4 Easy Steps to Get Your First Website Online in One Day
Having your own website is surefire way to build your own solid online business. A website is an asset to the owner just as land is to an owner.
This is not to mean that you can’t make a lot of money online without your own website but a website allows more opportunity to earn on autopilot than the other models that don’t require a website. Furthermore you can liquidate or cash out on your website any time in the future and who knows maybe make triple the amount that it is worth. I hope that whets your appetite.
Getting a website online takes three fundamental steps and one equally important extra step as follows:
- Get a domain name
- Get a hosting account
- Update the Domain Name Servers
- Sign up with an autoresponder service (this step is not a must but is vital to your long term success online)
Now let’s go through each one of them in more details:
1 Register a domain
The first thing you are going to do is to register a domain name for your website. Did I hear you ask, “Kevin, what is a domain name?”
Well every website is stored under a domain name which is basically a unique address on the internet that allows web surfers to access the files stored under the website. For example internetwealthlab.com is my domain name, facebook.com is the domain name for Facebook and imageeditor.net is the domain name for the online image editor.
To register a domain name you need a domain registrar. I always use Namecheap.com. They are cheap, reliable and above all, flexible. They also have a good user interface that is easy to navigate. Registering your domain name with namecheap costs you only $9.98/year.
To choose a domain name, go to namecheap.com and search for the domain name you want to register by typing it in and then clicking on “search”. button
Tips:
- Consider having your domain name keyword-rich. For example, if your niche is “acne”, you’ll want to have the word acne in the domain name of your site.
- Consider also going for either a .com, .net or a .org extension as they are the most popular. Overall, however, .com looks more professional and is most memorable. Again, most people tend to enter .com by default when visiting a website.
- You can register your own full name or the name of your business
- Consider doing away with hyphens (-) and underscores (_)
Now, you will not always find the domain name you have in mind as some of them will already be registered. If that is the case, continue searching until you find one that you like, and then proceed to register it.
To register your domain, click on the “Add to cart” button
To continue for now, click on the Express Checkout button.
You will be prompted to create an account with namecheap if you don’t have one. Once you have created an account with namecheap and you are logged in, click Express Checkout button and then choose to pay by credit card or by funds available in your account.
Yes, the funds available in your account. Namecheap allows you the option to deposit money through PayPal into your namecheap account for faster checkout. This is particularly helpful for people that register lots of domain names such as professional domain flippers. For now, just pay by credit card and let’s move to the nest step.
NB:
Don’t take the offer for web hosting from namecheap. Just register the domain name and set up your hosting account with hostgator
2. Set up a Hosting Account
Once you have your domain name, you need to host it on a server somewhere online. While it is easy to find free web hosts that promise some quality features, they will be more than likely strict limitations to what you can do with your hosting space.
If you don’t want some third party banners on your website distracting the sale process or costing you subscribers and customers, then you must stay away from free hosting. I tried one and I promise it was one nasty experience; eventually I had to move my entire business to a new location (hostgator).
You’ve been warned. What you really need is a reliable web host with good customer support 24 hours a day. Again you don’t want to have your site going down three times a month.
If I ever have to give recommendation for a reliable web host, then it has got to be Hostgator. It is my absolute favorite (from my own personal experience) and is preferred by majority of online marketers. I host all my sites with them and here is one practical example why I like them:
“Some two months ago, I accidentally deleted my blog some minutes before midnight and within two minutes, I was chatting live with a hostgator technical assistant. About three hours later, the blog was restored 100%. That is what is in my opinion, reliability”
Although hostgator will offer to register you a domain name, don’t go for the offer. They will have control over your domain making it difficult to transfer it to a new registrar should you ever decide to do it for whatever reason. Go for their hosting package and register your domain at namecheap. I hope you remember that.
The “Baby” package ($9.95/month) allows you to host unlimited domains on the same package as your online business grows. But if you are on a tight budget, just go for the hatchling package ($8.95/month). It allows you to host only one domain but you can always upgrade when the need be.
Tip: You can knock off the monthly hosting fee to as low as $4.95 by choosing to pay on 3 years intervals.
3. Update the Domain Name Servers (DNS)
After setting your hosting account, hostgator will send you an email containing the Domain Name Servers for your hosting account. They will be similar to:
NS1.HOSTGATOR.COM
NS2.HOSTGATOR.COM
What you now need to do is to login to your namecheap account and click on “Manage Domains” from the top navigation tabs. Then click on your domain name
Next, click on “Domain Name Server Setup” from the left hand menu. An empty form will appear you asking you to change the existing Domain Name Server Information. Simply coy and paste the Domain Name Servers in the order NS1 and NS2 exactly as they appear in the email you received from hostgator as follows:
Click Save and that is it. You’ll now only need to keep checking to see whether the changes have taken place. After about 24 hours, login to your hostgator cpanel (Account Control Panel) and check it out. If your domain name has appeared, you are ready to build and upload your website files.
You now have two options:
If you want to create a wordpress blog, you can create it automatically using a feature called Fantastico Autoinstaller available from your hostgator control panel.
If you want to build a regular HTML website, you can use a free website builder called NVU. You can get a free completely illustrated NVU guide here.
4. Get an autoresponder account:
While it is very easy to overlook the importance of an autoresponder account, it’s one of the most important assets to an online business owner. It is the easiest way to drive traffic to any website on demand.
A list of subscribers is so important that many A-class marketers will swear it was the single most important factor to their huge success online. One marketer I know even claims that “if you are not building a list, you are not building a business but rather building some other peoples’ businesses
There are many autoresponder services out there but none beats Aweber in terms of deliverability and reliability. It is also the number one choice for most internet marketers. That’s all there is to getting your first website or blog up and running.
Wishing you success with your first website,
Kevin Njoroge.
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i believe that to earn money online , that not necessaries that you need a website. But no harm to get one while it may able to double up your sales because it able to help to bring in more traffic and higher conversion rate.
ghostfighter0506 recently posted..car racing games
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I have been in the business for about 2-3 years now and I have never used autoresponders.
Instead, I always do my keyword research and and trying to take the first spot in Google for a great keyword.
It’s hard for anyone newbie to get people to sign up to their newsletter. It’s better to build up at trust before you even think about using a autoresponder.
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Don’t forget that when creating your website that you must give some thought to SEO. Contrary to what Kevin Costner says in Field Of Dreams, They will not come just because it’s there!
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Hi!
Thank you for the detailed steps provided for setting up a website. I agree with what Rasmus said above. I will also not sign up for anyone’s newsletter until and unless the company is of very good repute and known to me. Hence, it is very important to make yourself known before going for the autoresponder series.
Rodrigo Valenzuela recently posted..Los tips de seduccion de starfanny
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Hi!
I believe that first we need to establish ourselves as a credible online company that provides quality information and not crap. It is good that you have mentioned here that sending autoresponder mails as optional. It must be done but after some time after it is established online.
Thanks for the information
Leo recently posted..Porque YO voy a dejar de fumar : algunas razones
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I would say that difficult part is promotional activities, you have to be much active here if you are doing your business online seriously.
Mary@Making Money Point recently posted..Using Discount Coupons for Starting Your Blogging Career
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Website owning is not a big deal but the advertising of a new website is very difficult task to do and it would be hard to bring the new website online in day..
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Thank you for you tips. In fact, dealing with one own website is necessary for internet business. Establishing the website is less difficult, but designing and boosting it are more difficult and vital.
Sophia recently posted..Hidden dangers of using automated trading robots
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This is a really good post – its refreshing to see that even experienced webmasters recognise that not everyone knows the ins and outs of website-building and needs to see screenshots showing them exactly what to do.
It is always easier to change an established site than it is to build a new one from scratch from people – so don’t psyche yourself out and not make the site until you’ve planned every little detail of it on paper. Follow this author’s advice and get the site up there TODAY before you tweak and perfect it.
And remember – content is king but the structure of the site is important, otherwise nobody will see half the content. If content is king then the structure must be the palace!
SkaDandy567@A Make Money Online Journey recently posted..Alert Step 1 – done before it was begun!
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That is correct. I agree mostly with the keyword in the domain name. I have an e-commerce and the visits did not meet my expectations. I changed the domain for other parties with a main keyword and my site visits tripled!
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WordPress has made the proceess of setting up a blog. I remember when I had to write my blog platform in perl and I thought it was great at the time. How far we’ve come.
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Excellent information for all newbies who wants to start their website with less efforts.
And don’t have depth knowledge about.Many thanks for these excellent tips.
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Thanks for the great tips. Dealing with one website is one thing but when you have many that is another story, awesome info.
College Blogs recently posted..Starting a Blog can Help with College
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Hostgator is really a good webhost I must agree. It’s so much more user-friendly for beginners, and is still reliable and stable as well. It’s great for my Internet marketing blog.
EV@Internet marketing recently posted..Introduction to Coffee Shop Millionaire
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Really excellent. I recently created a site have followed all these steps. My only question now, how in the world do I improve my rank in google?
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Interesting post on the subject….. things have certainly changed since Big G Brought out that nasty Panda but it all seems to have panned out now. The thing is building a website is easy.. building a site that stays within Google’s rules is the main thing.
Mikaere recently posted..Money Online For Beginners
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You are right with wordpress thing have become much easier to get involved and not know a bunch about code or anything. And with all the plug ins you can get decent SEO as well.
College Blogs recently posted..Starting a Blog can Help with College
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When it comes to setting up a website, it takes a few steps. But, I think it takes a lot of time to help it achieve higher ranking. After a website is made it needs a great deal of patience.
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Thank you for sharing. Really thank you so much… Very informative
post..!!
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I will print this advise because i am planning to buy a domain of my own. Thanks for the tips and newbies like me really appreciate this kind of posts. Advance Merry Christmas.
logo items recently posted..4 Easy Steps to Get Your First Website Online in One Day
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Your writing is very good, I really like
thank you for sharing
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I am currently in the process of making my website, so I haven’t submitted my sitemap to Google yet. When I do submit my sitemap, do I need to submit both rss and atom sitemaps? Also, how long will it take Google to index my first website? Do I need to keep submitting new pages when I add content to my site?
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Great article it’s really very simple steps and very good for biginers not only for starters I’m not proffessional but I have bookmarked it to follow this steps when starting new website, and I like hostgator hosting it’s really good one
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Great and informative breakdown on how to set up your first website. This is great information for the newbs out there.
College Blogs recently posted..Starting a Blog can Help with College
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Wow these are some great steps. I actually used these steps yesterday and had to come back because I wanted to leave a comment because on that day I had my website finished.
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Your article make aware the people how to create their own website. Really well written.
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Thanks for alighting the simple easy steps required for getting your first website online. Very refreshing post indeed
Thank you so much for the free tips
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Twitter: jhnhdg067
says:
I have used Host Gator for years and would recommend it to everyone
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Very informative regarding setting up a website for a newbie. Precise and clearly written!
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Getting a domain name that’s totally amazing can make a big difference.
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