Don't
Pay Too Much
by Stephen Brennan
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Having been involved in Affiliate
marketing for while I have seen a number of ‘newbies’ start out
on their ‘online adventure’ paying far too much for basic
Internet facilities. Every now and then, I feel an overwhelming
need to make a couple of important things known to the thousands
who, every day, make their first step towards Affiliate
Marketing or other Home Based Business.
It seems, as with many things in life, the new, uninitiated or
young tend to give in to excitement and their urge to 'get
moving' by using or buying the first facility that comes along.
A fatal and costly mistake, especially on the Internet, where
there are so many who are comfortable with selling something for
more than it is worth compared to other options available.
To begin with, you need an Internet presence to be online at
all, so the first thing is a Domain name. Domains (the 'address'
of your website - like a phone number) can be chosen by using
one of the many facilities available to see if your choice is
available (experience shows shorter domain names are more 'user
friendly' and more easily remembered, obviously).
To check the availability of a suitable domain name, go to:
http://www.mydiscountdomains.com and select a domain name which
is available.
As a home based businessperson, it doesn't matter if you use the
.com, .net, .biz or any of the other types of domains. You just
can't use those like '.gov' that are reserved for specific types
of website (.gov is obviously for Government concerns and
Departments etc). At this time, I recommend '.biz' as it still
has the largest number of domain names available compared to
'.com' or '.net'. A basic domain should not cost more than $20,
but can be as little as $8, so shop around.
Having done this, you need to get your domain onto a Host
Server. This basically means you have to have it 'installed'
onto a public access server (not the same as your Internet
Service Provider like AOL - ISP's just supply access to the Net
- they don't 'host' domains) so people can access it or 'dial'
it up. You need a Web Hosting company to do this and these offer
a myriad of different plans and prices for all the different
needs of the industry. As a Home Based Business just starting
out, you don't need a terrible lot of anything to begin with, so
the plan you choose should be quite reasonably priced. As little
as $3 per month will get you up and running easily, with all the
features you're likely to need.
The first consideration is 'Disk space'. This is the same as the
room on you PC's hard drive, in that it simply means the amount
of space you will have available on the server to put your
website, with it's different pages and images etc. To start
with, you don't need any more than 100 - 200 megabytes (each
average web page takes about 20 - 40kb plus images, which are
often used on many different pages, like your logo, 'header
image’ or navigation buttons). |
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The second
consideration is 'Bandwidth'. This is the amount of information
(in the form of the web pages and images you build your website
with) that the server will send to people visiting your website.
You see, each time a website is visited, the person looking at
it is actually downloading to their browser (as opposed to
‘downloading to disk’) that is, they are being sent all the
information that makes up the web page being viewed. This all
adds up to bandwidth and in a hosting plan it is referred to in
Gigabytes (1 Gb =1000 Mb) per month. Starting out, you will find
5 - 10Gb per month absolutely plenty. You can generally update
or increase these limits easily and cheaply.
Other considerations regarding the
needs of your home business website are more complex and involve
things like how many email accounts you can have, as you will no
longer need to rely on your ISP email or free accounts with MSN
or Yahoo etc. You will have your own domain and will
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have email addresses which you will name, like 'me@mydomain.biz.
This is far more impressive and professional than the 'dime a
dozen' free email accounts that everyone has.
Other facilities you may have or want available for your home
based business website are Guestbooks, Forums, Databases, SSL
(secure socket layer), Shopping Cart, Frontpage Extensions
(allowing you to use the popular Microsoft website building and
editing program Frontpage). There are so many options, most of
which you may not understand or need at all, ever, but some you
will.
One specific option which a home business website, especially
Affiliate related, should have available is the ability to
create FREE and either unlimited or numerous 'Sub-Domains'. This
facility allows you to create mini websites (although they may
not be so small) within you main Domain. For instance, if your
domain name is a 'generic' name like www.online-plus.biz and you
are marketing brooms, you can create a separate website with a
URL, which will look like this www.brooms.online-plus.biz .
You can do this as many times as you are allowed sub-domains and
it is extremely handy and cost saving for Affiliates and those
who wish to 'diversify' but not have to get a new domain for
every product. This is why it is wise to choose a domain name
which is 'generic', which means it has no specific meaning and
can be combined with anything and not look out of place. For
instance, if you choose www.brooms.biz, then you can hardly use
it in a website which deals with Viagra!! (www.viagra.brooms.biz
??? ). Although, there are some strange looking domain names out
there??!!
** This 'Author's Resource' must be published intact with links
active when copying or publishing this article **
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