Part Time Webmaster Blog

Now, that you’ve read our first article, you should have an email address already. So, let’s determine if you need a website a little bit more.

Can I survive without a website? Yes. But, what if I have a company? Can I really survive without a website? Yes.

Ok, we’ll teach you how to survive without a website. As we do, we’re going to register your information on a lot of sites. But, we really need to make a decision before we start posting our information all over the internet. For now, forget about whether or not you need a website and ask yourself this question, “Do you want to have your own website address (domain name)? like parttimewebmaster.com?” Do you? Remember, we’re going to register you all over the internet and you don’t want to go back and change your email address everywhere. Does it seem like a big decision? What if I told you it’s probably going to cost you less than $10 a year? Does that make the decision easier? It probably does. As your making your decision, keep in mind that domain names come with free email addresses. If it were up to me, I’d say you’re better off having one than not, and it’s really not that much money. If you’re ready for a domain name (all companies should be) then read the article, “How to choose your domain name.”

Let’s get back on track. How do you survive without a website? Note, we can’t go over everything in this one page, so we’ll split it up. Follow along on these posts and we’ll review everything.

This first one is for company owners.

Not too long ago, we all referenced the yellow pages. If you’re like me, I don’t even want them in my house, I just put them in the recycling bin. So, how do you get to people like me? How do you find people or businesses? We search online. So, let’s get you registered in some online business directories.

Read the article “Business directory websites.”

This evening, I sat with family thinking about the blog. I wondered if I was going in the right direction. Who is this blog for anyway? Me, you. Is it for me to make money? Well, yes and no. Or, is it a site for me to express my thoughts, share my knowledge? Anyway, I figured I have gotten a little off track and figured I’d start all over again.

I’m a programmer by trade, when I first started consulting all of my clients were through large consulting companies. And, these clients all knew what they wanted. They wanted a website. So, that was our mission and we built a lot of them, still do. But, what if it’s just you, you’re not a big company with a lot of money, you’d like a website, what do you do, the little guy? Well, this post is for you. So, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a small or large company, or an individual, this next set of posts will help answer any question you may have.

First question, “Why do you want a website?” This is a big question. So, if you’re just starting out, or, you’re familiar with everything, let’s analyze why we want a website.

What is your goal? Here are a couple of questions to get started down the right path for your presence on the internet.

1. Do you own a company?
2. Do you sell products?
3. Do you sell services?
4. Do you have a full time job?
5. Do you want to make money online?
6. Do you want to keep in touch with family?
7. How much money are you willing to spend?
8. Do you have an idea to make millions?
9. How much time are you willing to invest?
10. Do you like to do everything yourself, or do you want someone to do it for you?
11. Are you technical? Are you a programmer?

If you’ve put some thoughts into those, you probably have more questions. So, again, do you want a website? Or, do you think is something else online already that will suit your needs? For example, could MySpace or Facebook solve all of your problems? If you own a company it doesn’t matter, eventually, you will need a website, but, you don’t need one right away.

In either case, if you want to present yourself on the web, there are a few basic steps you’ll need to take. In this post, we’ll just start with the basics.

Step 1: Get an email address
I know it’s simple, but before you do anything on the internet these days, you will need an email address. You don’t need a special one yet with your company name. But, to register for website addresses (domain names) you’ll need one.

So, if you don’t have an email address yet, sign up for a free one on one of the most common search engines. Whatever you do, do not sign up with your internet provider and use that one as your main email address. Why? Well, what happens to those that choose an email address based on their cable provider? When they switch, they have to tell everyone the new email address. So, stick to the basic email providers so you can have the email address for years to come.

Here are a couple of the most popular:

1. Google: Google by far is my favorite. To sign up for a Google email address, click here.
2. Yahoo: Yahoo is pretty popular as well. To sign up for a Yahoo email address, click here.
3. Microsoft (Hotmail) – Microsoft will be here for a while as well. Click here to get a Hotmail email address.

Now, that we have an email address, let’s go onto the next step. See the next blog titled “Can I survive without a website?”

Yes, you can host your website for free. And, it doesn’t have to be a plain old site. You can host your website for free even if you use tools such as WordPress. But, as with all free things, there is usually some cost involved, granted, it may not be an out of pocket expense.

The initial question is “How come I get it for free?” After all, nothing in business is free. Well, hosting companies compensate for this initial loss in a couple ways as follows:

• ALWAYS: No matter what, the hosting company will post ads to your website. This way, they recieve money from new customers, pay-per-click campaigns, or affiliate marketing programs. It’s pretty smart actually. Consider this, all of the people you attract to your website are potential customers.
• They may ask you to purchase something such as a domain name. This way, they did make some money.
• The free hosting may be for a trial period. So, they’ll get money from you eventually.
• If you install software, there may be some limitations. For example, there could be limited fuctionality that you won’t know about until you test out the site.
• They hope that you’ll get frustrated with the ads and actually buy hosting.

If any of these things offend you, you may want to consider paying for hosting. Today, hosting is not that expensive, for example, you can host a site for less than $40 a year. But, if you are looking to test the waters, why not try it before you spend the money. After all, all of the hosting companies will allow you to switch over to an ad free site easily.

We’ve taken some time to track down several hosting companies that will offer free hosting with your domain. Granted, the hosting may be a do it yourself website. NOTE: In most, if not all, cases, the free hosting is a do it yourself website package, or they allow you to install packages such as Wordpress for free. Don’t expect that you will be able to register or transfer your domain name, then upload your entire site via ftp.

List of Free Website Hosting Companies (with domain name purchase):

• GoDaddy
  With each GoDaddy domain you get the GoDaddy photo album, quick blogcast, hosting, personalized email account, starter web page, “For Sale” page, parked page, getting started guide, domain forwarding and masking, 100 pack email forwarding, total DNS control, change of registration, status alerts, domain locking, and more.
• 1 AND 1
  With each 1and1 domain, you get free private domain registration, host unlimited 1&1 domans, 5 subdomains, 5 host external domains, DNS management, domain forwarding, URL masking, domain contact management, domain access with or without www, 1 email account, supported by IMAP & POP3, 2GB of mailbox space, 200 email aliases, email auto-responder, email forwarding, catch all email addresses, optional spam filter, 1&1 Starter website builder, 1&1 control panel, simple submissions for SEO, and phone support.
• Aplus.net
  With each domain, you get a starter page, email address, and 100 email forwarders.
• JumplineJumpline offers domain control, email forwarding 5 POP email addresses, webmail client, and site builder.

What do we recommend? We recommend both GoDaddy and FastDomain.
Why? Both of these offer you the ability to set up a website now. So, if you’re just looking to get your name out and put up something quick these solutions are easy and quick. They also will allow you to upgrade when you’re ready.
If you happen to know of any more, please let us know. It took a while to track these guys down.

Did you know that you could create a website and host it with Google? That’s right, we could have been hosting our website with Google.

What is Google website hosting?

If you have a Google account, you can set up your own site with Google. That’s right. You can even have your domain name point to the site.

So, what is it? Google provides a do it yourself system which allows you to create an unknown number of sites (I have 5 private sites). You can pick out some simple designs and templates, add logos, etc. One of the cooler things about it is that you can add Google Gadgets to it. So, you don’t have to program anything. Plus, there are hundreds of Google Gadgets to add to your site.

How do I create my Google website?

There are a couple of ways to get to it. If you’re starting out, just visit the link http://www.google.com/sites. Here, you can sign up to create your site. Once you’ve signed up, you can use iGoogle to get to it later. If you are already signed up with Google, go to your iGoogle page, http://www.igoogle.com. Look in the top navigation for the link called “Sites”. If you don’t see it immediately, click on the “More” drop-down to find the link “Sites”. If you still can’t find it, click on the “Even More” link to find it.

How do I point my domain name to my Google site?

1. First, log into iGoogle and browse to your site using the sites link in the top navigation.
2. Look in the top right hand side of your site for the More Actions button, click on it and choose “Manage site”
3. In the left hand menu, click on “Web Address”
4. Follow the instructions to add your website address, that’s it!

Today, I was notified that I had some malware. Not too excited about that. As it turns out, the easy way to block this in the Firefox browser was to add an Ad Blocker plugin to my browser. Sounds cool right. Well, just out of curiosity, I looked at my website and found out that all of my ads were blocked! Makes sense right.

Well, there’s one drawback. If I’m only using ads to make revenue from my site, I’m out of luck. So, what to do? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that I should mix my ads with some links to affiliate programs. I know, this may seem obvious to some, but it wasn’t to me.

So, now, my next task is to add to my general template links to some affiliate sites. Otherwise, if all of the ads are blocked, I’m out of luck.