What is the largest market that you can reach virtually 3.5 billion people per day? Yup, you guessed it. It's the internet! To not have an online presence and leverage that potential access to 3.5 billion daily customers would be a huge fail. That's where the importance of having a website comes in. But do you know how to build a website?
The majority of us would answer with a quick NO! The great news is that's totally OK in this day and age. I personally had no experience building websites before, and now I have a few that I have built and manage passively on the side. How? Great question. I'm going to show you right here.
What is the easiest way to build a website from scratch? That, along with many other important concepts of online website development will be the topic of this discussion. I'm going to show you exactly how you can start building a website from scratch, and how to determine what to base your website on.
How To Build A Website For Free From Scratch
There are only a few steps to building a website from scratch. Ill lay them out below and then follow by going into detail about each step.
- Determine your website niche
- Determine the overall objective of your website
- Domain name & website title
- initial content
- Being persistent
With these 5 steps above, your website can be built in no time and your online presence will expand exponentially.
How to determine your website niche
The first and perhaps the most important step, is to determine your website niche. Simply make a list of your favorite hobbies, extra curricular activities and topics you are passionate about. This will be the starting point of your website topic.
Of those you will pick your top 3 from your list, and brainstorm topics and post ideas to build out your website. Of those top 3 picks you want to choose the one that has the highest potential audience, one that has a lot of potential topics you will be able to post, and ultimately the one you are most interested in.
You will be writing a lot of content and building your website around this topic, so it's important you enjoy the niche or else you will become burnt out quickly, resulting in a failed website.
What is the objective of your website?
When I refer to the objective of your website, I am referring to whether your website will be used for blogging, used for communication purposes to a community, or even used for ecommerce.
The objective ov your website will help you determine the proper path of creating your website. An ecommerce website may be a bit different than a blog. Both are great options but both also have different approaches.
Once you've determined the type of website you are going to build, take it a step further and set your ideal purpose for each visitor, or, what do you want your visitors to ultimately do when they land on your website?
Some may respond that they want to help provide them informative content, guiding them to make a purchase of one of your products you sell.
If you are a blog website, your purpose may be to capture as many email addresses as possible. It could even be to get as many of your website visitors to click on affiliate links you have included on each page.
Be sure this objective is very clear and defined. This will result in you being able to make better decisions on the build out of your online business, and in what type of visitors you will attract.
Pick a domain name and title for your website
The first two steps are more preparatory steps in building a website from scratch. Now we get into the fun stuff. Here we will actually begin to build a website for free, whether you have any experience or not.
Building a website does not require you to know how to code, or even how to build a professional looking website layout, or template. This has all been done for you with the process we are going to use.
First off, brainstorm a list of ideas for a website title and domain name. In most cases, these will be the same for both your title and domain. Once you have found a title and domain you like, we need to make sure it is available.
We will be using a free website domain with SiteRubix, the internet's top website builder and domain name registrar.
To see if your name is available, head over to SiteRubix and type in your desired domain name. If it is available, a green box will appear with the words “Available!”. If this is the case, you have found yourself a winner. Simply click “Build My Free Website”.
You will have the option to purchase the domain outright for a few bucks per year if you would like. Otherwise, select “On a free domain” for building your website for free.
Next, enter the website title, and then choose from one of the 2,800 website layouts or templates. Last step is to click the button that says “Click Here To Build This Site”.
That's it! You're website has been built!
Your initial website content: About Me, Privacy Policy, & Disclosure Pages
The first pages on your website should be the About Me and Privacy Policy. Many companies you may want to promote will require you have a privacy policy before allowing you to promote their produts or services.
The About Me page will be one of the most viewed pages on your site, so it's important that this is well thought out. A few things you will want to include in your About Me page will be things like:
- Your unique story, background and experience
- The purpose of the website
- Why you want to help people in that niche
- Keep things personal to relate to your audience
Keep in mind you will be able to change and improve this page as things evolve and as your learning & knowledge grows.
SiteRubix will also give you a template you can use for your Privacy Policy page. If you aren't sure what to write for your privacy policy, my advice is to use the template they provide and again, update it as your website grows.
Next, you're ready to start building out awesome content and attracting thousands of daily visitors!
The one thing that will make or break your website – persistence
Many people build their website and keep it going for a few months. They get impatient or lazy and forget to posting new content and marketing their website. This results in failure and frustration. The biggest difference between successful websites and failed websites, is simply being persistent.
Set a schedule and follow it to exactness. Schedule out what days you will provide new content, how you will market your website and attract new visitors, what keywords you want to target and use to attract more visitors, etc.
One major factor in search engine optimization is the age of your website and how regularly you update and provide new relevant content.
The process is simple, but often not followed by new blogs, resulting in a failed attempt. The important thing is that you start now and stay at it for the long run, who knows you may just be the next million dollar website!
