Website, Domain and Hosting

Regardless of the type of home based business you decide to enter into, you will almost certainly be requiring a website and hosting plan to get your product visible on the Internet. There are some who say that it is not necessary to have a website of your own in order to run an Internet based home business. This is 'strictly' true, but it's like having a shop with no signs and no passing traffic - very difficult and for the small expense involved, it's a necessity as far as I'm concerned. This is a relatively small expense considering it will be the means by which you will be presenting your home business and products etc to the world.

Website

As for your website, some people are confident and able to build their own using the 'ready made' html based programs like FrontPage and DreamWeaver etc. Some people JUST don't have the necessary PC background. For those who aren't confident enough to build their own and for whom having one built is just too much of an expense (this is most people - having a site built for you will cost at least hundreds!!), my recommendation is the following program. Check it out. It can include EVERYTHING including domain and hosting. Take a look at the options and you'll find it's a pretty economical way to build your website, with all the help you'll need, on an ongoing basis, for as long as you need. You also have different options as top how much help you wish to engage etc.

Domains

Domains (the 'address' of your website - just like your phone number) can be chosen by using one of the many facilities where you can search to see if your choice is available (experience shows shorter domain names are more 'client friendly' and more easily remembered, obviously). We have included one below, so you can find one straight away. As a home based business person, it doesn't matter if you you use the .com, .net, .biz or any of the other types of domains. You just can't use .gov or some others that are reserved for specific types of website (.gov is obviously for Government concerns and Departments etc). I recommend .biz as it still has the largest number of domain names available compared to .com or .net. But again, it doesn't matter and will make no difference to any part of your hosting cost, business or promotional activities. the .biz domains are often cheaper than the others also.

To check the availability of a suitable domain name, most domain sellers have a tool that you can use to check the availability of your preferred name. Certainly Ehostpros, our recommended hosting (and domain) people have this option. Click on their add below.

Hosting

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 or ISP like AOL - they just supply access to the Net - they don't 'host' domains). You need a Web Hosting company 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. 

The first consideration is 'Disk space'. This is the same as the room on you PC's hard disk, in that it simply means the amount of space you will have available to put your website, with it's different pages and images etc onto. To start with, you don't need anymore 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). 

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 or being sent all the information that makes up the web page being viewed. This all adds up to band width 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.

Other considerations regarding the needs of your home business website are more complex and involve things like how many email accounts you will be able to have (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 have email addresses which you will name, like 'me@mydomain.biz. This is far more impressive and professional than the 'shared' type email addresses 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.onlineplus.biz  and you are marketing brooms, you can create a separate website with a URL www.brooms.onlineplus.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??!!

Now that you have an idea of what you need in the website and hosting area, you simply need to decide who you are going to have as your Web Host (there are thousands). Some are huge international concerns, while others are one man operations using a garage as their place of business. You can tell a bit from the amount of 'up-time' (the amount of time the server is operating and is accessible by people on the Net - i.e. not being serviced or repaired due to breakdowns and problems). This is expressed as a percentage. Anything less than 99% is not acceptable, as each percentage point represents approximately an entire day every 3 months!!

Anyway, when you choose your Web Host, you simply advise them of your chosen domain, as part of the sign up process, and they will usually be able to arrange for the domain to be transferred to their server and it will usually take from 24 - 48 hours. From that time on, you will have a domain up and running. You still have to build your website, although you may already have one built that you just need to upload (or publish), but many people build as they go. Some Affiliate programs supply websites or full web pages., These are advantageous in that it is instant content and can be promoted immediately. These websites or pages are generally, or at least should be, 'optimized'. This means they are built so that the Search engines such as Google and Yahoo etc, will 'notice' them and give them a decent ranking. But you will find that there is far, far more to getting a good ranking in the SE's than just that. There is also much about this important aspect of online business included in 'The Affiliate Guide Book' (2005 Edition).

If you have a website (or can build your own without much help) an you are in the position of being ready to commit to a domain and hosting arrangement, I have to introduce you to my Web Host. Ehostpros.com host five websites for me and I have used others, but they are certainly, I guarantee, the best in terms of price, facilities, options and service as a package of the necessities. So much so, that I will recommend only ehostpros.com as the best Host for anyone, for any purpose. However, their packages are especially well geared for the Home Based Business website. For those interested, they also supply products and services for the Hosting Reseller.

Click this banner to check out ehostpros' plans and pricing - from $2-99 PER MONTH

Domains can also be purchased, registered and/or transferred here

If you do choose to go with another Web Host (there are thousands, as I said, which can be found by doing a Google search for 'Web Hosting' or Web Hosts' and similar keywords), you should not have to pay any more than the prices at ehostpros because they have virtually every facility and option you could want. But of course, it is everyone's right and privilege to do their own searching and judging.