BUILD A WEBSITE

GET YOUR DOMAIN NAME

In order to create your own web site to generate income, the first thing you will want to do is obtain your own domain name.  For those of you new to this, the domain name is basically the address to your web site.  For example, to get to this web site, you either clicked on a link or you had to type in www.bpshome.com.  The bpshome.com part is the domain name.  Having your own domain name is not an absolute requirement to building an income generating website but it has many advantages over the alternatives and for less than $10 per year, it makes sense.

Now, where do you go to get your own domain name?  Just like everything else on the internet, you have hundreds of choices but in my opinion, one stands above the rest, and you have probably seen the television commercials (especially if you are a NFL fan or a NASCAR fan). It’s GoDaddy. Why do I recommend GoDaddy? Well, I've tried several differnt places and in my opinion GoDaddy is the best due to their low prices, ease of use, excellent customer service, and full line of products. GoDaddy is truely a one-stop-shop for website related services. To find out more about GoDaddy, check out their web site by clicking here:

BUILD YOUR WEBSITE

The next thing you will need to do to create a web site is find a host.  The host is the computer where your website will reside. Although it's possible to host your own websites, there are so many issues you need to take into consideration (including security) that it's just not cost effective unless you have many different websites with lots of traffic.

So, where will you host your website?  Once again, I would recommend GoDaddy.  Hosting your sites with the same company that you use to register your domain name keeps things simple and once again, it's hard to beat GoDaddy's prices.  If you don't mind having a GoDaddy advertisement on your website, hosting is free but even if you don't want the GoDaddy ad, you can create a hosting account for less than $7 per month and use that hosting account for unlimited websites.

Finally, you need to have a tool for creating your website and then publishing it for the world to see.  There are many options available in a wide range of prices.  GoDaddy has what they call Website Tonight which you can use to create websites up to five page and it's free.  For just a couple bucks a month, you can remove the five page limit.  Website Tonight is easy to use, great for beginners and you can use it to make some very nice proffessional looking websites.  The only problem is, if and when you outgrow it, there is no easy way to convert to more feature packed web design software.

If you want to start out with full featured web design software, I highly recommend  XSitePro.  I started out with Website Tonight, switched to Front Page for the features and then heard about how great a product XSitePro was.  It had a 30 day guarantee so I had nothing to lose.  Within an hour I found out why it has become such a huge hit in a short amount of time.  Not only is XSitePro a great product to help you develop your website but it also helps you optimize your  site for your chosen key words and helps with chores like sitemaps that Google likes to see in order to help index your site in the search engines.  For more details or to purchase XSitePro, click here.