You may be thinking of starting to build a presence on the internet, so where do you start? It can be intimidating but if you are seriously considering either selling your own product or more likely acting as an affiliate for someone else then you do need to think about the long term. You can in the short term act as an affiliate without having a website or blog of your own but if you are serious about making money,you need a domain name and a hosting account as a minimum.Once you have these,you can move onto setting up a website or blog and driving traffic to it to make sales.

Here are the steps.
I have found that it is cheaper to have the hosting account separate from the hosting account. Domain names are cheaper direct from a domain name company than buying them through a hosting company

If you have no domain names at all, then try and get your own name first. It will be easier to add domains onto your own name at a later stage because it will be easy to remember! Alternatively think of the product you might be wanting to promote and get a domain name that has some relevance to it. If you get your domain names through Godaddy, or something similar, you will pay a small amount for the name. You will need to register an account with your card details etc. Its pretty straightforward. Do that and then follow the easy steps to see if a domain name of your choice is available and purchase it.If you see one that you like, get it! If you leave it, it is likely to disappear. There are domain names being registered all the time. Once you have bought the name you will get an email from the domain company which you need to keep safe. They cost around $9 or $10

I would recommend that you open a folder for your emails from your hosting company/domain name company. You will at various stages need the nameservers,passwords etc. If you highlight the email title in your inbox and right click on your mouse you will see "copy to folder".Go into that and click on new folder,name it and save the email into it. You might also want to copy the contents of the email into a word document and keep it separate that way as well.

Log onto the hosting company of your choice. I use Hostgator. You need a hosting company that gives you unlimited domains and unlimited emails. It is called babycroc on hostgator. Its not the basic package but one up. Have a look at that or Kiosk or one of the many others around and choose which one you feel comfortable with. They are pretty easy to get started with,just follow the instructions. There is usually a small monthly fee for a hosting account

You do need to register with a new domain on the hosting account unless as I have recommended,you have already got one, in which case you need to tick the second box which talks about updating nameservers only (more about that in a minute) then follow the instructions through. Once you have finished registering you will get a welcome email which will amongst other things give you the nameservers details. Keep this in a safe place.

Once you have the domain name and hosting account set up you need to go into the manage part of your domain account,click on manage domains,look in the toolbar for nameservers,click on that, then click on custom nameservers. At this stage you will see there are 2 already completed (these are the domain companies own and you need ot redirect them,) take those out(you might feel safer copying and saving them somewhere first...just in case.) Then if you go back to your hosting account emails you will see that they have given you details for the nameservers, type them in the domain account then click save or OK. The nameservers are usually some numbers and the hosting company name. They will be easily identifIable in the welcome email.

You are now redirecting the domain to your hosting account. It takes a few hours for it to redirect so they advise although I have found it is pretty immediate.

Then you need to add it as a domain name in your hosting account. There is something called cpanel which is the bit that controls everything. You will have been given the details of how to get onto it probably in that first email from the hosting company. Go in there, click on add domains (it will be called something like that),then "add on domain feature," click on "add on domain maintenance". You will need to think of some passwords at this stage and write them down somewhere so you have them. The host name is yourdomain.com,the password is the one you were given originally by the hosting company ,click on add on,give your domain your own password (save it somewhere else so you don't forget it) and hit save.

Once you have done this for a couple of domain names,its easy,honest