Cheapest Way To Set Up Chain of Websites

Truegho

I am thinking about starting my own business by setting up a chain of websites (say five to begin with). However, I do realise that the cost of paying for both web hosting and domain names will soon add up.

What I want to know is this: do any of you know a cheaper way of setting up five online businesses without paying through the nose out of my JSA? I have heard some hosting companies offer you discount hosting packages if you buy in bulk, but I don't know which offer would be the best money-saving one for me to sign up for.

chalkie99

What do you want to do with the websites?

I use a package from http://vidahost.com
which costs £29 a year (or 3 years for the price of 2) and that lets you run 6 separate sites under the one package.

You get one x co.uk registration for free and extra ones are £5.58 for two years.

I have four sites on my package at the moment - all different names and nothing to suggest they are linked to one hosting package.

Truegho

That sounds a good deal. I may go with them.

As I say, my aim is to build around five online websites and see how they perform in terms of affiliate links profits etc.

chalkie99 wrote: »

What do you want to do with the websites?

I use a package from http://vidahost.com
which costs £29 a year (or 3 years for the price of 2) and that lets you run 6 separate sites under the one package.

You get one x co.uk registration for free and extra ones are £5.58 for two years.

I have four sites on my package at the moment - all different names and nothing to suggest they are linked to one hosting package.

steve1980

Truegho wrote: »

I am thinking about starting my own business by setting up a chain of websites (say five to begin with). However, I do realise that the cost of paying for both web hosting and domain names will soon add up.

What I want to know is this: do any of you know a cheaper way of setting up five online businesses without paying through the nose out of my JSA? I have heard some hosting companies offer you discount hosting packages if you buy in bulk, but I don't know which offer would be the best money-saving one for me to sign up for.

Truegho wrote: »

That sounds a good deal. I may go with them.

As I say, my aim is to build around five online websites and see how they perform in terms of affiliate links profits etc.

In that case what you need is this:

http://hostsphere.co.uk/hosting/multipledomainhosting

This lets you have 5 completely separate websites which hold 20gb of space for EACH website domain plus alot of other stuff too (Vidahost is only 2gb (333mb for each site)).

Robert928

Wouldn't it be better to work strongly on say one or two websites than spreading all your time over 5? No rush.

Truegho

Yes, I have contemplated just spending my time on one or two websites first. But the thing is, I need to make enough money to be able to sign off the dole and work for myself, so this other alternative keeps occurring to me to set up a chain of five or more websites with high keyword CTRs. This is a problem which, I know, a lot of webmasters have: trying to make up their mind whether to just concentrate on one or two big websites, or start a chain.

Robert928 wrote: »

Wouldn't it be better to work strongly on say one or two websites than spreading all your time over 5? No rush.

PasturesNew

Re original question, you need what's called "reseller hosting". The name implies that you will be a reseller of hosting, but all your 'customers' are you. That's how the majority of people with lots of domains do it (I have about 30).

Re 1 or many. Definitely one... especially if you've not done it before. Do one as it'll be a big learning curve and you'll change a lot of what you do in the first few months and you'll learn a lot and will want to do things differently next time. If you do five in one go, then discover something new, or want to tweak/change stuff, you've got to apply those changes to five sites, which is a pain in the butt. Sometimes I feel my entire life is spent purely on upgrades/updates/tweaks and adding in new features... I never ever get to the marketing bit

David.

chalkie99 wrote: »

What do you want to do with the websites?
I have four sites on my package at the moment - all different names and nothing to suggest they are linked to one hosting package.

are they all on diff class c ips ? if not they are linked

Truegho wrote: »

Yes, I have contemplated just spending my time on one or two websites first. But the thing is, I need to make enough money to be able to sign off the dole and work for myself, so this other alternative keeps occurring to me to set up a chain of five or more websites with high keyword CTRs. This is a problem which, I know, a lot of webmasters have: trying to make up their mind whether to just concentrate on one or two big websites, or start a chain.

Dont want to be negative but starting with no knowledge and I am guessing little capital to invest it could be a while. Its one of those situations when you are not making much online you can not afford or dont want to risk your money on software new domain names etc. But once you do start making money then it is more an investment to grow your income.

PasturesNew wrote: »

Re original question, you need what's called "reseller hosting". The name implies that you will be a reseller of hosting, but all your 'customers' are you. That's how the majority of people with lots of domains do it (I have about 30).

Why ?
Reseller costs more and chances are it is on the same class c so you may as well just pay for one hosting account and put your domains on that.

PasturesNew wrote: »

Re 1 or many. Definitely one... especially if you've not done it before. Do one as it'll be a big learning curve and you'll change a lot of what you do in the first few months and you'll learn a lot and will want to do things differently next time. If you do five in one go, then discover something new, or want to tweak/change stuff, you've got to apply those changes to five sites, which is a pain in the butt. Sometimes I feel my entire life is spent purely on upgrades/updates/tweaks and adding in new features... I never ever get to the marketing bit

I agree totally anyone who thinks they can just set up a site and have it ranking in google on the first page without knowing what they are doing is dreaming and thats how all these gurus make their money selling the dream of sitting on a beach whilst the money automatically rolls in .
Saying that once you do know what you are doing ranking a site for low-mid term competition keywords is not hard and harder keywords just take more work ,time and money.

InsideInsurance

As usual a lot of people giving "advice" without anywhere near enough information to do so properly.

There is a fair amount of additional information really needed to be able to give you a thorough answer. For example if you simply want to have a few independent sites with no bespoke functionality you most likely could get a very affordable webhosting package that allows sufficient domain aliases and allow a CMS to separate out the sites by domain name.

If your not intending to try and interlink the sites and get an SEO advantage from it and the sites are complex functionality/ bespoke etc then a multi domain hosting package may be best and that may or may not be a resellers account - they do tend to be cheaper for multi-domain packages from my experience.

If you are interlinking for SEO purposes you need to consider having multiple accounts with different companies because of the believed advantage this brings with your google rankings etc.

DCFC79

Any news on this OP

VSC

Before you do anything, do some research.

Getting a website to make money is extremely hard, takes time, effort and money. Don't want to put you off, but it's not as simple as putting a site up.

If you haven't already, sign up to forums on domain names, web hosting, design, copywriting, SEO.

Read read read.

Start a project management file, with the steps you need to take, timetable etc.

Domain names shouldn't cost more than £3 a year. Hosting about the same or less per month depending whether you get individual hosts / reseller hosting (some hosts offer different IP addresses which means that you get round all the sites on the same class c and can still work out cheaper. Also there is evidence that Google likes having sites on their own unique IP ).

Depending what market you are looking at dictates what standard of design you need. Wordpress could be the answer with a multitude of templates available.

Some forums which might help:

acorndomains.co.uk
forums.digitalpoint.com
warriorforum.com

I'd start off focusing on one site while you learn the ropes. Don't expect riches fast though. If you are going to rely on natural organic search it will take a lot of effort and time to get on page one. If you plan to pay for adverts, take it slowly and steadily and continually test - too easy to end up spending hundreds a day for no sales.

Good luck