In order to market goods and services or sell products directly to the consumer requires an online presence. To develop and online presence requires buying a domain name, hosting your domain name on a server that is connected to the Internet, providing content, and taking payment for goods and or services.
A domain name is the name by which the web site is registered. This is the name that follows the www. (world wide web) and is suffixed by a variety of top level domain names (.com for commerce, .edu for education, .net for network, etc). They could also be followed by a country code such as .uk for the United Kingdom, or .au for Australia. The key for the online presence is the name in the middle which will reflect your company name (i.e. howtostartanonlinecompany.com).
Buying a domain name is fairly straight forward these days. There are numerous providers of domain name services, all at different levels of pricing. The first large provider of domain names is Network Solutions who now sell domain name and domain name services under the name of Register.com. This is the presumed “Cadillac” of domain registration but you can purchase domain names for a lot less money at Godaddy.com or Dynonames.com. You receive the same service at these low budget domain registrars so it is not necessary to overspend for this service.
Once you have purchased a domain name, you will need to host that domain on a server somewhere connected to the Internet. There are two primary considerations that need to be addressed that may affect which Internet Service Provider (ISP) you choose to host your domain. This consideration is the platform that you are using to perform the online functions required. If you have software that runs on a PC then you will need a Windows server to host your web site. If you are going to use an open source application, then a Linux server is what you will need. Some applications use a database such as Cold Fusion in which case you will need to find a vendor who will support Cold Fusion. Several lost cost services that provide both Windows and Linux hosting services are Godaddy.com, Hostgator.com, and Webhosting.net These ISPs also provide an easy to use service to set up a WordPress blog as well.
These ISPs all provide turn-key hosting service that can host a single small web site to hosting a large server farm that you may require. If you are interested in a co-location service where you can host you own servers that can be maintained by your own employees or by the ISP in various levels of support, then Webhosting.net is a good choice as they offer a wide range of services where your servers are connected directly to one of the major Internet hubs. This may be a requirement if uptime and worldwide connectivity for your servers is of the upmost importance.
If you are going to sell goods and services there are many different options available to you. You can get full shopping cart services from GoDaddy.com. With their service options a small offering of goods and / or services can be provided without purchasing a SSL Certificate. To accept credit cards for a larger operation will require you to purchase an SSL Certificate (Secure Socket Layer) which creates a secure online connection to protect personal information.
Another way to set up payment options for services is by utilizing Paypal. With their service you can accept credit cards and direct payments to / from bank accounts with users who use their service. If you are building a large operation, then you can set up your server with a merchant gateway service from a company such as GoeMerchant where online transactions happen in real time between the customer and the credit card companies. Another service that can be utilized is Clickbank which specializes in eBooks and other downloadable products.
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