Creating Your Own Website

First off, if you're totally new to setting up any kind of site, you may want to have a look at this site, HubPages.com. It's totally free to use, fun, and you can even make money with it. Some people use it exclusively and don't even have their own dot coms.

If you have any experience setting up your own websites, especially on your own domain(s), using your own hosting account, there may not be anything that you need here. If you are new to the whole process though, something here may help you out.

When I first started trying to make money online, I, like many other people do, bought ebooks, courses, software and joined membership sites. The bad thing is, you don't need about 99% of most of that stuff. There are some great marketers with many very good products, but there is also a lot of people selling rehashed material, some of it that wasn't good the first 100 times it was sold by other people.

You will need the products, services and capability to start creating you own website...and the sooner the better, if you have the dedication.

Also, start searching for anything that you need information on from free sources. There will be times and places to spend money, but only for certain things, and only after you know more about what you're doing. I wish I had followed my own advice !!

Creating Your Own Website for Free

There are many free options for creating your own website. Sites like Blogger.com and WordPress.com are totally free options if you want to create a blog format site. There are also some other options for creating your own website that isn't a blog, but I won't cover much on the free website options, they're easy enough to find using simple Google searches. They may very well work fine for whatever site you have in mind, but just remember that ultimately someone else has control of your site(s).

For less than $10/month for quality web hosting, and less $10/year to register a domain name, I would seriously consider getting your own hosting account and domain(s) for your site(s). You will want to eventually, and you may as well learn about it now.

Also, if you can come up with just few dollars per month for a decent web hosting account, like HostGator or BlueHost, WordPress is included as part of the hosting, for free. With the thousands of plugins for WordPress, most of them free, you can pretty much make a WordPress site function anyway that you want. I have numerous Amazon stores set up with WordPress, as well as eBay stores..

The only cost for all of the stores is the one hosting fee (less than $10/month), and registration for each domain name (less than $10/year). A nearly worldwide access to your store that has practically no setup or ongoing business expenses !! Isn't the Internet just grand ?

Although there is a charge for the plugins that I use for the Amazon and eBay stores, they are well worth the cost, and have paid for themselves many times over. They have lifetime updates for free, and excellent support from their creators.

One other very good option that I will mention here. There is a free program called KompoZer, that can be downloaded from kompozer.net. it's an open source, totally free program, although the hard-working programmers will accept donations, and rightly deserve them. It may do everything that you need to do, but I haven't used it in probably a year and a half or so. If your funds are low I would certainly check it out if you're not interested in learning to code.

It looked as though KompoZer hadn't been updated in a while back when I was using it, but it appears there's been several updates recently. I may have to download it again myself to check it out. It is a WYSIWYG (WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET) editor, with FTP support and is a very good work in progress. As good as it is already, I'm really anxious to see where it goes.

Please donate something if you can. Even a dollar to let those that work on it know that it is appreciated.

Creating Your Website with Site Build It!

Site Build It! is a complete package deal offered by a company named SiteSell. I don't have anything bad to say about this option of creating your website. If you have no experience, and want everything, domain registration, hosting, keyword research and a site builder in one place, this is your product.

It was created by a medical doctor, Ken Evoy, and he really developed a great system. They advertise most of their client's websites being in the top 1% of the websites on the Internet. I truly believe that to be the case. A look at some of the testimonials, and the sites created by those users shows that the Site Build It! system definitely works.

If it's so good, then why am I not using it ? Actually, I did, well sort of.

The SiteBuildIt! program is really a whole training course that ends, if you do it correctly, with the user having a quality-built, well researched, high-ranking website. I'm very impatient, got in a hurry (plus I knew something about keyword research, web hosting etc.) and didn't think things through before I decided on a niche for my website, as well as a domain name. It would have been way too much work to be competitive in the niche I selected. By the time I had done things properly, and selected a different niche, I had signed up with a hosting company, bought an excellent keyword research piece of software (Micro Niche Finder), and really had enough knowledge that I didn't need the hand-holding type of program that is SiteSell. Don't get me wrong, people join SiteSell, do things properly, get an excellent site published (or several) and never leave. However, once you have a site up and ranking well, I feel the price of $299/year is a bit much.

Having said that, if you have little to no experience, I can and do recommend Site Build It!
very highly. If, however, you want to purchase your own website creating software (I recommend XSitePro2) hands-down, get a hosting account (for less than $10/month), register your own domain (about $10/year) and maybe a keyword tool like Micro Niche Finder, I think you'll be satisfied long term.

Of course you could sign on with SiteSell, get the hand-holding type of help, or even use their option to have them actually build your site, then move on after a year. I'm not sure how good their proprietary website builder software exports the sites to another builder though. I would guess you probably have to export it from SiteSell as HTML, and then import it from the HTML into XSitePro2 - or whatever you choose to use.

Creating Your Own Website with XSitePro2

I will say right up front, I own XSitePro2, use it exclusively and love it. I won't say that it's the right choice for everyone, but I couldn't imagine using anything else. I've tried many other programs, but I'll never use anything else but XSitePro2.

I should also say, in case you don't know, Adobe's Dreamweaver is considered the industry standard for most professional web developers. Some of those people also work on huge corporate type sites as part of a web development team. There are different needs when working in that environment however. Also, you use what they tell you to use, and it's usually Dreamweaver.

On to XSitePro2 though - compared to Dreamweaver, XSitePro2 is about half the price, much easier to learn, at least for me and many other people I have heard comment on it, but XSitePro2 is also equally as capable, at least for me. I honestly don't know Dreamweaver well enough to say what it can do that XSitePro2 can't, but I do know that XSitePro2 can do everything that I could ever possibly want - and much more.

Website Hosting for Your Websites

There are many, many web hosts available. Although you can find most of them in the same general price range, all are not created equal.

I use 2 hosts. HostGator and BlueHost. There's really no need for 2 hosts for most people I guess, but I just like having a backup, and I like the idea of totally different IP addresses and different physical locations. Both accounts are just shared accounts. You may want to consider a reseller account if you find out later that it will benefit you, but if you're just starting out, I would think a shared account would be perfect for you.

Both HostGator and BlueHost are just about the same price, less than $10/month, and you can host as many domains as you want on both accounts. You'll get to the point that you can't afford all of the domains, or you're not able to maintain all of them, long before you don't have a place to host them using either of these accounts.

I have quite a bit of time with both of the aforementioned web hosts, and have never had any real problem with either. I have read from more than one source, GoDaddy hosting can sometimes be finicky on how certain scripts/setups work (or not). I have also read, again in more than one location, that GoDaddy can also be quick to shut-down your hosting account if there is a complaint. Obviously, if you're putting up illegal or really offensive sites, you deserve to be shut-down, but it sounds as though, if the complaints are valid, that GoDaddy is a little quick to judge.

For domains, I now use NameCheap exclusively for all of my new domain registrations. I'll occasionally still renew some domains through BlueHost or HostGator if they were originally registered there and I don't feel like messing with changing the servers.

After saying all of that, I have registered many domains through GoDaddy and I have never had a single problem. That are priced okay, and there is usually coupons floating around that offer some great deals.