One of the most important step in my earlier post on how to start a free online business is to have your own web site. For many, How to set up a web site may be a challenge. But it is not really that difficult. To set up a web site, you need a domain name and a hosting company. I have already discussed how to find an available domain using a free domain tool. For a hosting company, either you need an “ad free” free web hosting or you can lease a shared hosting plan from a good web hosting company like Host Gator.

Here is a short three and half minutes video that summarizes what you need to get online and why you need a web presence for your online business success Before we go into the web hosting stuff and a video on how to set up a Web Site using Host Gator, you can watch this video for an introduction on the importance of a web site for your business.

I recommend Host Gator $9.95 Baby plan because you can host unlimited domains or web sites. Once you learn how to build a web site and know some techniques to drive traffic to your web site, you will probably build more than one site. So, why not get ready from the start?

You can buy your domain and name and hosting from Host Gator. You can also get your domain name from GoDaddy and then sign up with Host Gator for web hosting services. Host Gator web hosting comes with web site building templates and blog software. If you are starting out, using a blog software is the easiest thing and Wordpress is the most popular blog software.

I am using Word Press to create this blog post. You can embed pictures and videos in your Word Press blog post easily. You can also create pages, instead of blog post, and put those pages in your web site menu. I will discuss how to set up a Wordpress blog on another post.

I spent almost one hour in YouTube to find a good video that shows  how to set up a hosting account in Host Gator. Most of the videos are promotional videos with choppy information, bad quality, poor sound, etc.

One issue is how do you get a domain name. You can get a domain name from a domain registrar like GoDaddy and use the domain in Host Gator to open a hosting account. I would not recommend it if you are a newbie. You can get your domain and web hosting at the same time form Host Gator.

Once you have a Host Gator unlimited domain plan (like $9.95/month baby plan), you can start getting your domains from GoDaddy and use them in Host Gator to create new web sites. If you don’t have any domain, I would not recommend you spend time on all the intricacies of registering a domain using GoDaddy.com.

I use GoDaddy and I have almost 100 domains with them. I also use 1and1.com for registering domains. GoDaddy provides lots of flexibility and if you don’t know what you are doing, you should avoid it for now and go with the simpler route, i.e. registering your domain when you get your hosting account from Host Gator.

After searching and watching for one hour, this is the best video I found on how to set up a web site using Host gator.