The best thing that I like about the Internet is the endless opportunities for growth. All than you need is some understanding of the online space and a bit of imagination. In a recent post, I talked about how you can start an online business with an investment of under $150. Can you start an online venture for an even smaller investment? Of course, yes.
In this article I will talk about how you can start your online business well under $25; to be more precise, the cost of one domain name.
How is it possible? Use Blogger.com for a blog and Google Sites for business websites, for FREE.
Here’s how you can create a free blogger blog.
Blogger, a free blogging platform by Google, allows you to set up a custom domain with your free BlogSpot blog. It also gives you the freedom to design your own templates. The combination of these two features will allow us to create a professional website or blog.
Create a new Blogger blog: Register a brand new Blogger blog. Till our blog is ready for launch, we will remove it from Blogger listing and disallow search engines by making the changes in the basic settings of the blog. Choose “No” for “Add your blog to our listings?” and “Let search engines find your blog?”
Setting up your own domain or Web address with Blogger blog: It is a very simple process. You just have to make some changes in your domain’s DNS settings. Add CNAME record for the subdomain (www or other subdomain) pointing to ghs.google.com. If you are using the naked address such as http://example.com, create A Name DNS records ponting to 216.239.32.21, 216.239.34.21, 216.239.36.21 and 216.239.38.21. Now, go to the Settings > Publishing tab in Blogger and add your domain name.
How to add custom domain name to your Blogger blog?
Blogger Help: How do I use a custom domain name on my blog?
Get a cool design for your Blogger blog: After setting up your custom domain, it is time to get an elegant design for our blog. There are plenty of free Blogger templates on the Web. You can also use the Blogger’s template designer to create your own theme.
If your website is going to be a single-page website, you can use just any HTML template (available in plenty on the Web). Go to the Design tab and click on Edit HTML link. Paste the HTML code there. But there’s no CSS styling yet. How to add it? If your HTML template’s styles are saved in a separate .css file, wrap it in the tags as follows:
<b:skin><![CDATA[/* /*---YOUR CSS STYLES HERE---*/ /*---COPY-PASTE THE CONTENT OF THE CSS FILE HERE---*/ ]]></b:skin>
Now, paste it just above the closing </head> tag. Done! Check the result by visiting your blog.
Make the blog live: Now, go to the basic settings tab and make the blog accessible to search engines and Blogger blog listings. Start promoting your website or blog. Place ads on Google Adwords or Facebook, talk about it in forums and listing boards. Start earning profits.