Business Opportunities Weblog

September 9, 2008 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

The Wall Street Journal:

Thanks to competition among Web-hosting providers, and the falling costs of Web storage, it’s never been easier to get a Web site up and running — from buying the domain name to building a site to setting up a payment system to tracking traffic.

This week in a 5-part series, we’ll lay out all the steps you need to take to build your site, and present some expert opinion about getting it noticed and keeping track of customers — all with no technical background required. Yesterday, we bought our web address, today we find it a home.

For years, companies have charged small businesses a fee to “host” sites — store the sites’ content on their computers. According to a recent survey from Jupiter, about a third of small-business executives say they pay up to $1,000 a year for Web hosting, and about another third pay more than $1,000.

Fortunately, in the past year, a number of companies have begun providing hosting services free of charge. They often make money by charging for premium services or running ads on your Web pages.

All you need to do is visit the Web site for one of these hosting services — such as Microsoft Corp.’s Office Live Small Business, Weebly Inc. or SynthaSite Inc. — and enter a user name, a password and some other details. Then visit your domain-name registrar and tweak your settings so that your Web address points to the service you’ve chosen. The hosting service will give you instructions on how to do this.

Photo by lusi/CraigPJ.

In Advice, Ecommerce, Internet | 1 Comment