How to Get Started With a Website for Your Home Business

If you have a home business or hope to have one, you need a website. While most home business owners don't rely on the internet to sell their services or products, they do rely on the web as a marketing tool to reach customers around the globe. Within the last decade, the internet has become one of the best marketing tools available. There are still the traditional advertising methods out there, and they work well. But none of the traditional marketing methods can even touch what internet marketing does for a business. Direct mail, postcards, brochures, word of mouth, newspaper and magazine ads.....these are all great marketing tools for letting people know about your home business and service. But as good as all of these are, none of them can match what the internet has done for business marketing. The use of the web to advertise yourself allows anyone in the world to find you by the click of a mouse, at a cost much less than traditional marketing methods. Internet marketing should not replace traditional marketing, but should be an enhancement to it.

Putting your home business service or product on the web might sound intimidating, especially if you've little experience with the web, domain ownership, or building sites. Don't let the lack of knowledge in these areas cause you any fear. When I went online in 1997, I knew nothing about a computer except how to type. Five years ago, I had no idea how to go about buying a domain name, let alone how to build or make a website, and the idea of researching hosting plans was a joke to me. Today, we have over 50 sites which we build and run ourselves, all self taught.

After deciding on a hosting company, you'll want to go back to where you bought your domain name and add the name servers to your new domain. You should receive emails about this from the hosting company when you purchase a hosting plan. After adding the name servers (NS) to the domain name, it generally takes 24 to 48 hours for the changes to show up on the internet. In other words, your domain name will not show up for at least 24 hours, and it could take as much as 72 hours, although it can be as soon as 30 minutes.

While you wait for the domain name changes to make their rounds across the internet, you can be working on your new site. There are some excellent HTML tutorials online to help you build your site. As you work with HTML and practice with it, you'll become more comfortable dealing with it, using it, and building your site. Some helpful HTML and web tool sites I've found on the web are:

• HTML Goodies
• Web Monkey
• HTML Color Chart
• Flaming Text
• HTML Tutorial
• Java Scripts
• Echo Tools

You can use FTP to upload your sites easily and quickly. The two most popular FTP software programs are WS-FTP LE and CuteFTP.

HTML editors are wonderful tools for building sites. First Page is made for the beginner to advanced web designer. But you can use Notepad also.

Once your site is up, you'll want to let people know about it. As wonderful and helpful as websites are for the home business owner, a site serves little if any purpose if the rest of the world doesn't know it exists. There are many ways to advertise your new site. The traditional methods work well, such as word of mouth, business cards, etc. But there are other ways to reach lots of people, and they in turn will help spread the word of your site, and therefore your home based business. When you send out an email, add a sig line to your emails. In this sig line, include your website URL ( such as http://www.authormania.com ) and be sure to include your name or any other info you want people to see. Keep the sig line six lines or less. You can also join newsgroups or discussion groups, such as Yahoo groups. Don't just lurk on these groups, participate! At the end of each rely or post, add your name and domain URL. Be sure not to spam these groups or by email! Another great advertising method using the internet and Yahoo is having a newsletter online. Whenever people join your Yahoo group that you use to send out your newsletter based on your new website, you'll get traffic and potential customers.

Remember to keep a record of customers and even of potential customers. People that come to your site and purchase something might come back if you simply follow up with them within a couple of weeks or even a couple of months. Often if a customer buys from you once and they receive good a good product or service, they'll come back. Don't forget them! The potential customer might need nothing more than a gentle nudge to return and become a customer, so don't forget to email them or send them a brochure to stay in touch.

It takes time, patience, and practice to get your domain looking as you want it to. The more you work with HTML and web tools, the better you'll get at it. Your home business will get more exposure using the web as an advertising method, and it won't break the bank. Keep in mind that it generally takes about two months from the time you first get your site online to start seeing any income made from the site. If you really push hard to market the site immediately, chances are you'll see income even faster.

Tip: Use a marketing method that allows you to see what sales come from the internet. You can use PayPal to accept sales (including credit card orders!), and it'll be obvious which sales were made online, or you can add a department number to your contact address (such as Dept. 123) so that when orders come through the regular mail, you'll know the sale was made from the internet or what ad the customer responded to.