Only a few years back, not too many business owners even bothered with building a website for their business. You probably remember how clunky and slow the internet was. Back then, it required some real programming knowledge to make your own website…. You even had to understand some new programming language called “HTML” to build your website. Shortcuts did not exist back then, no Dreamweaver or anything like that. Building a personal website was a labor of love, something not for the faint of heart or the inexperienced.

Fast forward to 2008…. Wow, have things changed ever so quickly. Nowadays, making a website is practically a rite of passage for anyone who wants to consider himself or herself tech savvy. Everyone and their brother has some form of a blog, and the number of new “webmasters” are only growing. If you have not learned to make your own website, you probably feel behind by now. After all, sites such as MySpace and HubPages make it so simple that people who know next to nothing about the Internet are building pages in no time.

Up until recently, most businesses never even built a website. Most of them told themselves that making a website was a waste of time and money. Many didn’t really have the desire, and there were more important things to do. In reality, however, today, most business owner realized that there is very little aspects of their business that are less important to master. Many businesses have made some great ecommerce sites in the last few years. Many business have experienced their ecommerce sales out weigh their brick and mortar sales. Those few that haven’t have got to realize in order to stay competitive, they must go online!

There are just a few simple steps needed to build your business a website.

1. Pick a domain name. The selection was obviously a lot better back in 1997, but you can still find a very good .com or .net domain today with a bit of searching.

2. Decide if you are going to attempt building the site yourself(A), or if you are going to hire someone to build it for you(B).

A. If you are building it yourself a great resource is google.com Simply do a search on the phrase.. “How to build a website”. You will find tons of free advise, tips, and techniques.

B. If you are looking to hire out the design job, chances are you have a couple different options.. find someone locally, find an established web design firm, or outsource to a “free lancer” type site.

3. The last piece you need is web hosting. With a little searching, you will be able to find a good hosting account. You should be able to locate a good one for less than $10 per month. Your web designer will handle uploading the site for you, or if you are building the site yourself, your hosting company can provide you with instructions.

It’s obvious the internet is not some short lived fad. It’s here forever. The sooner you build your website, the sooner you can start reaping some of the rewards the world wide web has to offer!