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You may be thinking of starting to build a presence on the internet, so where
do you start? It can be intimidating but if you are seriously considering either
selling your own product or more likely acting as an affiliate for someone else
then you do need to think about the long term. You can in the short term act as
an affiliate without having a website or blog of your own but if you are serious
about making money,you need a domain name and a hosting account as a
minimum.Once you have these,you can move onto setting up a website or blog and
driving traffic to it to make sales.
Here are the steps.
I have found that it is cheaper to have the hosting account separate from the
hosting account. Domain names are cheaper direct from a domain name company than
buying them through a hosting company
If you have no domain names at all, then try and get your own name first. It
will be easier to add domains onto your own name at a later stage because it
will be easy to remember! Alternatively think of the product you might be
wanting to promote and get a domain name that has some relevance to it. If you
get your domain names through Godaddy, or something similar, you will pay a
small amount for the name. You will need to register an account with your card
details etc. Its pretty straightforward. Do that and then follow the easy steps
to see if a domain name of your choice is available and purchase it.If you see
one that you like, get it! If you leave it, it is likely to disappear. There are
domain names being registered all the time. Once you have bought the name you
will get an email from the domain company which you need to keep safe. They cost
around $9 or $10
I would recommend that you open a folder for your emails from your hosting
company/domain name company. You will at various stages need the
nameservers,passwords etc. If you highlight the email title in your inbox and
right click on your mouse you will see "copy to folder".Go into that and click
on new folder,name it and save the email into it. You might also want to copy
the contents of the email into a word document and keep it separate that way as
well.
Log onto the hosting company of your choice. I use Hostgator. You need a hosting
company that gives you unlimited domains and unlimited emails. It is called
babycroc on hostgator. Its not the basic package but one up. Have a look at that
or Kiosk or one of the many others around and choose which one you feel
comfortable with. They are pretty easy to get started with,just follow the
instructions. There is usually a small monthly fee for a hosting account
You do need to register with a new domain on the hosting account unless as I
have recommended,you have already got one, in which case you need to tick the
second box which talks about updating nameservers only (more about that in a
minute) then follow the instructions through. Once you have finished registering
you will get a welcome email which will amongst other things give you the
nameservers details. Keep this in a safe place.
Once you have the domain name and hosting account set up you need to go into the
manage part of your domain account,click on manage domains,look in the toolbar
for nameservers,click on that, then click on custom nameservers. At this stage
you will see there are 2 already completed (these are the domain companies own
and you need ot redirect them,) take those out(you might feel safer copying and
saving them somewhere first...just in case.) Then if you go back to your hosting
account emails you will see that they have given you details for the nameservers,
type them in the domain account then click save or OK. The nameservers are
usually some numbers and the hosting company name. They will be easily
identifIable in the welcome email.
You are now redirecting the domain to your hosting account. It takes a few hours
for it to redirect so they advise although I have found it is pretty immediate.
Then you need to add it as a domain name in your hosting account. There is
something called cpanel which is the bit that controls everything. You will have
been given the details of how to get onto it probably in that first email from
the hosting company. Go in there, click on add domains (it will be called
something like that),then "add on domain feature," click on "add on domain
maintenance". You will need to think of some passwords at this stage and write
them down somewhere so you have them. The host name is yourdomain.com,the
password is the one you were given originally by the hosting company ,click on
add on,give your domain your own password (save it somewhere else so you don't
forget it) and hit save.
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