Let’s go over a couple more basics for the beginners that are reading this before we move on to the advanced marketing techniques ahead. Let’s go to the very beginning of the process of putting together a home based internet business. One of the first and primary things you’ll need is a website. You can’t be in business these days without a website. Ok, so now that we know you need a website, let’s talk about what makes up a website:

The First Step is To Get A Domain Name:

In order to have your own website, you must first get yourself a domain name. One of my domains is www.ProgramReview.com Don’t use part of any person or companies domain name. For example, if you did build a website using a web builder from Tripod.com, don’t use the free hosting that Tripod offers. It may be free, but your website would end up looking something like this:

http://www.tripod.com/members/home/yournamegoeshere

Obviously that link above has two things that would cause you to lose money.

1. It has the name Tripod in it as the main domain name, so all of your potential customers are going to see the name Tripod and think: “Boy how can this guy be making any money? Tripod gives free hosting so this guy can’t even afford to pay $4 a month for hosting. He can’t even afford his own domain name. “How can I trust this person?”

2. Next, the name is so long that you can’t effectively advertise it off-line. Can you imagine listing that link in a magazine ad? How many people do you think would really take the time to try and enter that whole long website address? I bet almost nobody would do it.

The other problem with using the domain name of another company such as:

http://www.tripod.com/members/home/yournamegoeshere is that if there is ever a problem with that main company link such as they go out of business or they cancel your account, you’ve got a major problem. Or if you find their service to be poor because your website is down a lot you’ve got a problem. If for any reason at all you want to change to a better host, maybe even because you found a better price, you’ve got a major problem. Because it’s not easy to just try to tell people to stop going to your old website and start going to your new address. It’s not that simple! If business was good with your old website address, that means potentially hundreds of other website owners have linked to that specific website address.

If you move your website to a new website address, you lose all that great free traffic from all those places linking to your old address. And there’s no way you can reach all those people to tell them your new link. You will never even know about most of the people who are linking to you so there’s nobody to contact. Even if you could contact all of them, it would take way too much time! It is for all these reasons you definitely want to get your own domain name and should never even consider getting your website hosted by a company like Tripod. Don’t get hosting with any company unless you have your very own domain name being hosted by them. Bottom line: If you’re going to do business online, spend $15 and get your own domain name. Don’t try to be cheap and cut corners on this one or you’ll have major regret.

I know what you’re probably wondering. Why did I recommend the website at tripod.com in one part of this course, and then say to avoid it on another. In the other section I only recommended using the website builder that tripod offers. They have some good free website building tools at Tripod.com. I didn’t recommend their hosting or domain name. And that goes for www.AngelFire.com, www.FreeYellow.com, www.Geocities.com, www.HomeStead.com, www.FreeSiteTools.com as well. These are mostly free hosts and I don’t recommend their hosting, but I do recommend the simple tools they offer to build your own website.

The other problem with free hosting is that since you’re not paying the host any money, they technically don’t owe you anything in return. So if you get a free host, there’s no guarantee that your website will even be up and running half the time. It’s very common to experience technical problems with free hosting and to have your website load too slow. Since you can have your website hosted for $4 a month, why would anyone want to put up with technical problems and a slow loading website? You got me!

But I guess this isn’t obvious to everyone because I continue to see so many small business owners that keep bouncing from one web host to the next looking for a better deal each time they switch. There is only one place I’ve ever found that offers rock solid hosting on extremely reliable servers for around $4 a month. I’ll tell you more about it in the members only website.