Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links for which I may make a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you sign up for the services mentioned.

Web Presence - Online Presence

If you haven't already then at some point, you may wish to establish a web presence / online presence via a niche website in order to communicate ideas or create an income stream based on a product or service. Whatever the reason you will need to understand and go thru the steps that will bring your site to fruition and establish an internet presence.

Before we get to the 'technical steps', let me comment on niche sites from personal experience. For those starting from scratch and bare-boning things (running your business with low-cost output), you may need to consider focusing your first site on a very specific niche that has lower traffic volume and lower keyword competition. This space, how to's and why's on internet marketing & monetization is very competitive. Had I known or understood the competition aspect in this space (i.e. competition surrounding keywords and who ranks where for them) I would have taken a different approach in establishing this site. But alas I am here.

On the other hand, my first site, the first 'shot at things' so to speak is doing quite well for the niche and keywords I select. And is in fact ranking for over 100 keywords with several on page 1 & 2 of Google. But it is in a very specific niche with relatively low monthly volume searches and low competition. I'm making steady income there and now have a base for increased monetization. So suffice it to say if you don't get anything else from this page, think very carefully about your niche site selection.

There's a psychological component as well. If you develop a really great site in a high competition area and struggle driving traffic to it. How do you know if it's a site/content issue versus a site authority/keyword competition issue? The feedback you may get, lack of traffic, may lead to a wrong conclusion and worst case lead you to give up.

Now on to the 'technical' aspects.

Obviously or perhaps not so, the first step in bringing a niche website online is establishing a relationship with a web hosting platform. There are many to choose from! My choice is Bluehost.

Web Hosting Service Provider

Once you determine the hosting service provider you'll be using, you will need to consider the contract length for your the hosting arrangement. I use the word contract but not in a negative or pejorative sense. I simply mean that you will need to decide if you will set up your hosting arrangement for an annual term or multi-year term.

The service cost as advertised (ex. $3.95/mo) is correct…generally, for the most basic level of service and for the initial term. A more realistic pricing expectation based on the cost for purchasing / registering your domain, additional services and features you want and add-on features…is on the order of $200-300. If you come under this level great, if you go over it shouldn’t be sticker shock. If you are sure and ready now check out Bluehost you can sign up here or from my affiliate link/icon below, the current price for basic service is $3.95/mo. If you're an Ebates user and have the extension installed on your browser you can get $10 back (from Ebates) for signing up for the service as well. You can sign up for Ebates here if you don't have an account.

Having decided on a hosting service to establish a web presence / online presence for your niche website. You will need to research and come up with a site name which will serve as your domain name. From Wikipedia, "In general, a domain name represents an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, a server computer hosting a website, or the website itself or any other service communicated via the Internet". A lot of gobble-dee-gook to say the name of your website. Your hosting service provider should provide an additional service that will allow you to research and select a domain name and register it. This specific research portion is to determine if the domain name is available. Again if you are ready to take the next step or are curious about a domain name you had in mind enter it below to check its availability.

Next, dependent on the web development service that you use, you will have to either have the site built by someone else or use a site builder to build your website. For me, since I was bare-boning things, I needed to build my site out as opposed to paying someone to perform the service for me. Or you may be the type that needs to understand what goes into developing a website from scratch so that when you move on to establishing other sites and decide to source that activity out you will have a good idea of expectations and costs.

Whatever the case this portion of the page is for sites that will be built by individual business owners or those bare-boning projects on the WordPress platform.

WordPress

First comment, WordPress is challenging. I’m a pretty bright individual but WordPress took several months for me to become moderately familiarized with. I have no shame admitting that I was pretty intimidated when I got to the ‘would you like to start a new project’ page. There were no instructions. I suggest that you follow the wizard offered thru Bluehost to get you to the point of site Theme selection.

I mentioned the word ‘theme’. The theme is sort of the picture frame for your website (the painting canvas). You can change the picture frame (theme) but it would potentially change the ‘meaning’ of the painting or could clash with your website plugin selections or settings choices. I found a good video that gave me the basic steps of selecting a theme and building my first web page. Shouts out to Tyler at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd0grLQ4voU.

WordPress Theme

The WordPress theme that you select will in some ways dictate the additional Plugins you will need to install. And in picking a theme, be mindful that there are ‘free’ themes and purchasable themes. If your bare-boning things this may be an obvious decision, find a free theme that fits the vision of the site you intend to create. Note that even the 'free' themes have an upgraded or advanced version you can purchase if you ever feel you are missing out on features. For my first site, I was primarily focused on the aesthetics and went with the Minamize theme have since switched to the theme for this site.

WordPress Plugins

Once you've selected a theme, you will need to think about plugins. These come with installed plugins. Beyond those, you can add additional plugins for website tasks and optimization. Plugins, in my words, are additional programs or subroutines that are add-on code to your website and generally perform a specific enhancing function. An example is in order, if you want to copy and paste pages based on what you’ve previously written or created you need a ‘post/page duplicator’ plugin for your website unless your theme comes with the functionality already available or the plugin pre-installed. Prior to locating this type of plugin for my sites, I had to create each of my posts/pages from scratch even if they were similar to one(s) I had already created. Note also that plugins come in the ‘free’ and ‘purchasable’ variety as well.

I'm not going to go into widgets and the mechanics of setting up a basic page at this point as that may be a bit too much in the weeds. I will cover one additional important activity that needs to occur once your site is developed and you have published relevant pages.  It has to do with creating conditions for your site to be found by others, which is sort of the whole point of building the website to achieve web presence / online presence.

Search Engine Indexing

After publication, in order for your site to be found by others on the web, it must be 'indexed' by search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo...etc). To accomplish that you must submit your website to Bing, submit your site to Yahoo, and/or submit your URL to Google search engine. I could detail it here but instead will point you to a tool I've used. Check out the information from a site in the UK for steps on search engine indexing.

Hopefully, this will provide enough direction to get you started establishing your own web presence / online presence. In review:

• Focusing in on and finding your niche (low competition keyword focus with lower volume)

• Establishing a hosting relationship (choose Bluehost and get your $10 Ebates rebate :-))

• Selecting a platform on which to build your website and selecting/registering a domain

• Basic description of site theme and suggestions on how to choose

• Basic description of add-on plugins for the theme you select

• After site publication, you'll need to submit your site for search engine indexing to achieve web presence / online presence

Helpful WordPress Plugins

Website Plugins that have been of great use:

• Yoast SEO

• Updraft Backup Protection

• Jetpack Antispam plugin (Akismet)

• RS Cleaner Lite

• Head and Footer Script Inserter

• Adinserter

• Post / Page duplicator

• TablePress

See my resources page for the full list

Final thoughts as you can see by the focus of my site and will hear on many podcasts in the Soloprenuer, Sidehustle, Web Marketing, space if you have an idea that you think will bring value to others or have a desire for financial independence thru development of multiple sources of income, you will need to break thru your mindset inertia and move from thought to action. Your journey will undoubtedly be different but I encourage you to take one…

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