Website for your home business

The recession has forced many people to financial refuge by launching that pet project or "muze" project. The type of business that won't make you quit your job, but will bring in some revenue if it takes off.

The first place launch your home based business is through launching a website.

Websites come in many shapes and sizes. you could first start by launching a blog similar to this one use the templates that are available and go for it. You can then step it up a bit with customizing a word press theme/blog to appear more custom.

Even with custom websites you can get a fully branded concept for a low price if you trust the designer you hire and let them do their work, the cost go up with the multiple rounds of revisions and tweaks. But if you let the designer have creative freedom you will usually get work you or the designer never expected...

Aside from the first option you will need to consider maintenance. At no pun we try and tie web maintenance in with a weekly session with google analytics we look at the traffic and other key data and make suggestions to try and increase this data. This type of weekly maintenance helps keep your site fresh. By hiring an outside firm to do this maintenance enables you to focus on the logistical side of your business, instead of wasting your time trying to learn HTMl and CSS

Leave it to the pro's!

Next you need to get a hosting account, this is different from registering your domain name, once you register your domain name you need to point that name to a space on the internet. For most if not all sites don't spend more than $10 bucks a month.

Be sure that even if you hire a designer to do the work for you, you personally should set the domain name and the ftp yourself so you have ownership of this vital information, Its ok to entrust your information with your designer so they can hook up the connections for you.

Graphics, This is the most fun part designing a website for your home business, this is where you will put a face to your concept. Do not this is the most important aspect of the project being this is the first impressions your customers will have on your company, so make sure you do it right. But try not to get to "personal" with what the designer shows you, trust their instinct and launch the site, if something isn't working it will show in your analytic. I personally believe, I want a site that performs well, more than personal preference of how I want something to look.

The last element "aside from promoting your website" is content, content is king, and is usually the needed asset that prevents many great website design projects from launching. This content has to come from you, its your business its your passion, designers like nopun.com offer copy writing services as a way to earn more money on a website design project, but even when we get the opportunity to do the writing, we usually need something to start with. So bite the bullet and pull it together, don't simply push it off or say just grab content from your competitors (that' not even legal).

Once you have all of your elements and assets in order you will be in a better position to hire a designer or even attempt to setting your site up yourself.

Google luck and we hope to see you on the other side of this recession!

For more reading on the pros and cons on using templates check this article out