When entering into the online business or the world of building and growing (hopefully) profitable websites as a beginner you are going to make mistakes and waste money. The quicker you can shorten your learning curve, minimize mistakes and lessen the wastage (time and money) the better for you.
The aim of this article is to provide the beginner (or in some cases those with website experience) a simple resource to help speed up that knowledge base and get you on the path to a profitable website or online business. This article will outline tips, product recommendations and as well as people to follow in the online world.
We will focus on building websites in this article however some of the information below is applicable to building an online business.
Some Basic Tips
If you are a true beginner a lot of this information will mean very little to you. We recommend that you don’t spend any money at this point in time, just consume as much information in this area for the next couple of weeks.
DON’T spend any money on domains, hosting, plugins, courses, e books or mastermind groups when starting your online journey. Read all the online business information on this website or the free information that is available on the recommended authority personalities/websites that we list later in this article.
DON’T get too worried or panic if most of this information goes over your head. Absorb what you can, take a break then get back into it.
DON’T just blindly follow others or accept what people say as gospel (including this website). Question the motive of people offering advice and really drill down into their advice and recommendations. Just because others have success it doesn’t mean that you will automatically have success so questions everything, including your own actions.
DON’T commit (yet) to building a website or online business based on a hobby or activity you enjoy. Make sure you do your (detailed) research to determine whether there is a market or there is money in the niche that you choose to build a website or business around.
DO consume as much information as you can either reading, videos or podcasts from recommended online personalities.
DO subscribe to this website’s email newsletter as well as those who we recommend later in this article.
DO keep an open mind and write down ideas that you may have to build a website or business around and do your due diligence on these before committing to an idea.
The first 3 months or so you should be absorbing as much information as you can. Again, we’ve recommended a couple of niche website professionals to follow to help speed up your progress. Read through their free content, check out their videos (if applicable) , search for podcasts that they have appeared on and importantly follow them on their social media channels and subscribe to their email newsletters.
Now onto the tips!
1. Set Goals For Your Website/Online Plan
What do you want to achieve online? Do you want to build a website that will earn enough income for you to leave your full time job? Or are you looking to earn a little extra money for some luxury expenses such as a new car or family holiday? Know what you want to achieve before embarking on your online journey. Sure these expectations may change however having an initial goal should be something you outline to work towards.
Also how much time and money can you invest in your website idea? Your progress will obviously be quicker if you can focus significant time and money resources towards your new website however for many of you time and money is of short supply. Don’t stress if this is you. Many people venturing into the niche or affiliate website space started their journey while working a full time job and or having a family so success can be achieved if your time and or money is limited.
You just need to be very good and efficient at allocating your time and money.
2. Planning Out Your Website
What is your website going to be about? Starting out you’ll likely favor a topic or niche that you have some experience or knowledge about. Whilst this will be helpful when coming up with site and content ideas, as we touched on above, due your due diligence to determine whether there is enough money in this niche before committing resources to this project. Determine whether this potential niche is going to be profitable before investing too much time or any money into this.
What I mean by this is, is there going to be a sufficient audience that will read, watch or listen to your content? Will this audience be sufficient for your website to be profitable through product sales or through advertising targeting visitors to your website? Will there be sufficient social media engagement to drive traffic or revenue to your website?
In most cases beginners should avoid highly competitive fields such as money or high end gadgets however in some cases your experience or background may mean you shouldn’t totally avoid them. Through your job, knowledge or previous experience you might be an expert in a particular area of a popular niche which might be worthwhile to build a website or brand around.
Once you’ve picked up some basic knowledge and have an idea of what you can build a website around, do your testing to determine whether it’s profitable (and wide enough) for you to target and make money from. This could be through keyword research (more on this later), general research (using various google tools such as search or trends) or following social media.
3. Selecting Your Niche and Building This Out
Now that you’ve selected your niche, what will your website look like? What type of content will you be focusing on? Will you look to add video or a podcast down the track? How are your social media talents?
Plan out content ideas to draw readers or viewers to your website. Plan out your content, plan out your social media approach, what ideas will you incorporate? Now your website and relevant ideas will be fluid. You don’t know what you don’t know and every day of learning will create new ideas and opportunities. Run with this. Look at successful websites in the niche that you are going to build your website in and look at what they are doing.
How have they designed their website? What content are they writing or producing? As your knowledge increases you’ll be able to see what keywords they are ranking for and get some ideas from this.
In the short term we believe a hands on approach works best. You get a better feel and understanding for your website and you get a quicker learning experience by doing most things yourself. As you learn more (and have more money to spend) , outsource the non trivial aspects of your website and (if possible) some of your content generation. The more experienced (and successful) you become the more systems and procedures you can incorporate into your business and this can help you expand into other websites and online businesses.
4. Finding and Registering Your Domain
Whilst the days of having your niches keyword in the domain name to rank high in Google are behind us you will want to create a concise domain that has some relevance to the niche you are entering. Ideally you will purchase a .com domain as this (in most cases) is a more valuable type of domain rather than one limited to a country ie .ca, .uk or .au or a domain that has a suffix that is sector or niche focused (such as .biz or .blog ). Where possible register a .com domain to build your website on.
If you are having trouble finding a domain name to register look at several domain name generator websites such as Domain Wheel, Namelix, Domain Name Generator or Lean Domain Search to give you some ideas to name your domain. Remember to only use these sites to generate a name, don’t use these sites to register your chosen domain or to sign up for hosting of this domain. We’ll recommend domain registration and hosting suggestions below.
Once you’ve found a domain you’d like to register, do a check to make sure a) it’s available and b) wasn’t in use before and hadn’t attracted any google penalties.
If you stumble across a domain that was previously used and is now no longer in use there may be SEO benefits however do your due diligence to make sure there is no negative impact from its previous iteration such as Google penalties. Experienced website builders may search for an expired domain to build a website on, such as Odys.com however as a beginner in most cases we recommend starting your site on a brand new domain.
To check if your chosen domain name is available the only place we recommend you check this is by using a Who Is search, one that is NOT LINKED to a domain registration or hosting company. We recommend Who Is or Domain Tools Who Is search option. DON’T use a domain registration site to check if a domain is available. When previously kicking around some niche ideas and searching for available domains I found it highly unusual when some of my chosen domains that I thought were initially available were suddenly unavailable after using a Who Is linked to a hosting company and these domains could only be purchased at a significantly higher price to the initial registration fee. Shawna Newman from Skipblast has also mentioned this happened to her previously (in her great Beginner’s Guide To Niche Authority Sites course) as have other people online.
After you’ve found your domain that is available and is either fresh or has expired but had no previous issues it’s time to register this domain.
Our preferred domain name company is NameSilo. Their domain registration rate is $10.95 per domain and each domain comes with a free privacy (WHOIS) option. If you don’t want to be spammed by opportunistic supposed SEO experts or web designers you’ll want to have your domain ownership details private. Other services NameSilo offer include SSL and website hosting however we recommend other hosting providers below.
5. Finding a Suitable Website Host
Now that you’ve found your domain, you need a host to host your domain and website. A host needs to be reliable (i.e. your site is always up), it needs to be fast (particularly for higher SEO rankings) and for the beginner it is very simple to access and navigate with good customer service.
For the more experienced, a good host will also offer easy site migrations (moving a site from one host to another and ideally these are free or very inexpensive) and have super fast speed and options that help with this.
We have two recommended hosting options below.
BEGINNER: SITEGROUND
If you are a beginner (and one on a limited budget), you want your hosting option to be cheap and reliable. Ideally your initial hosting period will be a maximum of 12 months which will give you sufficient time to build and test out your website to determine whether it (or your selected niche) is worth sticking with after the first 12 months.
The first hosting service we recommend is SiteGround. Their 12 month basic no frills hosting option will run for about $60 US (cheaper if you sign up during their Cyber Monday promotion). This is a great price that’s not too expensive and should be one of your only costs whilst you are building your new website.
Every new website we build is usually hosted during its first 12 months with SiteGround. They are reliable, relatively easy to use for a beginner or someone less experienced and have pretty good customer service and uptime. In nearly all cases SiteGround is a great host to build a new site.
The sting in the tail of these entry level providers which also include Bluehost and HostGator is that they offer very cheap hosting services for a certain period, however the sting comes when it’s renewal time where in some cases you could be charged at least 5 times your initial 12 month hosting costs.
MORE EXPERIENCED: WPX
If you are happy with your website after your initial 12 month period we recommend moving to a bette