1) First of all, choose a domain name that is somehow related to the business you are in. For example, if you are looking for a domain name for your pillow business, you might want to try using a name like www.SquarePillows.com or www.PillowSleep.com. It is important to use a “real” domain name. Your visitors will not take your business seriously if you use a free domain name like www.tripod.com/squarepillows , or www.angelfire.com/pillowsleep . A lot of the good domain names are already spoken for, but if you are patient enough, you will search and find one that is still available. If you think that you will need more than one domain name, get that one now too, as thousands of names are taken up each day. Do a search under “Google” using “cheap domain names” as your search words. You will find some very reasonably priced domain registrars. The cheapest one that I have found so far is at www.GoDaddy.com. They are a full service operation offering web hosting and cheap, cheap, cheap domain registration.

2) You will need a hosting service for your domain name. The hosting service allows your domain name and all of its content to be viewed on the internet. This is easy to handle. You have basically two choices here. You can pay for the hosting service or get it for free. If money is not really a problem for you, then you may want to choose the paid version. Just do a search using “Google” with “web hosting” as your search words, and take your pick from the thousands of sites. You will find that the price charged varies wildly depending the services required. Now if you want to explore the free version…. There are a lot of free hosting companies on the internet. The problem with these free hosting companies is that they all require some sort of pop-up banner, static header or footer banner, or both, to be placed on each and every web page. These banners can contain all kinds of advertising, and some, or all of it, may not be welcome to the viewers on your web site. The free hosting option is certainly not the best one to explore. To save you time, I would recommend www.GoDaddy.com again for the most economical hosting of your web site.

3) Once you have your domain name and hosting service taken care of, you will probably need a way of uploading your web content to your site. Sometimes your web hosting service provider includes a site manager that allows this function. If not, then you might want to look into downloading some FTP software such as WS_FTP for example at www.ipswitch.com. While you are downloading software, you may also want to add WINZIP – located at www.WinZip.com to your download list. WINZIP allows you to “unzip” your “PillowSleep” file for example. A file is initially “zipped” to compress it for ease of downloading. To use this download zip file, you will have to “unzip” it first.

4) Your “PillowSleep” site probably needs a little more customizing. Look at other pillow sites on the internet for comparison and see what could be improved visually on your site. Does it need any flashy graphics? There are many free graphics available on the internet - just do a search with google. Once you are happy with the way your web site looks, it's now time to focus on that fun part – html coding. Unless you are very comfortable using “html” coding, don't touch the “html” coding on the “PillowSleep” pages at all. If you are comfortable using “hml”, then you could add things like Title, Meta Keywords, Meta Descriptions, etc., which would allow the search engines to find your web site much easier. The use of “keyword phrases” is much more useful than just using “keywords”, because it makes your web site more search specific. Go ahead and add a “Pillow” links page too. Another tip is always keep a hard copy of your web pages somewhere, either on a floppy, cd, or dvd. There are few things worse than customizing a web site and if something bad happens to your computer or hard drive, losing the web content forever.

5) At this point, you probably already have uploaded your web site and have it online. Now you need to “drive” visitors to your site. One popular way of bringing traffic to your site is to use a free link exchange or free link trading service. For the free link exchange service, you just sign up and put a little bit of code on your “Pillow” web site (this allows other Pillow web site banners to be viewed on your site and vice versa). The free link trading service is very simple also. You simply add another pillow's link to your links page and vice versa. This trading of links increases your sites popularity greatly with the search engines. One of the most important things you can do to gain traffic is to get listed with the major search engines. Go to each search engine, or use a free service like www.AddMe.com and add your web site there. There is also what is called “pay-per-click” search engines where you actually pay for traffic sent to your web site. Other search engines require payment in order to get listed with them at all. “Yahoo” is one of these “pay” search engines.

6) Please be advised that is illegal to “Spam” on the internet or via e-mail. Spamming is sending unwanted e-mails or putting internet advertising material, or internet material in general where it should not be. That being said, another method of marketing and promoting your site is to add your site to casino and gambling message boards and free for all links pages. Please check to see if it is ok to post your info there first, and in which category, and anywhere else before posting there. If you “Spam”, you risk losing your internet service provider, and possibly your web host with all of your web content. It's just not worth the trouble.

7) Another way of promoting your site is to add your web site address to your business cards, and/or make up flyers and posters. Don't forget to get permission before you post anything anywhere. If you have other web sites, add a banner and/or link to your “Pillow” site there. Make a t-shirt with your “Pillow” graphic and web address on it (on both sides of the t-shirt) for yourself to wear. If you want, add your “Pillow” graphic logo and web address to different products like baseball caps and coffee mugs, and give them away as promotional items. Buy an ad on a bus stop, or a small classified ad in the local paper, or radio ad, etc. How about getting two of those “12 inch x 12 inch” sticky, bendable, removable, flat, “magnet ads” made up at your local printing store to put on the sides of your vehicle's doors. When you drive around the city, every body will see your web site ad and when you get to your destination, simply take the sign off until you leave again. How about putting one of your “Pillow” flyers or small posters on the inside of your vehicle's rear side glass areas. Just make sure it doesn't obscure your vision. The idea is to use your creativity here.

8) I hope these pointers are of good use to you. Good luck with your online web business!!!

Sandy Johnson