- Get a pen and paper and write down your business ideas. What kind of online business do you want to start?
- Do your research, doing your research is important in findind out if there is a market for your business.
- What are the problems you are planning to solve with your services? Look for what people are searching for answers to.
- Keyword research and search volume. Is there enough people searching for this keyword? knowing this will help you determine if you are wasting your time and effort or if this online business will make you money.
- Get a domain and hosting. Now that you know what your market is, what you need to fulfil and how many people are searching for your interested keyword per month, it is time to head over to a domain registry and get yourself a domain name. A domain is somewhat your business body are lets say the shop and your hosting is the land that your business will be on.
My number one place to get cheap domains are namecheap, they are easy to use and as i said, they are cheap. You can search for a coupon code to get a discount on your purchase. Most people go for .coms but if that extention is not available, you can use others like .org, .net, .online, .site and so much more.
You are charged for a domain yearly, this means you will only pay once per year for your domain. Depending on the type of extention you may pay anywhere from 10$ to 13$ per year but with a coupon code you will get it cheaper. Other extentions like .xyz, .online and many others are only 0:88cents for the first year, this is a sweet deal.
Now it is time for your hosting. I use hostgator along with many other people because they are reliable and their customer service is great. If you only plan on having one website, you can go with the first option which is the hatchling but the baby plan is better because you get unlimited domains which means unlimited websites and more money. This is however up to you.
Hosting at hostgator can be started for 1 penny for the first month and then $11.95 per month after, this is for the baby plan. I will leave a link here for this 1 penny hostgator deal. - Set up your website. Now that you have your name nd hosting, it is time to build your website or hire someone to build it for you.
- Decide what your platform will be, many businesses use wordpress platform for building their websites for their online business, this may be a good idea since wordpress comes with so many additional goodies.
- Setting up your payment processor. Depending on what you decided to offer as a business, you may need a cart to collect payments for your product or services, this can be easily acheived.
- Promoting your business, you will need to promote your online business to drive traffic to your website, this can be acheived by adding a blog to your site with fresh new content on a regular basis, you can also make videos explaining your products or services and upload them to youtube. This is a great way of getting visitors to your website.
- Social media account, if you plan to be successful and reach a wider audiance then you need a social page or two for your online business. Facebook, twitter, linkedin and instagram are great starting points but there are many others worth looking into. Get your logo and banners out there infront of the crowd and customers will be coming to your onlkine business by the loads.
Please leave your comments or questions below if you need any assistance.
