How To Create Your Own Website--Web Hosting, Shopping Cart...

[daisymae]

thanks for the info! that helps a lot!

[*Jill*]

i use lunarpages

[alibug]

I guess I am just a total dummy. I really want to start up a website, but I have NO idea how to go about doing it. How much do you pay for your website? Do you just pay the $5.95 per month total? Or is there something else you have to pay to get it started? I am so confused. I think I understand how to get a domain (you just go to something like godaddy or this hostmonster.com that you have and sign up. I understand that it is $5.95 or so. Does the hostmonster just give you the domain or can I actually have people go to my domain and look at my bows, etc. to buy. I need some help big time...

[hipgirl]

Originally Posted by alibug

I guess I am just a total dummy. I really want to start up a website, but I have NO idea how to go about doing it. How much do you pay for your website? Do you just pay the $5.95 per month total? Or is there something else you have to pay to get it started? I am so confused. I think I understand how to get a domain (you just go to something like godaddy or this hostmonster.com that you have and sign up. I understand that it is $5.95 or so. Does the hostmonster just give you the domain or can I actually have people go to my domain and look at my bows, etc. to buy. I need some help big time...

Take my website as an example. I have 1 domain: www.hipgirlclips.com. 2 subdomain: www.hipgirlclips.com/store, www.hipgirlclips.com/forums. The store is the online store which allows customer to browse products, add items to shopping cart and check out. The forum is the online forum that allows members to read and post messages.

1st, I need a company to host my website and get my domain name. So I chose hostmonster to host my website. The price is $4.95/month ( 5.95/month now, 2 years contract) plus free domain name forever (you can also choose monthly program and renew service every month but the price would be much higher and you need to pay about $10 for domain name).

So after paying hostmonster $4.95x24month, I have a domainname www.hipgirlclips.com with nothing in it. Just a blank page or big 'under construction' sign.

Now the next step is to set up my online store www.hipgirlclips.com/store. I need to install the shopping cart software. So I chose zen-cart (free shopping cart software). Install the software under www.hipgirlclips.com/store and did some configuration (upload my own head image, put my store name in header....). Now I have an online store with 0 products.

Next I need to add my products to the store. The shopping cart software has 2 parts --front end which is the store customers can see (that is www.hipgirlclips.com/store). The back ends is the admin interface that only the owner can access. I just go to this admin page to create the product categories and then create products under categories.

That's it. If you only need an online store, that's all the startup steps. The cost is $5.95/month. Nothing else.

But wait. Nobody knows you have an online store. So you need to advertise. You can sell on eBay and direct your eBay customers to your store. (See How to Promote your web site in eBay listing. ). Or you can advertise on google via AdWord program. Google will post your ads according to the keyword you specify and you only pay google when somebody clicks your ads. For example, this forum shows a lot of hair bow, hair clips and ribbon google ads since the forum is about hair bows and ribbon. If you see an ad and click it, the owner of the ads will pay google (and google will pay me) since you will visit their website and might purchase somthing off their site. I don't advertise on google since my website is only my 2nd job now but I heard that it's easy to spend hundreds of dollars/month.

So I think the cost of setting a website and running it can be ignored (only $5.95/month). But you may need to spend a lot of money (or time) to advertise your site.

Besides the online store, I also run this forum. The cost of the forum software is $180/year. There are also free forum software available but after research. I chose this software since it's more administrator friendly and it'll save me a lot of time to manage it.

Also, if you don't want online store or forum, there are other options: blog, image gallery... All have free software available. So basicly you only need $5.95/month.

Michelle

[daisymae]

awesome info and breakdown michelle. i hope that is pinned somewhere b/c it is very helpful for newbies.

[hipgirl]

Thanks. I just pinned it.

Michelle

[alibug]

Wow thanks so much! That answered my question perfectly. I guess I would need to know how to upload a header and my pictures to the website that people can shop and buy. I don't really know how to do that. Does anybody know how much it costs for somebody else to do it? Or it is pretty easy to figure out how to do it myself?

Thanks so much Michelle! You are such a big help!

[LilysMommy]

Thank you for the great information! I was actually coming here to ask the exact same question. I am totally clueless when it comes to building a website.

[creativekiddos]

I USE WHAM

* WAHM Special Just $7.00 per month.
* Free Full Featured eStore, Built-in cart.
* Free Forum/Message Board
* Free Postcards to friends built into the store.
* FrontPage Extensions and FTP access.
* 300meg of Storage site and store.
* Unlimited products in the eStore
* Up to 50 email mailboxes

Heather

[Miranda]

Yep, that's who I use also here is the link http://www.wahmshoppes.com/index.asp
So far I have been happy with them, I know they had some issues awhile back but I was never effected by them. I had been talking about trying to find a new host but I think I am just going to stick with them. The support message board is great too.