Build Your Website

Small businesses (and especially Minipreneur businesses) absolutely must have a website. If you have no experience setting one up, it really is not as scary or difficult as you might think. Whether you build it yourself or outsource it, there are 5 basic steps that must be done.

1. Determine what you want your site to do.

• Will you actually be selling products or services on the site or will it be just to provide contact information? The key to remember is that a website can make you lot’s of money, but not by itself. Websites are only a marketing/sales tool to and your site will be one of billions out there.

2. Decide if you will build the site yourself or have a Pro do it.

• Tip: Do NOT have your best buddy or neighbor or cousin’s son or daughter’s boyfriend build it for you. Penny pinching in this phase will only cause you problems down the road.
• If you have a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, FTP, and SEO, then building a site is not difficult.
• We highly recommend that you use an open source code CMS tool like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. These are all free to use and there are thousands of plug-ins available to enhance your site’s operability…BUT you must keep the various modules and plug-ins updated.
• Tip: WordPress is our favorite and a website built with it can be used as a blog only or as a more sophisticated site with numerous pages, forums, e-commerce, etc.

3. Pick a great Domain name

• To appear most professional, your website must have it’s own unique web address (or domain name). A domain name should be memorable, clever, easily spelled and reflect your business name.

4. Register your domain name

• You will need to search a Registration company’s database to see if the name you selected is available. There are hundreds of registration companies available but we recommend either Name Quick or Go Daddy.

5. Sign up for a webhost company

• Again there are literally thousands of these companies out there and they all have different pricing schedules. Additionally, if you are not able to contact their support staff then a cheap hosting plan is worse than worthless. We highly recommend Site 5.