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Over 20,000 domain names are registered every day. Statistics have also shown that more Singaporeans are utilizing the internet and buying online. However, more than 90% of internet businesses are not making profit. This is indeed not surprising. Many offline businesses do not sustain very long too. Anyway, this article provides useful and practical tips for online business startup. Some of the contents here can be quite technical.
1st step: Design a realistic business model
Having a practical, realistic business model that has a market online is half the battle won. Here, we need to emphasize that "your business need to have a market online". If you plan to sell clothes, you may want to reconsider. Personally, I believe I will hardly or never buy clothes online for obvious reason. Another important issue: "How are you going to generate revenue?" If your answer is "advertisement", you may need to build a website that can potentially generate at least 5,000 new visitors every month. Examples of successful models include Google, Friendster etc. Contrary to common beliefs, websites are listed free by Google. The company’s main stream of revenue is generated from advertisements.
2nd step: Choose and register a meaningful domain name
If you are serious about your business, the general guideline is to choose a meaningful, short and easy to remember domain name. Example: www.sgproperty1.com, which can provide property resources and information in Singapore. Also, Google will give higher ranking for sites with keywords in the URL of the domain name.
Below are common domain names to choose from. Examples:
.com (Registration at US$17 per year)
.com.sg (Registration at S$60 per year, require a company to register)
.net (Quite similar to .com)
.org (Commonly used for non-profit organization)
Now, Singapore Network Information Centre allows you to register for 2nd level domain name:
.sg (Registration at S$60 per year, require a company to register)
Registration for 2nd level domain name is easier and require no documentary proof.
3rd step: Choose a reliable web hosting company
A good web hosting company offers very competitive and affordable packages. Several factors to look for:
Reputation and reliability: general issue like how long the web hosting company has been around. You wouldn’t want your server to be down all the time.
Affordably: A typical hosting plan suitable for general use can cost as low as about $90 per year. You may even find something cheaper. However, make sure you find out what is included in the package.
Search engine ranking: More than 80% of internet traffic is driven by search engines. It means a lot when your web host has a high search engine ranking.
Support and resources: A good hosting company can provide valuable support to you, especially online marketing and web design.
4th step: Web design and development
Web site design need not be complicated. In fact, search engine robots do not like fanciful stuffs like flash, animations, javascript. Your website may be the most beautiful in the world. But it can also sit there for years if it is not search engine friendly. For site development, you may consider ASP or PHP. PHP programming is more popular and commonly used nowadays. A good combination will be PHP, MySQL database and Apache Server. Make sure your web host supports the type of programming language that you intend to use.
5th step: Website marketing
Well, you have come so far, designed and built a fantastic website. Yet, I would say you are only half way through. After building the website, you need to market the site aggressively, with more than 80% of your time now spent on marketing. There are basically 2 main methods to market your website:
Search Engine Optimization
Affiliate Marketing
We shall not elaborate further. If you need basic help and assistance, feel free to contact us. For in depth assistance regarding online marketing, web design and development, you may want to engage an IT consultancy from us.
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