I’ve talked a lot here on my blog about how easy is to start a website using wordpress content management system. Basically, it is easier than reading this post, but starting up a website with wordpress is not what you want. You don’t want a website, you want an online business, even if it is a community website, a content website, a tool website, a service website or even a simple blog.

A website can be up in 5 minutes, but an online business takes weeks or months to set-up. You need many things to complete the process of starting up: a good hosting, content, promotion and monetization plan.

1. Domain and Hosting

The choosing of the right domain and hosting is very important for the future of your online business. While you can change the hosting later, the domain is something you will stick with for a long period of time. Long story short, a good domain should be not too long and spellable. There is a long debate if it is good to use keyword stuffed domain or to use a short domain name that can be branded.

If you use a keyword stuffed domain name you will have a starting advantage and your website may appear higher in seo from the start for the exact keywords you have in your domain, but this only if the keyword is not too competitive, so you have to choose the name very well so the keyphrase is searched enough times and the competition is low. If you choose the wrong keyphrase then you lose the only advantage you had by having a keyword stuffed domain.

If you choose a short domain people will remember it often and you can take advantage of returning visitors. Another advantage is that you can alter the topic if you want.

The hosting is not that important as the domain is, but you also need to make a good choice. Moving to a new hosting will give you a headache because you have to move the files, the database and you will deal with the file permission problems. Few years back when I was more involved in freelancing I was used to charge a lot for moving websites to new hosts. If you are not a techie guy then you will have to pay some money to move. Do make sure you do the right decision you can consult a Web Hosting Search Directory.

2. Content

The content can be articles written by you or by others, or a tool or service you offer to your visitors. First of all you will want to make sure that you don’t provide the same content that is found on another few hundred of websites. If you get into a very competitive topic then you have only to lose.

If your website is article based, then it is not that hard to write unique articles, even if you write about the same things that others are writing. There are infinite things to write about and your unique articles will be spidered by search engines and you will end up with some traffic.

If your website is based on a tool, then you really have to check out the competition. You can’t expect massive traffic on a site with a PageRank checking tool, while there are thousands of similar websites. The tool is very easy to be added on a website and you will probably never catch up with websites already established.

3. Promotion and Advertising

If you don’t promote your website people will never find it. The promotion ways are very different, depending on your topic, targeting, your budget and many other things. I will not list here tips on how to promote a website because you can find the info all around the web on Webmaster Forum Blogs.

4. Monetization

The monetization is another well dealt topic on the web. The possibilities are a lot, but for a starting website you will not have too many options. The only viable options for new websites are advertising networks. My advice is to not get downhearted by the low amount of money you make at the beginning, because you can lose the motivation. Once your website grows and traffic comes more options will open and the amount of money you make will be much higher than you can expect if you do the simple math.