Website For New Small Business.

EPL

Hello guys,

Just after a bit of advice. I am wanting to set up a website for affiliate marketing purposes.

So I am going to need a domain, hosting and a website builder. The actual website doesn't need to be of the highest quality but I do want a professional look.

I have looked at GoDaddy and they do a package with all 3 of these that I need and it seems pretty cheap. Has anyone had experience with them ?

Or can anyone recommend any other sites that offer these types of packages ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated guys

directdebiter

Buy a domain say from Godaddy or 123reg and then put a website brief on a site like elance. then different compnaies will pitch to work with you. This is a good way to get decent developers/designers.

rhapsody_princess

Use Wix to build and purchase your domain. I built a 5 page in an afternoon and looks the job Don't pay someone to do it when there are free tools out there to do it yourself! MSE remember!

Lagoon

You can certainly use free services, but you'll want to pay the membership charge to get rid of their advertising if you want to look professional. I run a business and one of our services is cheap website production.

Please don't use Wix, however, if you'd like your website to be found using search engines. Personally, I recommend Weebly for a cheap website that you can make yourself. I know that you've said you don't want a fancy website, but your best bet is one that looks good and can be found. In my (fairly extensive) experience, Weebly is the only one of these 'free/cheap' services that does that properly.

shmeeko69

There are a variety of free blog sites like Blog.com, Blogspot, Google sites and Wordress that you can easily sell affiliate products on, but you should always look at the paid option for the longer term. I personally use Dreamhost for domain and hosting and have nearly always been reliable.

John_Ashtone

I can concur with Lagoon about Weebly just put my name followed by dot com, and you will see how professional Weebly can look.

However you are restricted to 6 pages for free, most people will find that good enough to get started, I am moving on to Joomla (which is much more complicated) because it gives more control over what can be presented, and more complicated sites (I am already planning at least 2 other sites).

My domain and hosting was £150 for 3 years, so just a tad under £1 per week. All I need to do now is knuckle down to finishing my next book, which will free up the time to design and build those next websites.

Note I was going to use Wordpress (avoid Wordpress blog there is a big difference wordpress dot org is the one you need) but I am still on windows XP, and wordpress seems to have problems, I get a white screen, but otherwise that seems very good, but again you will have to learn some skills to use it, whereas Weebly will have you up and running in the day and look expert.

nicesurf

You can buy website in forums.digitalpoint. There are so many cheap website on a tread "site". You can use hostgator as your hosting.

Percy1983

I would say buy a domain, find a cheap shared hosting deal and go with wordpress or Joomla.

As another link I found http://www.uk-cheapest.co.uk/ good for domains, I have a few with them now.

As it is if you want to check out wordpress or Joomla I am happy for you to join my server for a few months to give it a go before you pay out for a server, you will just need to buy the domain.

steve1980

Out of interest, where are you going to get the traffic from for the site?

Affiliate marketing sites went out years ago and you need to show affiliate companies that you have a good flow of traffic to your site to get accepted.

freewheelinfranklin

steve1980 wrote: »

Out of interest, where are you going to get the traffic from for the site?

Affiliate marketing sites went out years ago and you need to show affiliate companies that you have a good flow of traffic to your site to get accepted.

Yep ... the landscape has changed dramatically for affiliates in the last few years. Unless you really know what you're doing Google will never give you those top organic placements and you will be sorely disappointed. Not trying to neg you out but just being realistic.

quinechinoise

I've always been happy with 123-Reg for domains and hosting.

As for the website, cheap options include: you could design it yourself, use a CMS (content management system) such as WordPress and a premade skin or you could ask a student to do it as part of their portfolio.