Your First Website
To a complete beginner, the thought of building their own website might be a bit frightening to say the least. Really it is not as difficult as you might think. There is so much software available on the internet that helps you in this area. Much of this website building software is free. You can even get ready made templates and customize them to suit your particular needs. You may never need to learn how to code or even what HTML and PHP is.
There is more to running a business online than building a website and waiting for "them" to come. But, we will get to that on other pages. For now we will discuss getting your first web page online.
To follow my recommendations, what you will need is:
- A Domain name.
- Hosting.
- An FTP program. (Try this one: FileZilla)
- Ewinsoft Site Builder (FREE)- Download Here (In my opinion Adobe Dreamweaver is the best. But, it is expensive.)
The Ewinsoft Site Builder is easily customizable and you can easily build a unique website of your own. Fool around with the software for a day or two and familiarize yourself with it before you begin to work on your "real " website.
You can also get Wordpress or Joomla or some other blog or content management script (CMS) and customize it. But I think that the Edwinsoft Website Builder is easier for a beginner.
Okay, now that you know how to make a website, you have to make a couple of important decisions. You must decide who you want to sell to and what you want to sell them. For a beginner this might be a bit of a shock. Most people start off in this line of work thinking that if they build a website, there will be queues of visitors lined up at their website waiting for them to produce something for them to buy. Before long they discover that this just does not happen.
The first thing to do is find a niche market. A niche market is a piece of an existing market. It is often the case that the more you specialize in a smaller segment of a market the easier it is to dominate it. The more you generalize the more competitors you have.
When you have found this market, research the niche and see what is needed or what people in that market niche are buying. Then sell it to them. It is not complicated. However you do need to do your research. You need to become an expert on this area of the market and "know what you are talking about". If you don't, you will soon be found out and branded a "fast buck merchant" from whom your prospective buyers will run very quickly.
An example of a niche might be Health > Weight Loss > Obesity > Obesity in Teenagers > Obesity In Teenage Girls.
So you might want to concentrate on products for overweight teenage girls. If so, you must get to know your niche as well as anyone can, short of getting a medical degree. Then you will know what is needed in this niche and will have a much better idea of how to present the products to your prospects.
With this knowledge, you can begin to work on your first website. This website will be filled with quality content articles giving your website's visitors good information about your chosen niche.
Your choice of domain name and hosting options have been discussed, so we will not re-hash it them here.
Your first website does not have to be perfect on its first day online. In fact, although there is a slim possibility that your website will be indexed by the search engines even if you do nothing at all to attract attention to it, this is unlikely, so you can work on and modify it as often and as much as you like and nobody will know. Then when you are happy with it, get it listed in the top search engines and start promoting your website to attract paying customers.
Unless you have a product of your own, you will be selling other peoples' products. This is called being an affiliate. Affiliates sell products for others and earn a commission for every product sold or every lead sent or every viewing of their ad etc., depending on the deal you have done.
Many of these sellers will provide you with banners and other graphics and information that will help you to promote their products. These banners are usually professionally produced and will enhance the look of your website.
When you have added the content and advertisements to your first website, you will need to upload it to your domain hosting server. This is done with your FTP program. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. There are many versions of this software available without charge on the internet. Just do a search for Free FTP. Or just go to FileZilla. I have been using it for years and have never had a problem with it.
Simply enter the login information into the boxes at the top of the page, and click quickconnect. Then navigate to the folder on your server that will hold your website, (this usually means: click on: public_html) then on the computer side (the left) you navigate to your website files, which you have just created using your site-builder. Select the website files and drag them to the server side and wait a few seconds. When the transfer is done, go to your website's url, i.e. your website.com, and see how it turned out.
If you are totally happy, it is a miracle. If not, then make the changes you think are necessary and upload the files you changed to the server and have another look.
You have now made a good start. But it doesn't end here. Far From it. See the other pages of this website to take the next step.