Starting A Scrapbooking Business Website

So you’ve been thinking about starting a scrapbooking business? Great! Whichever kind of scrapbooking venture you plan, it would behoove you to set up a website for it. Having a web presence will not only reach a wider audience, but it will also give you a more professional image and really seal the deal to make you look serious about it. For a small investment of your time/money, you can have a website or blog set up that will provide you additional revenue and lasting relationships with like-minded people.

You know, even if your business is on a localized level, and you’re not quite ready to go worldwide – you still need a site! It makes it easy for your local clients to get in touch and also to see what’s new with you. You can post new ideas, thoughts, and tutorials for your clients to view at their convenience, and it makes the client feel like they are dealing with a true professional.

If you’re ready to start a website, here is a rough plan of action that you’ll need to follow. Don’t worry, anyone can do it, and with an unlimited amount of free resources on the internet, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune either!

1. Domain name – Perhaps the most important element of your brand image, the domain name (www.yourdomainname.com) should be relevant to your business. Make sure you use a keyword in your domain name if possible (like scrapbooking, scrapbook, etc…) as it will help your positions in the search engine when someone does a search for that word, and if you want to sound local, put the name of your city or town in it (example – SpringfieldScrapbooking.com) Domain names can be purchased through a registrar like Godaddy, Name.com, Namecheap.com and many others.

2. Hosting – The second thing you’ll need is a good web hosting package. In order for your site to be live on the web, it has to be hosted somewhere. Many registrars that sell domain names also sell hosting packages (like Godaddy), so that makes it easy to maintain everything under one roof. Hosting packages on the level that you’ll need are very cheap (under $10 month), and make sure you get a good company like Godaddy.com or Hostgator.com who offer excellent customer service in the case that you need assistance (and chances are at some point – you will).

3. Build – Chances are if you’re reading this, and somewhat new to starting a website, you probably don’t know HTML, so you probably can’t code a new website from scratch. If you can, that’s great! If not, don’t worry, because most of the big hosting companies offer some kind of DIY website builder where you can just drag and drop and have a website up in a matter of minutes.

If you want something a bit more professional, then you may want to look into hiring someone to build a site for you. There are hundreds of thousands of design companies out there, within all different budgets. If you’re on a lower budget, head over to a site like Elance.com and hire a freelancer to do it – it will usually save you money, and you get the advantage of having a professional designer make you a unique site.

Make sure you shop around before you pick someone, and make sure that they know what you need. For instance, if you’re going to be selling products from your site, you’ll need a shopping cart built in. If you want a blog with your site for your customers to comment on, you’ll need to have that coded in. Giving all the specifics up front can save a lot of money and heart-ache in the future.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start building your site!