Start a Website

Primer

Buy domains

  • GoDaddy - The first thing you need to do when starting a website or blog is to purchase a domain name. Go here to pick up your domain name(s). It is a good idea to have several domain names for different ideas and sites. It’s a good to add private registration for security reasons.

Website Hosting

  • Hostgator - Your website has to be hosted somewhere otherwise you do not have a website, you just have a domain name. BOLD & DETERMINED uses Hostgator and I have never had a problem with their hosting services. You can host unlimited sites with hostgator for about $8 per month. Hostgator will provide instructions about how to host your domain name.
  • Bluehost - I have never used Bluehost but I hear nothing but good things about them. Bluehost will provide instructions about how to host your domain name.

Privacy

Offshore Website Hosting
  • Shinjiru - Offshore web hosting located in Asia.
Offshore Domain Purchase
  • AnonymousSpeach - Offshore domain purchase, anonymous web hosting and anonymous email

WordPress

Install WordPress

WordPress themes

Create Sales pages / Static pages / Squeeze pages

  • OptimizePress - The best of the best when it comes to sales pages, squeeze pages and static pages.
AutoBlogging
  • Multipress - a WordPress plugin which allows you to create hundreds of blogs out of one install, fill them up with the relevant content and attract real visitors. With the minimum interaction.

Market Research

  • Google Keyword Tool - The best FREE tool available for doing market research on your chosen keyword and demographic.
  • Google Analytics - Google’s free website tracking and analytical tool. View all sorts of info about your visitors (i.e. how long they stay on your site, your most popular articles and pages, how visitors came to your site).

Email subscription and Newsletter creation

  • Aweber – Aweber is the best of the best for capturing emails and sending out mass emails and newsletters. I used it for about two years. I only stopped when I no longer needed to send out mass e-mails.
  • Mailchimp – Mailchimp is a way to capture email addresses and send out mass e-mails for your newsletter. Mailchimp is free for the first 12,000 subscriber and 2,000 e-mails per month.
  • Feedburner - You can use feedburner to offer RSS subscription service, e-mail subscription service, and newsletter service. Feedburner is free. Feedburner gives you some great details about how many people are reading your posts, opening your e-mails etc.. For BOLD & DETERMINED I use feedburner for my RSS Feed and every time I post a new article it is e-mailed to people who subscribed to the e-mail updates.

Outsourcing Work

  • E-Lance - Elance is where you go to get a freelancer to do some work for you (i.e. Site design, site coding, ghostwriting).
  • BPOVIA - BPOVIA is a company located in China that provides Virtual Assistants at an affordable rate. You can use Virtual Assistant(s) to do all the BS work you don’t want to do. You’ll be surprised how much they can do for you – from website management to personal management. VA’s can do many of the things that a freelancer could do at a fraction of the price. I used BPOVIA before and they did all my tasks assigned to them acceptably.
  • Fiverr – Get work done for $5 a pop.

Making Money

  • Google Adsense - Google Adsense are ads you put on your site. Anytime someone clicks on the ads you make some money. It’s only small change but it adds up as your traffic grows. It can turn into some real income for you if you build a good website.
  • Clickbank - Clickbank is where you go to find an affiliate product(s) to advertise on your website. Signing up for a clickbank account and promoting clickbank products is very easy.
  • Amazon Affiliates - If you send someone to amazon to purchase a product you can make a percentage of whatever was sold. Signing up for Amazon Affiliates is extremely easy.
  • Commission Junction – Commission Junction is another affiliate website where you can get links to companies to promote their products and services for a percentage of the sales.
  • Paypal – Paypal is one way for you to accept payment for your website, goods and services. It’s very easy to set up. FYI – You can donate some of your hard earned money to me for producing this helpful and free guide for you. Paypal accepts all major credit cards, to make a donation you do not even need a Paypal account. But you will likely need to open a Paypal account to receive payments.
  • E-junkie - E-Junkie is how you sell a product you created. You simply create your product and they will take care of the rest. You can add their shopping cart to your website and boom, everything is automated for you after that. You can also choose affiliate products from E-Junkie to promote.

Bookkeeping & Accounting

  • Intuit Quickbooks - You’ve got to run your website like a business, and that means taking your bookkeeping seriously.

Business Creation

  • Legalzoom – Create an LLC or other business structure right from your computer (Especially take note of New Mexico LLC’s).

Phone / Fax

  • eVoice® - Phone and fax service. Send and receive faxes directly by e-mail. Read your voicemail as an e-mail. It’s worth it simply to not have to listen to voicemail on your phone.

Ghost Address

  • Mailbox Forwarding - Get all your paper mail right in your e-mail inbox. Perfect for when you start making some money online and realize you’d rather go travel to, or even live in, other countries. I’ve been using this company for a year while I have been in Asia and haven’t had any problems with them.

Cool Free Stuff

  • Google Docs - Create and share your work online and access your documents from anywhere. Manage documents, spreadsheets, presentations, surveys, and more all in one spot.
  • Open Office - A multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, free to download, use, and distribute.
  • F.lux - F.lux fixes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.