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After determining your web strategy the next task is to set up one or more web sites that suit your plan to monetize your on-line business. These days you may decide to just use one page mini-sites or weblogs (blogs). Blogs can carry web ads and affiliate links and are circulated through very rapid RSS feeds. If your main ambition is writing and continuously generating content, this might work well. Most web site owners are more interested in getting assistance to set up a business web site and to learn how to make content changes at the site store, to the pictures or descriptions. Regardless of your main business interests, a web site owner who plans to make a part time or full time income from the web has to master at least some basic technical terms and understand a few of the technical dynamics of the web. In the first place most of us have to figure out how we are going to access our own web site and select the correct bandwidth carrier for our needs (see Technology Tools).
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The next step is to determine if you are ever going to want to be on the phone with a customer and at your web site at the same time. This could be to complete a sale, provide sales support or walk someone through a sequenced presentation to reach a donor committment. As soon as this becomes part of your plan, a single dial-up system will no longer work for you.
Finally, you need to select a hosting plan. These offer a great deal of variety in storage space, bandwidth transfer and access to email accounts, scripts and data bases. Most hosting companies offer free templates and strong technical support so that you can set up and design your own web site without knowing HTML or programming languages. Fees for hosting have dropped dramatically. Some "web designers" are actually sales people for templated web sites who offer hosting services at rates much higher than the highest hosting service fees. This is to pay the sales people to "set-up" your web site. If you are paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for your web site design and hosting, make certain you are getting more than a free template and technical support.
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