Buy or Build A Web Site for Online Income

"You're ready to start a home based business or get your existing small business online, but you don't have a website yet. This article focuses on buying an existing online business as well as creating a new site. Includes links to the best products and services to help you take your website to the next level..."

Laura Childs, 2nd Oct, 2005

You can buy a website pre-made and already in profit, or build one.

Here are a few tips to not get burned buying existing sites on ebay. And, if you're ready to take the plunge you can find a few gems here: buy established online websites selling on ebay now.

Mini-sites work great for selling e-books and info-products to a niche market, while larger custom sites are often used for product or corporate branding, promotion, and/or selling product lines. 

Highly specialized websites with lots of links, scripts and graphics require time and talent, experience or training, and more often than not a fair chunk of cash. 

My best advice is below, but for starters I'd recommend starting with a mini-site, then growing your website as your income and business profits increase.

Building Mini-Sites

Creating a website has never been easier, but for the small business owner new to making money online, setting up any site - mini or not - can be a daunting task.

All you need for a mini-site is one page with an 'Order Here' link.

There are usually 2 steps involved in setting up your own niche-market site.

First you register your domain, and then you set up a hosting account.

I'm really excited about this because I've never seen hosting prices and a service that matches this one (and I've been online creating websites of all sizes for a number of different clients since 1996).

Here's where starting an online business becomes simplified...

Your domain name is registered to you for when you set up your hosting account.

It's as easy as 1, 2, 3 and your account is created, your online space ready for your product or content.

1. Choose your account size and type,
2. Enter the domain name you want to register or use,
3. Add your personal details.

If you need help you'll find online live support 24 hours a day/7 days per week. A little chat window opens up with knowledgeable and friendly staff ready to assist with any answers you need! They'll either walk you through a process, do it for you, or explain it until it makes sense to you.

The easy part's over. Now you have your domain name and your hosting account...what's next?

I Don't Know How to Make a Web Page!

If you are, in fact, just starting out with your first website and you don't want to go through the hair pulling experiences of learning how to edit an html document, ftp files to a server, etc. at this point in time, grab the second cheapest account type.

It happens to be called 'shared - baby'.

Build Web Pages or Set Up A Blog...

With the Shared - Baby package you get free access to a Site Builder account that will literally create your website for you as well as a one click blog installation option.

• You choose a 'look', enter your text, answer a few questions, select some images off your hard drive if you want, presto - your site is online. The service is free with your $10 hosting account (value $159, so you're getting quite a deal)!
• You can also skip Site Builder and perform a one-click install through your website administration panel to set up a WordPress blog (very popular with people new to website creation due to it's ease of use).

Another nice feature with this level of a hosting account is that you can use the same account to host multiple websites on it - no added fees, same price per month no matter how many websites you build.

I first thought "At these prices there must be something wrong the host!", but I signed up anyway to review and test the service. My final review made me an evangelist for this company! Don't let the cheap hosting price fool you - these guys know what they're doing and they deliver on their promises.

Not a Newbie to Setting Up Websites?

This host is still my top choice for online business. Why? The 99.9% uptime has a lot to do with it, but I do like hosting accounts with cPanel management - you can set up a blog, shopping cart, bulletin board, chat room, guest book, FAQ page and more with just one click from a cPanel managed account.