How to get a website >> Turorial

[Mapals]

Hi,

I am a karate student by interest and a webmaster by profession.

In the past, I have been approached by several martial arts schools to develop a website.

I thought I may be able to contribute a short article to explain how you can get a website if you are new to the idea.

I will keep it short here, and if you have questions you can ask.

How to get a website for your business.

1. Domain Name:
You need to get a domain name for you website.
A domain name is like defend.net
You can purchase it online with credit card.
Price: $10/year.


2. Hosting:
You are probably paying rent for the space where you have your school (or business). In the same way, you need to pay rent to house your website on the internet. The company that provides you that space is called a Hosting Company or simply Host.
Price: approximately $120/year.


3. Web Designer:
This is an individual or a firm that creates websites.
You can find plenty on the net.
Here are a couple of suggestions on finding the right web designer.
1. Shop around. Don't go with the first one you speak with.
2. Ask for examples of their work.
3. Visualize what you want on your site (in as much detail as you can << very important).
4. Tell several web designers what you want on your site and ask them for 2 things in particular - price and timeframe.
5. Wait for replies from all the web designers you contacted.
Based on the replies you receive you will get an idea on what's out there.

NOTE: The lowest price ones might not always be the best solution.


4. Marketing:
This is the most important part of your website success but probably the most ignored.
80 % of your online success depends on marketing.
It is probably the most expensive if done right.
Marketing techniques:
a. PPC (Paying search engines to rank high)
b. SEO (Fixing your site to rank high, without paying search engines)
d. Business Cards
e. Writing articles about martial arts in your local newspapers.
f. Putting free ads up where ever you legally can.
g. and many more..


Now all this is very basic info.

I am open to answering any questions you may have.

Thanks
vj
http://www.123CheapSite.com/

[Tant01]

I hope some of our members will look into your offer...

[Ryan Wheaton]

Mapals,

Great post! Here some places that I use all the time and highly recommend for anyone interested:

Domain Names = GoDaddy.com $9.99 domain names.

Hosting = JiffyNet.net ($36/yr for 333MB of space, which is probably all you'll need).

As for hiring a web designer, if you can't do it yourself, I recommend putting a listing on Craigslist.org in the web design jobs category. I've received over 50 replies to one project request before. You will probably have to do some sifting, but I've found some great designers and programmers for dirt cheap.

Some tips when posting to Craigslist.org:

Post to the web design jobs category. Be specific. State your budget, number of pages you need, the time frame, and that you need someone who can both design and code the website in HTML.

Be sure to make it known this is a one time project, not a job.

Also, ask if they are willing to do monthly maintenance and how much that will cost per hour. You will likely have updates each month.

Be sure to include that you want someone with search engine optimization experience. Some may charge a little extra for this, but will be well worth the investment. Why? Because just because you build a website doesn't mean people will be able to find it in the search engines; especially for the holy grail of locally related key terms.

Hope it helps!

[Scott Bolinger]

I use bluehost.com they run around $80 or $90 per year and you can host 5 domains. Domains run around $!0 per year.

on the forums, you can get a PHP forum for free or goto freeforums.com for a free forum. For starting out, anyone can start up a forum to help cordinat classes and promote there gym. then add a front page later.

[Mapals]

Installing a forum on your site is easy. Running a successful forum is very very difficult.

For a small site that requires regular updates, I would suggest using a blog. With some help from a web designer you should be able to setup the blog the way you want it.

Most hosting companies provide free blogging and forums software if you need.

If you decide to create a bigger site where you can add articles, write blogs and create forums etc then I would suggest a CMS software like Joomla or Drupal. Both are free and easy to install (with certain hosting companies).

vj

http://www.123CheapSite.com/

http://www.123cheapsite.com/Hosting.php - A list of some hosting companies I use.

[Ryan Wheaton]

I have used BlueHost.com as well and would recommend them but they are more expensive than JiffyNet.net for the about the same thing. As for content management system, I would definitely recommend using a Wordpress blog. Both JiffyNet.net and BlueHost.com include a feature that will allow you to auto install it.

Before all of this, be sure to plan what pages you want on your site. I highly recommend having all 8 of these pages on your site:

1. Home page - The main entrance to your site.
2. Contact Us - All the various ways to contact you.
3. Offer page - This could be your trial program offer. Capture name and email.
4. Frequently Asked Questions - Where are you located? What do you teach? How much is it? Etc.
5. About Us - The place to establish your credibility and experience.
6. What You'll Learn - explain the art you teach and why your prospects should care.
7. Training schedule - days and times of your classes.
8. Why Train Here - Position yourself against your competition and talk about what makes you different. Make it easy for people to choose you.

For additional information, here is a more detailed article on the subject: http://www.marketingmartialarts.com/...bsite-content/. Hope it helps!

[Birmingham]

can i suggest Google Sites? It's free

[Ryan Wheaton]

There is a downside to using free web hosting in that you don't own the website property and therefore it isn't your asset. You also get served a lot of ads that are making other people money and takes people off of your website. Having your own web properties with a dot com URL is cheap investment in your business. While I understand free is appealing, I think it costs you in the long run. Hope it helps.

[Birmingham]

There is a downside to using free web hosting in that you don't own the website property and therefore it isn't your asset.

So long as you register your own domain name, you're safe in the way that all your marketing will always point to that website address, even if you ever change server hosting or website design.

Besides, some people consider it an advantage to not have the burden of officially "owning" stuff.

You also get served a lot of ads that are making other people money and takes people off of your website.

well, there are plenty of free site providers that don't serve ads.

[Johnbear]

You also get served a lot of ads that are making other people money and takes people off of your website. Having your own web properties with a dot com URL is cheap investment in your business.

[dhen26]

There is a downside to using free web hosting in that you don't own the website property and therefore it isn't your asset. You also get served a lot of ads that are making other people money and takes people off of your website. Having your own web properties with a dot com URL is cheap investment in your business. While I understand free is appealing, I think it costs you in the long run. Hope it helps.