A Guide to Creating an Online Home Business Website

The Internet's popularity has increased exponentially over the last decade. It serves as a medium for anyone of any age to play games, communicate, find information and shop. Due to its diverse uses thousands of people have now turned their heads and eyes to the Internet as a new source of income. If you are one who is seriously considering a home business on the Internet then the first thing you need is a website. Below is a guide creating an online home business website.

A Guide to Creating an Online Home Business Website


Web hosting


A reliable and proper web hosting plan should be amongst the first things you need to consider. Web hosting is equivalent to renting a shop or office space for your online home business only in this case we are renting space on a server that is connected to the Internet 24 hours a day all year round. Currently, the Internet contains hundreds of different web hosting services. This may all be a bit overwhelming at the beginning especially if you are not familiar with the Internet and the differences between them. It is therefore important that you take a closer look at the main features to help you decide.

First think about how much space and traffic you estimate your website will generate and require. A general information site with a few pictures would probably do well with 100MB space and 1GB bandwidth. If you plan to have any multimedia on your website such as videos then you are going to need much more space. Other features you may want to consider are if you are provided with any extra tools such as a site builder, FTP access, website templates and 99% uptime guarantee. Due to the competition on the Internet, some web hosting companies now offer all these extra features allowing website owners to build their own websites with ease and no tech knowledge.

Domain name registration


Another decision to be made before doing anything about your home business website is to choose a name by which you want your online home business to be called. You can think of something original (), use your own name () or stick to generic names (). Whatever you choose to be the name of your website there are some common mistakes you may want to avoid, such as, using numbers (), using misspelled words (). These can sometimes be confusing to remember. Try to think of short names that are easily spelt and easily pronounced. Once you have decided on a name you need to register your domain name with a domain registrar or your web hosting company.

Website design


After registering a domain name and signing up for a web hosting account, the fun begins with the actual creating and designing of your website. There are a few ways in which this can be done. You can design it from scratch using HTML (the universal language of the Internet programming and may take time and effort to learn but is very handy), use a WYSIWYG editor (this uses a "What You See Is What You Get" Interface" allowing you to edit like you would a word document), use a site builder (usually comes with the hosting account), outsource a website designer to do the task (can be very expensive) or use a website management application such as WordPress or Joomla (very popular with blogs and membership sites). Make sure your web hosting service provider is able to provide all these features.

With the above tips, you should now understand the basic requirements of setting up your own online home business. More importantly you should understand why these 3 steps are important decisions in the success of your online home business venture.