I’ve bought website hosting from several different companies. I noticed that the majority of webhosts make the mistake of thinking they are in the webhosting business. They only offer website hosting and, maybe domain name registration. As a marketer, I see huge missed opportunities to make more profits.

Some website hosts see these opportunities. They realize that they have gold. They have a group of clients who crave something more than hosting. What do hosting clients want? To make sales from their websites.

Knowing this, these webhosts create backend Profit Centers so they can make more money with their clients. A Profit Center is an area of your business that brings more cash to your bank account. Webhosts who bring in lots of profits offer their clients useful information, tools, software, audios and more to help their clients become successful. It doesn’t have to be difficult or labor intensive. First

ASSESS YOUR CURRENT PROFIT CENTERS

In your website hosting business, you may have these current Profit Centers:

Website hosting, of course
Domain name registration, an easy tie-in
Website design
Higher level programming services
Search Engine Optimization services
Search Engine submission services

If you don’t have all of these Profit Centers, remember you don’t have to provide these with in-house talent. You can joint venture with other quality businesses and get referral fees. This is a wise way to go because you don’t have the up-front investment and risk if it doesn’t sell. If a service DOES sell, you may decide to later offer it in-house.

And this is just a beginning. There are more Profit Centers your business and your clients can benefit from.

NEW PROFIT CENTER IDEAS

You can add new Profit Centers to your webhosting business. Some of them require a few hours up front, then they run automatically for months or years with minor updating. You decide how much time you want to put in. The key is to ask yourself – Does this help my clients make more sales?

Three new Profit Center Ideas are:

*An upsell on your check out page. This works because it catches them when they are already buying.
*A mini-marketing course sent by sequential autoresponder, offering solid information and products to help them achieve their website marketing and sales goals.
*A Resource Center webpage that’s available only to your clients.

Remember, each Profit Center needs to be more than just a pitch. I must warn you…
you can do all of the above and STILL fail at creating Profit Centers that go ka-ching. How?

Imagine, a man wants to get married. A friend tells him to start on the road to marriage by simply finding a nice woman and asking her for a date.

Will this work? It CAN, but you and I both know there are many factors that make a difference…

WHO he asks, WHEN he asks, HOW he asks, WHERE he asks, and WHAT he says

All this makes a difference to him (and her) and it makes a difference to you when you’re building Profit Centers. Profit Centers need marketing finesse. You may remember Beta videotapes. It was a superior video format, but it failed because it wasn’t marketed as well as VHS.

CONSIDER THIS WHEN BUILDING NEW PROFIT CENTERS

WHO you make the offer to – are they a good match for the product or service? If they are not in the market for what you offer, it’s very unlikely they will buy.

WHAT offer you make – will this offer make a difference for your clients or do they feel like you’re pitching them for your own benefit?

WHEN you make your offer to them. Before they buy hosting? After they buy hosting? Once their site is live?

WHERE will you make the offer – on your website or in an email? Either can be successful.

WHAT will you say? This is crucial. You can have a useful product or service and still may not make sales.

What you say makes a huge difference. Use poor copywriting and people will click away from your offer like water jumping off a hot skillet. Great copywriting can inspire people to GO FIND THEIR WALLETS. That’s the level of copywriting you want – compelling.

To start building your Profit Centers, test your offer on a group of clients. See if it sells, and if not, analyze why not. Edit your Profit Center until it consistently helps your clients and brings your website hosting business more money

About the Author

Resource: Author and Marketing Specialist Raynay Valles produces New Profit Centers for website hosting businesses – upsells, mini-courses and resource pages, customized for your business and complete with proven copywriting. Just plug in and start profiting. For more information email her at webhostingprofits@jawdrop.com

Tips for choosing a web hosting company.

When choosing a web hosting company there are many factors to consider.

1. Does the company offer telephone support?

Email support is always nice to have available, but you may already know how long it takes some people to reply to these. Getting someone on the ‘phone when your site goes down will instantly make you feel better and get you the answers you need as quickly as you need them. A lot of bigger web hosting companies offer free support and often are available out of hours too. Phone support is a great benefit for any web hosting client.

2. What sort of history does the company have? How long has this company been in business?

Web hosting companies that have been in existence for less than a year may not be the best choice for you or your website. A hosting company with a proven track record and many happy clients is certainly a good sign and might work well for you. A lot of the larger hosting businesses will post customer testimonials on their site to reinforce the message.

3. What software does the company offer?

This varies widely between web hosting companies. Now that I have used Cpanel I wouldn’t want to be without it, mainly because I am used to it and now know what features it has and how to use most of them. It’s a lot easier to stick with something you know than have to try switching to a new User Interface.

Are you designing your site with Frontpage?. If so, check your host supports this, as not all do.

Read more [+]