4 steps to creating a profitable website for your business
28. Apr, 2009
4 Comments
It doesn’t have to cost you a fortune to have a website for your tourism business. There are various packaged websites/blogs which are ready made (or maybe tweaked if you want an individual look and feel). With less than R1,000 you will have a professional designed website with entire control on what gets published.
I know of quite a number of industry PR agencies without websites and suggest that they follow my recommendations. It’s an important communication tool to their daily work.
Below are my 4 easy steps of ensuring your business is online within 24hours.
1) DOMAIN NAME
A domain name is the website address where people can reach you online. Domains are relatively cheap, usually costing less than R100 to register and is renewable yearly. It is not always compulsory to use your company name for your domain name, especially when it’s a long name.
You can buy a domain through Moniker
Tip
Say for instance your company name is Midway General Dealers, going for www.midwaygeneraldealers.com might be a bad idea, as opposed to registering www.midway.com or www.mgd.com (provided those are still available). The shorter a domain the better for people visiting your website to easily remember it.
2) HOSTING ACCOUNT
A website can only go live (be accessible to the rest of the world wide web) through a hosting account. This works the same way as fuel for your car, without it your car cannot move. Many hosts try to trick new customers into buying expensive packages, when it really doesn’t need to be pricey at all. I recommend using HostGator, where you’ll pay less than R80 per month.
Too good a deal compared to local service providers.
HostGator doesn’t charge per domain and their packages are way superior compared to local hosting packages. All local hosting packages offer a limit of 5GB, beyond that it’s an arm and a leg.
3) PREMIUM WORDPRESS THEME
You can select one of the below three choices:
- Get a free design and not stand out from the crowd, something like muzi.wordpress.com/muzi.blogspots.com
- Hire a professional web developer and pay thousands of rands.
- Buy a packaged wordpress theme at a fraction of the price, you would have been charged by a professional designer.
I recommend the third option. If your site starts generating thousands of rands it may be worth a larger investment, but starting with a well priced theme works great in most cases. The beauty above all, with all wordpress themes is that you’re able to update your website/blog yourself, without any coding experience required.
My recommended packaged website/blog from one of below list:
Woothemes – provide numerous packages on blog templates, ideal for news publication.
iThemes – provide numerous packages on websites for templates, ideal for trucking business.
4) EMAIL NEWSALETTER
iContact allows businesses, non-profit organizations, and associations to easily create, publish, and track email newsletters.
You need to capture your website visitors, by getting them to sign-up to your newsletter. This newsletter will be a reminder for them to visit your website again.
Each time you update your website, you’ll like your readers to know of your new content. Therefore sending them a newsletter about what’s new on your website is recommended to keep them coming back to your website.
I recommend iContact for growing your mailing list and sending your newsletters. Begin your free 15 day trial today!
Extra Help From Freelancers
Elance providers a marketplace where you’re able to post projects according to your need, where freelancers from around the world then bid. This allows you to view their skills profile and feedback from previous work done. Their bids will also have rates according to your brief and you then award the project to your preferred bidder.
- Should you wish to customise your wordpress theme in order to have an individual look and feel or
- Seek help in installing your theme together with a wordpress, I also outsource through elance and get it done for $50 (less than
- Require help with a logo design or any complex programming project
I recommend you post your next project on elance where you’ll get professional freelancers from across the globe.
I welcome your questions below and will be happy to assist…
My name is Muzi Mohale a full-time travel blogger, your host at Travelwires.com responsible for all editorial on this blog. I blog about the travel and tourism industry in Africa. Apart from blogging about tourism, I also run 
I have make website from blog until now I don’t have earning from thus maybe I can use your advice for monetize my blog.
lembah´s last blog ..Start Saving