In our journey to start a small business, we’ve examined the business idea itself and think the idea is good and financially sound. We’ve thought about what kind of business entity we should operate under, and we’ve decided on the name of the business.
As a part of finding a good name for your business, you’ve looked at domain names and found one you like. Next, you’ll need to buy that domain name. How do you do it? Are these ads on signing up for web hosting to get the domain name for $1 any good?
So, let’s look at domain name registrars and web hosting providers. We’ll go into some detail on what they each do, which ones we recommend, and why.
First Things First: Buy Your Domain Name
Having a website means you’ll need to buy a domain name first. Here’s our review of some of the popular domain name registrars:
Next, You’ll Need to Find a “Home” for Your Website
Usually, after you buy a domain name, you’ll need to find a web hosting company so you can build your site. It will take time to build that website, though. So, here’s a fast and cheap solution you can set up quickly. This way, you can continue to set up your business but still have a fairly professional website and email to use. You’ll look like a legit business.
You Can Set Up an Alternative or Temporary Solution with Free Business Emails and Free Website Hosting from Google
There’s a domain registrar who offers a free website and free business email: Google Domains.
And you can do this for $12/year. This isn’t a gimmicky introductory price where your price will go up after the initial term. This is the regular price.
You’d have to go through Gmail, which I know some folks object to due to privacy concerns. The website would be a really simple static site (i.e. little to no moving parts). However, as a temporary measure and for free, it’s a great deal.
Here’s how you can set up free business emails and build a free simple website just by using Google Domains as your registrar:
Or You Can Take the Plunge and Sign up with a Web Hosting Company to Get Your Business Emails and a Place to Build Your Website
Remember that $1 or $0 domain name deal we mentioned earlier? If you still wish to take that deal from website hosting providers, here are a couple of articles to help you decide which hosting company to go with:
Now That You Have Your Domain Name and Maybe a Web Hosting Company, Keep Moving to Set Up Your New Business
If you intend to run an online business, of course there’s much more to do on websites. We know this.
But starting a business means you have to do many things at the same time. So, we’re going to take a short break on online-related items and address some of the other things a new business owner must do to set up their business.
We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming…
One of the nice things about writing on the internet is that, even though we intend you to read this blog in a particular order, we can change that order later in time if something new comes up. Originally, we had planned to start a new series of articles on how to find a lawyer. But we’re going to delay that and insert a later-written article here.
We are building this website as you are reading it. Sometimes, we make a mistake and learn that we could have taken steps earlier to prevent the mistake. The next article came about this way. We want to tell you our mistake and suggest some steps you can take to minimize or work around it.
Several months after we published our first article here, we noticed that this website wasn’t getting any search traffic. Our readers mostly came from social media platforms where we post new articles on our The Missed Details page. We were puzzled and alarmed and did a lot of research.
From the research, we learned about something called the Google Sandbox Effect. Basically, Google’s search algorithm takes at least 4-6 months to figure out and rate any new website. During this time, your website will rank very low (e.g. position 90-100) in any Google search.
If you intend your business to rely on Google searches to bring in new customers or readers, this delay can be deadly. We think we found a workaround to at least shorten this 4-6 months time frame. But you have to implement this workaround early.
So, here’s our blog post on How to Avoid the Google Sandbox Effect, for Startups. If your business is going to depend on internet-based sales in any way, we highly recommend you read the article.
Questions? Comments?
