Five Steps to Jump-start Your Business on the Internet

  1. Get Internet Access

    First of all, you need to subscribe the Internet access service from a ISP (Internet Service Provider).

  2. Get Email Address

    This is the most basic requirement for communication on the Internet. When you are registering on any sites, they will ask you for this information. Usually, your ISP will give you one. But if you are using free Internet access service, you can also get your email address free from an email service provider.

    www.mail.com Excellent email service provider. The basic is free. It offers different domain name and supports email forwarding.

  3. Get Home Page

    This is the place where you will store the files for your web site. Nowadays, many ISPs provides web space for their clients. But, if you enjoy free service and the web development utilities, you can try these sites.

    www.homepage.com One thing good about this provider is that it is very easy to remember your home page since you select it yourself, e.g. yourchoice.homepage.com, and you do not need to register the domain name. The problem with this provider is that it does not support frame yet.

    www.oocities.org This provider offers a lot of web development utility programs and it supports frame. This gives you more flexiblity in your web design.

    www.tripod.com Provide international support. Have sites in many regions. Very helpful in exploring e-commerce in other countries.

    www.homestead.com The Windows version of the web development program is very user friendly. If you know how to do cut and paste, you can develop your own web site.

    All these home site providers have a tool to allow you to upload or copy your files onto the server. But this can take time if you have many files to upload or you have many home page sites. To simplify the uploading process, you can use ftp to upload the files onto the server. For example,

    ftp -in ftp.provider.com
    user username password
    prompt off
    bin
    mput *
    bye

  4. Design Your Home Page

    This is the most exciting and creative part of preparing your business web site. You can either do it yourself, using the tools provided by the home page service provider, to make a simple page or you can hire a professional web designer to complete the work for you. It is like building your first house. It is fun crossing all the hurdles in the building process but it may take you quite a bit of time and effort.

    Before you start designing your web site, you should determine the objective of your site. To name three examples,

    a) Provide a service
    b) Provide a product
    c) Provide information

    But, no matter what your web site provides, you want to generate traffics. In addition on selling (providing) service, product or information, you can put advertisements and join affiliation programs to reward your efforts.

    Affiliation program is a list of well known companies on the Internet with proven records.

  5. Promote Your Site

    Once your site is ready, you should submit your site to the search engines and the web directories so that your clients can find it. The following sites help you to promote your site in different perspectives.

    www.scrubtheweb.com helps you to analyse your meta tags and submit your site to search engines free of charge.

    www.simplesubmit.com submits your site to search engines free of charge.

    www.webposition.com improves the ranking of your site on the search list.

    www.jayde.com gives you a free, detailed, comprehensive, categorized index of over 400 great places to promote your site.

    www.adrotator.com is an excellent tool to rotate your ads on your page if you are running out of space to put up your ads.

    www.smartage.com offers the free SmartClicks business banner exchange network. Your banner will appear on other sites without paying advertising fee.

    www.bcentral.com offers you the free banner exchange program from Microsoft.

    www.webring.com lists out the web rings you can join.

    Affiliation Program

    Commodity

      Babyfurniture

      Baby furniture

      BootsnAll

      Travel information

      Chipshot

      Golf equipments

      Classicclocks

      Classic clocks

      Ebag

      Luggage and bag

      Fogdog

      Sports goods

      Giftpoint

      Gift certificates store

      MouseRug

      Mouse rug

      Wearguard

      Work clothing

    E-store

      Amazon

      One of the most popular E-stores on the Internet

      Beyond

      Online hardware/software store

      Cnet

      Online shopper

      Enews

      Online magazine store

      Indigo

      Canadian online store

      MP3

      Online MP3 music store

      WebCity.ca

      Canada's portal

    Free Services

      Anyday

      Online day planner

      Bizland

      Web hosting, email etc.

      Driveway

      Online disk storage

      Ineedhits

      Submit your web site to search engine

      Pullpush

      Web site promotion

    Games

      800-trekker

      Science fiction collectibles

      Animation factory

      Animation collections

      Big EHollywood

      Entertainment studio store

      Chapters

      Bookstore

      CD Universe

      CD game store

      Disney

      Disney store

      DVD Express

      DVD game store

      eToys

      Toy store

      Mattel

      Doll store

      Sandbox

      Football accessories store

      Seekbooks

      Kids online bookstore

      SmarterKids

      Educational books, software and games

      Toyrus

      Online toy store

      Warner Bros

      Warner Bros. studio store

    Greeting

      American's Greeting

      Support multi-cultural greeting

      Amazing Mail

      Personalized postcard

      Hallmark

      Card centre

      Dan's chocolate

      Chocolate store

      Proflowers

      Flower store

      SendWine

      Send a wine online

      Wotch

      Mini-cards

    School

      CollegeGate

      Essay proofread for college students

      Revise.it

      Online tutor


    Hope you find this page useful and I wish you all the best in your Internet Business.

 
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