Starting an online business / venture needs to have an address / brand name and to this, we first need to get a website with your Brand Name. You should will have to register your own domain name or if you do not want to spend money on domain registration and hosting, you can very well go for a free blog / website service like WordPress.Com or Blogger.
I would advice to go for a domain registration rather than a free blog for some practical reason and avoid desperation in future. You may regret in future and you may decide to go for a domain registration when you realize the need of having your own domain name.
Advantages of having own domain and paid hosting
- You can have a domain name registered in your name and address (helps in brand building and sounds professional)
- You can customize your blog files / looks, etc when you have your own hosting
- You can add additional features, better storage
The disadvantage of having a paid hosting is that you will have to pay for it on a monthly or a yearly basis depending on the package you choose. There are hosting available from US$ 5 per month, which should be affordable, but again its your choice to go for a free or a paid blog /website. If you are not confident about your project, then you can start a trial using a free blog and get some experience.
Deciding your Content Management System
Days are gone when you need to know HTML and other web languages to maintain a website. You can now use CMS (Content Management Systems) like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla to maintain your blog. All the mentioned are open source and free to use. You can do any modifications according to the license (GPL).
I would suggest to use WordPress for your blog / website because its very much user friendly, supported by a big community, free updates, tons of free plugins and lot more. I have been using WordPress for more than 5 years now and I have never felt that this tool is not for me. I have created different types of websites / blogs using WordPress which works without any issues. There are millions of blogs powered with WordPress, so I am sure that you will not regret using this great tool
Creating your Online Presence
Besides having a website of your own, I would recommend to create accounts with popular social networking sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Improving your Social presence will help you a lot in marketing your product. I will be going in detail on this in the Marketing part, so first you need to get an account with atleast the following.
All are free services and the more contacts you have with these Social Networking sites, the more beneficial it would be. I will be discussing the methods to increase your social networking presence in future chapters so don’t worry about that right now.
Above are the links to my profiles on social networking sites, don’t forget to add me or follow me, I will be helping you with tips using these social networking tools
Further Reading
In the next chapter, I will be discussing about the next step which would be setting up the Website Design / Style / Theme which is very important
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Been searching for awhile for something like this great info very useful.
i prefer free domain and hosting because it gives you some quality hosting and a top-level domain. the only thing you need to do it earn a bit of points (you earn them from reading, clicking links). The website link is in the website url.
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