YOUR JOURNEY TOWARDS STARTING ONLINE BUSINESS:

When it comes to making money online, I believe that there are literally a million ways to do it.
 The only thing stopping you is your creativity and willingness to learn
quickly and act upon what you have learned. Each day that you
procrastinate you only put yourself further behind in reaching your goals. Set your goals
high, believe in yourself and then do it. Don’t think about it, don’t hope, don’t
dream….JUST DO IT.

One thing that keeps many people from achieving success is the fear that they may
make a mistake. SO WHAT! If you make a mistake then get up and go on. Everyone
who has ever achieved any level of noteworthy success has made a lot more mistakes
than you will ever know. Plus the most valuable education often comes from the mistakes
that you make. Don’t let fear keep you bound because you really have nothing to lose
from trying. Just keep moving forward until you reach your destination…then set a
higher goal!

That’s a piece of motivation from me. Now, your journey towards generating legitimate income from the internet starts with setting up your own website. Though, there are many ways you can generate passive income from the internet without owning a website; but having one will be of great advantage to you as it can open so many avenues for you to make money even when you are asleep after the system is completely set up. So, here we go
with the steps to follow:

1. Choosing a domain name to maximize your success:

Choosing a suitable domain name is an extremely important step as it will help determine your success both in the search engines and in the amount of targeted visitors your site will receive no matter what type of website you want to set up.
Don’t be in a hurry to choose a domain name. Make sure you take the time to fully plan your website or product before searching for available names.
Here are three questions to ask yourself before choosing a domain name:
What you will be offering?
Who you will be targeting?
What will your ‘keywords’ be?

If you can’t answer these questions, have another think or you might have to buy another domain if you change your idea at a later date. If you do have to change it, don’t just forget about the domain and let it expire. Rather, try to sell it at www.sedo.com or www.sitepoint.com for a profit; or at least to break even on the cost of the original purchase. Think of a name that people will remember and do your best to make it catchy! Even though some of the most successful online businesses, such as ‘Google’ and ‘Yahoo’, have names that in no way relate to their services, their names are very easy to remember. As a result they can be successfully promoted as a brand. However, trying to find a good, unregistered five or six letter .com domain is almost impossible. You could buy one, but it will cost you a lot of money; only take this risk if you are 100% sure your idea is going to quickly turn into profit.

Finding a free .com extension:

Trying to find any name that has not been taken, let alone finding a good .com, can be surprisingly difficult. The vast majority of quality .com extensions were taken long ago, so you might have to look at a few other options. Here is a list of some other extensions you can use. Even though you have other options, try your utmost to get a .com if you possibly can:
.org - Non-profit organizations.
.biz - Businesses and Corporations.
.pro - Professionals, such as lawyers.
.info - Information-based websites.
.us - United States.
.co.uk- United Kingdom/England.
.tv - Vanity domain from the island of Tuvalu in the South Pacific.
.net - General internet usage.
You will also need to make sure that your domain extension relates to both your website genre and your location. For example, if you are creating a website for selling beds in Washington DC, you obviously don’t want to use a .cn (China) extension. Obvious I know, but the mistake is often made. If the .com isn’t available, go for a .net, .biz or .info.

As I’ve just mentioned, the other option is, you can buy an already registered domain name at www.sedo.com. It’s certainly something to consider, and I’ll tell you why later on. I will also tell you how to make thousands of dollars using Sedo.com with only a few hours of work.
Here are ten more questions to ask yourself once you have thought of a domain name for your business or website:

i. Is your name short and memorable?
ii. Does your name promise a benefit?
iii. Does your name accurately reflect what you are selling?
iv. Does your name distinguish your business from your competitors?
v. Does your name create a visual image?
vi. Does your name appeal to your target market and does it reflect their values, needs, and lifestyles?
vii. Does your name have graphic possibilities?
viii. Is your name unique, or has it already been trademarked?
ix. Will your name allow you to expand your business with different products and services and still make sense?
x. Does your name reflect a position in the marketplace that is unique to your company?
Once you have your name decided, go to www.domain.com or a similar site to register it.

2. Choosing a web design program:

web designing is now an easy task that anybody can do. This is because of some soft wares called HTML editors (Hyper Text Mark up Language) editors or WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors like Dreamweaver, Kompozer, and BlueVoda which you can use to design your website all by yourself. You can download the afformentioned site builders and install them on your computer for offline web design.

There are other easy to use drag - and - drop website builders like Wix, Weebly and Webs where you can easily design a professional looking website online when you log onto your dashboard after signing up with any of those companies. The best part is that, you can design and host your websites for free with them and you can upgrade to premium plans anytime you like. You can even decide to use the free services for life as long as you don’t break their terms and conditions. Better still, you can use the services of other web hosting companies like JVZooHost, HostGator, or GoDaddy to host your website which can really make your site more professional and also make you an authority in your chosen niche.

3. Hiring a web designer:

If you have the money, you can obviously hire someone to design your site. If you want to sell a single digital product with a three page website then this will probably cost you less than $300. If you want to create something bigger, it could run into thousands. I strongly suggest, however, you learn how to do it yourself to avoid spending money unnecessarily in the future.

4. Finding a 'techie':

If you have absolutely no experience at either building or maintaining a website, I thoroughly recommend finding someone who knows what he is doing in times of crisis. Everyone needs help at some point and having someone just a phone call away can be a big help. He can also help to get your website online and help you make complicated code changes.
Ask friends or colleagues if they know anyone, or alternatively you can hire a programmer on the cheap at www.elance.com.

5. Researching profitable websites: 

A good idea before you start to design your own business website is to take a look at what works and more importantly what sells.
The first thing to do is to look at other sites within the same genre as your idea and analyze their traffic and sales.

If I wanted to create a website to sell an online book on ‘nutrition’ for instance, I would first go to Clickbank.com, hit the ‘marketplace’ link and then look at the bestselling books on that particular subject. In this case, the books with the highest ‘gravity’ are the ones that sell the best and have the most affiliates promoting them. I would then visit the website and see exactly why it sells by looking at how they have set out and designed the website; also, what angle they have taken on that particular subject. I would then do something similar with my site. If a website is obviously profitable, try to do the same sort of thing for yours; it’s as simple as that!

For other types of websites, simply type a selection of related keywords into one of the search engines and see what comes up. For instance, if a certain website shows up in the top 10 results on ‘Google’, the ‘spiderbots’ that rank the websites obviously approve of the way it’s set out. It will be receiving a good amount of traffic and other webmasters will be linking to it as well. Do the same type of thing for yours.

No matter the type of website you are creating, the real key to success is to create something of interest, something to which other websites and webmasters will want to link to. Keep your website or product simple; do your best to be unusual so you stand out from your competition. Look at the top websites in the same category as yours. Take note of all the good points, combine them and you should be on to a winner!

How to check a website's traffic:
A good tool for checking your website traffic is www.alexa.com. Type the URL you are interested in into their search bar, press go, and it will tell you where it ranks in terms of the most visited sites in the world.

Google, MSN and Yahoo are the top three; but, even if the site is ranked at 200,000, it’s still getting a good amount of traffic. (Approximately 2000 visitors per day). A good traffic to your site means more visitors that could translate into more sales. Alexa.com is not entirely accurate, but it does the job.