Once you have decided that you are going to start your own online business you will be looking at building your first website.

For many this is a really daunting process and it can be difficult to know where to start.

There are plenty of websites available for free which are pre-created and set up for you and that can instantly seem like the easiest option, especially if you have no technical or web experience.

However, your website will be the life blood of your business, the foundations on which everything you do is built and to me it therefore makes sense for you to learn and understand the basics of creating a website.

If you use a ready made site there is going to be a huge part of your business that you basically will have no understanding of, that is completely alien to you and that’s not a very good way to start your own business.

There will be times when you want to make changes to your website, upload images and new content etc., if you don’t have the basic knowledge of how to perform these simple tasks it’s really going to cause you a headache later on! You’ll end up wasting valuable time looking for answers and maybe even spending a lot of money paying some ‘techie guy’ to sort it all out for you.

None of that is necessary if you just take a little time to learn a few simple skills. Honestly, they really are simple skills, I have absolutely no technical background and am so not technically minded, if I can learn this stuff literally anyone can!

Many of the free ready made websites that are available are affiliate sites. This means a site that is already loaded with other peoples products which you will earn a commission from selling.

Affiliate marketing is very lucrative and there are plenty of people who make really good money online purely through affiliating themselves to other people’s products.

As a newcomer there are 2 main problems with this.

Firstly, so many people think that having great looking website packed full of products means that you are in business!

The website itself is worth nothing unless you have people visiting it and that’s where the enthusiastic beginner soon comes unstuck because they have no idea how to drive traffic to their website, they have no idea how to do ‘the Marketing bit’.

Secondly, most affiliate marketers promote other people’s products via their list which they will have built up over time.

As a newcomer you are not going to have a list of customers to promote to and that is where you need to begin.

BUILD YOUR LIST

Here is where we come back to the importance of having Your Own Website!

To effectively build a list you need to have your own website which has an opt-in form to enable people to leave their name and email address and in return you provide them with something of value for free, like an Ebook for example.

Also it is worth bearing in mind that those that make large sums of money online do so by creating their own products and getting other people to promote them and you will need to have your own platform in order to do this!!

GETTING STARTED!

If you are a complete beginner then the first step  towards creating your first website is purchasing a domain name.

A domain name is the name which you want to give your website i.e www.marketingthesmartway.com.

There are many places from which you can purchase a domain name and it is inexpensive.

I would personally recommend that you opt for a .com domain name and choose a name which will either allow you to brand yourself, i.e yourname.com or a name that has direct relevance to the niche market you will be building your website around. Something that maybe contains some popular keywords or that is easily associated with what it is you will be doing.

After you have decided on your domain name you will then need to choose a hosting company.

I have learnt through experience that it is a wiser choice to keep your domain registrar and your hosting company seperate. If you Google ‘hosting companies’ you will see that there are plenty to choose from.

I would personally recommend Hostgator.com but ask people who have websites and see if they recommend anyone inparticular.

A good hosting company shouldn’t cost you any more than $10-$15 per month. Setting up a hosting account is really easy and should only take a few minutes. Once it’s done you should receive an email from the hosting company which will contain all the hosting details for your domain name.

ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOU KEEP THIS EMAIL!!

You will need the information provided to publish your website later on so keep it safe!!!!

With your domain name and hosting company sorted out you’re now ready to create your first web page.

CREATING A SIMPLE WEB PAGE

You can create your own simple web pages from your own computer at home. In order to do that you will need what’s known as a Web Editor.

Basically this is a piece of software which allows you to create web pages and then upload them to your hosting company who in turn will place it on the web!

There are a huge amount of web editors which you could use but if you are just getting started then I would recommend you learn the basics by using a free web editor called Kompozer.

This program is free for you to download to your computer, once that’s done you’ll have the Kompozer icon on your desktop ready to use!

Once you open up Kompozer you’ll have a screen with a menu and toolbar across the top.

On the right hand side of the screen is a window which has a tab called ‘untitled’.

One of the first things you want to remember is that it is important to name each page as you create it. 

The name of the page appears in the title bar of the website which is the the bar which you see at the top.

The title bar is really important when it comes to achieving high rankings in the search engines as whatever is written in the title bar is what you see displayed in the results pages. This is a whole other subject which you will want to research eventually, it’s known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO for short), and you’ll find plenty of useful information on that in other categories of my site.

To create the text which will go in your title bar, click on ‘format’ in the menu and then click on Page Title and Properties from the drop down box.

In the box which appears, in the ‘Title’ you will enter the decription of your page, for example ‘Cheryl’s first site’ and then click ok.

You have now named your webpage!  

So, always remember that when you are creating a new page you need to name it, if you don’t it’ll appear as ‘untitled’ and that makes you look like a novice. Whether you are or not, you want others to see you as a professional who knows what they are doing!!

Now in Kompozer you should see that the name you have given to your page has appeared in the tab at the top of the large pane, it’s in here that you add your content.

Before you play around with adding some content, just make sure that the tab at the bottom of the page is set to the mode ‘normal’.

You can just go ahead and type some text into the large pane, just play around with it, all you are doing right now is practising your skills, there is no right and wrong here!!

Something else that is really important for you to learn when creating your webpages.

Get into the habit of ALWAYS saving the elements of your webpage to the same location. 

All the content, images and anything else that you want to appear on your webpage, save to the same location so that when you come to upload your newly created page, nothing gets lost along the way! You’ll have seen those sites where the images aren’t displayed correctly, that will be because they have made this simple mistake when uploading their pages, they didn’t have all the elements of the page in the same location!

My suggestion is that you get into the practice of creating a project folder for every website that you create and save all your content, images etc. in it.

Then all you have to do is keep each project folder in My Documents and you will always know where to find all that you need.

I have just skimmed the surface lightly here, there is still how to go about publishing your website, uploading images, creating more pages but you’ll be suffering from information overload if I go through all that in one go!

There will be other posts on the site which go over these areas, there will also be an Ebook which you can get hold of for FREE, which will take you through the whole process step by step.

Please don’t feel daunted or think that you are out of your depth when you are thinking about creating your first website.

Once you understand the basic principals and practice a little you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about!

Believe in yourself, not many people actually take the time to learn all of this stuff so you will be way ahead once you have mastered these new skills!