Once you’ve got your domain name registered you’ll need somewhere to host your account.  Now unless you’ve done this before at some point you’ll need somewhere to keep the website files.  This is a server that’s online 100% of the time and available for visitors whenever they arrive.

There’s not much to it really.  Do a search for local website hosting so you can get service quickly in the same time zone as you.  If your service is supplied by email only then you can find that it’s a long time between emails if your site is not working!  Better to be able to call someone locally to get the help you need.

I use jumba.com.au here in Australia.  I read loads of reviews on their services and was happy with their reputation.

I also looked for someone who provides me with a hosting account that allows unlimited addon domains.  This is important to me because I have many small websites and do not wish to pay for them individually.  It’s much more convenient to manage them all in one place too.

Make sure your hosting account is not dependent on any other membership services.  Sites like sitesell.com (sitebuildit) and wealthyaffiliate.com both require a monthly membership fee to maintain their hosting service.  They offer “free” hosting for their subscribers but it’s sometimes hard to move the domains from their servers if you decide the membership is no longer worth the money.

Get your own private hosting service and keep your files protected.  Your hosting service (and your domain registration) details are your most valuable assets as a website owner.  Password protect them and keep the password different to all the other passwords you own.  (on that note, I also recommend “roboform” as a tool to secure your login details for the sites you join).

My final advice is to get onto your local forums and ask the questions.  What’s the best web hosting service provider for people in my area starting some stay at home jobs on the internet?

OK, so I like to take notes – Here are some very detailed notes I took while doing a course online (I hope I’m not giving away any trade secrets here!)

Follow them exactly, and make sure to do them in order (I’ll add some time saving tips a bit later when I get time!  – does that make ANY sense?)

So here it is…

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(SAVE YOUR FILES OFTEN!)

Keyword research:

1. Go to amazon.com
2. Chose a department
3. chose a sub category
4. Look for brand names etc
5. Go to Google keyword tool
6. enter broad match keyword
7. hide columns – advertiser competition – Approx search volume and Local search volume
8. Show ‘estimated avg CPC” column
9. change broad match type to: EXACT
10. sort by “approx avg search volume”
11. export to excel spreadsheet
12. add column “POTENTIAL” (cell D1)
13. enter formula: =B2*0.25*C2*0.4*0.05 in cell d2 (This means… 25% of the CPC times how many searches for the phrase times estimation of traffic from 1st page [40%] times about 5% click through rate on site)
14. copy down through the entire list
15. sort by potential (highlight all fields, click Data>Sort>By Column D>Descending)
16. add heaps of keywords to the list (repeat above process using as many related keywords you can find on amazon or think of using your brain)
17. sort again when reached 5000 keywords (might take an hour?)
18. delete any that earn less than $50/m potential

Part 2 – Prepare to Check Competition By Searching Google

(excel spreadsheet column headings A1: SEARCH A2: KEYWORD A3: OUTPUT URL)

1. Grab another excel spreadsheet and enter this data in to the left column A2: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=

2. Leave column B Blank for now

3. Enter this data into column C2: =IF(B2=”",”",CONCATENATE(“<a href=”"”,A2,SUBSTITUTE($B2,” “,”+”),”"”>”,B2,”</a><br>”)

4. SAVE IT SOMEWHERE SAFE!

5. Go and download the firefox addon called “Linkey” from: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/425

6. Go and download firefox addon called: “SEO For Firefox” from: http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html

7. Adjust settings on SEO for Firefox to “Show pagerank automatically” with a delay of 1-2 seconds (less demand on google and less likely to get banned!)

How To use it:

1. Enter in all your keywords that have potential earnings above $50/month into column B (and watch the url’s code come out in column C)

2. Copy column C into a Notepad file and save it as .html extension to your desktop (or somewhere you’ll remember)

3. Open it

4. Use mouse to highlight approx 100 of the links (select less if you have a slower internet connection)

5. Right click your mouse and choose Linkey>Open Selected Links In Tabs

6. Go get a cup of tea while you wait for the data to load

7. Highlight the keywords that meet the following criteria:
- Top 4 results with pr3 or less
- OK with pr4 ONLY if EXACT keyword is NOT in title
- we never go after keywords that have ranked sites with pr5+
(NOTE: once I got to the sites with less than $100 potential, I only took sites with competition of less than pr3 – No point working too hard!)

The resulting keywords are getting enough traffic, and have few enough competition for you to rank highly with the least amount of effort.

Now that you’ve done all that… here’s one I prepaired earlier   (look honestly, you’re better off doing it yourself at least once so you know what it’s all about) DOWNLOAD KEYWORD URL GENERATOR

In my opinion, keyword (market) research is the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of setting up a website or business.  Think about this: if you don’t know what your market wants, how are you going to give it to them?