Teen Money Making Ideas

If you’re a teen looking for teen web site ideas to set up an online business that will make you some money, one of the first things that you need to do is to set up a website where you can sell products from. And let’s make one thing clear, just because you’re a teen doesn’t mean you can’t have a professional business image. Let me explain. If you’re really serious about running an online business, treat it like one! You’ll make much more money this way, believe me. Sure, you’ll have some out of pocket expenses, but that’s part of doing business. I cannot stress enough the importance of having your very own domain name and web site space.

Think of it like this: There’s a big difference between a department store and a yard sale. Think of your teen web site as a specialized department store, and give it a place to “stand”. If you try and do every single thing for free, your business will suffer for it in the long run. You need complete control over your business. After all, you are the boss and not just the manager. That’s why you need to steer clear of free web hosting sites.

Yeah, they give you your own sub-domain and a limited amount of space, but more importantly, these hosts hinder your earning ability with permanent banner ad placement and file upload limitations. Keeping everything as simple as possible will benefit you in the end and make your job a lot easier. Don’t waste your time or energy. In the long run, you’ll be happy you took my advice.

So, even if you’re starting up a teen web site business, do yourself a big favor and pay for good web hosting.

Before you set up with a specific web host, however, you will need a domain name. That is an easy enough task. Where you purchase your domain name is just as important as where you purchase your web space hosting. A good company to go with for domain name purchasing is Dotster. They’ve been around for a while and they have top notch customer service. Plus, their prices are affordable.

Many people recommend Godaddy for buying domain names but I’ve heard too many horror stories about them hijacking people’s domain names and other negative things, so if I were you, I would steer clear of them.

When selecting the right domain name it’s a good idea for you to add at least one descriptive word pertaining to your online business. Say for instance you want to sell soccer equipment, you might choose www.waytogoalsoccer.com, or www.soccersupplier.com, or www.yoursoccersupplies.net, www.justsoccer.com, etc. The reason for adding “keyword” in your domain is that when people use search engines your site will come up more frequently. And that means more traffic, which means more sales. Plain and simple.

Now, if you’re just beginning and don’t really have the funds to purchase a domain name and website space, there is another way to begin if you are wishing to sell information products that can be automatically delivered by way of downloading. There is a site that does something quite unique. I know I said earlier that using a sub-domain isn’t a good idea for serious online business. But, using a system like TradeBit is the exception to this.

First of all, you can get a free 20 MB account, a sub-domain, web based FTP file uploading, built in shopping cart, your own affiliate program, and integrated PayPal/eBay selling plus automated product delivery. This will cut down your work load substantially. Beyond that, they have extensive tutorials in both text and flash that help you “learn the ropes” when using their system.

Besides this, you can always use the redirect function when you purchase your domain name and have a small web hosting space. You won’t need a whole bunch of space if you use TradeBit to host your product files. And they allow you to host all the files that shared hosting companies do not - Such as .mp3, .exe, .zip, images and the like. Understand that any files you host you must have the right to sell them. But if you are a reseller, then this is not a problem.

Realistically, there is really no good reason why purchasing a domain name and web space should cost you more than $20. And, if you need more file hosting space, TradeBit offers affordable solutions for this as well that you can upgrade to at any time. All in all, setting up your own online business should cost you no more than $50.

A couple more things you will need before you begin selling online are a merchant account (to accept payments) and possibly an eBay account if you are interested in selling there. There are several different places where you can get a merchant account. A merchant account will allow you to accept payments from people when you’re selling online. PayPal is one of the top choices due to the fact that it’s free. Plus, this is the payment system that TradeBit uses although they are working on adding other systems at the time of this writing. Now, for those that cannot get a PayPal account because of restrictions, you can always get a free merchant account from PayDotCom and the best part about them is, it’s free.

If you have the money and can afford it, there are other merchant account systems out there too. ClickBank being the first on my list. It will cost around $50 to set this up. But don’t worry, it’s just a one time fee. Also, there is 2CheckOut and they offer a free shopping cart set up service. Later in other articles, I will go into more details about merchant accounts and how to select the best one for your needs.

So, to summarize, as a teen, when setting up your very first teen web site for online business, two of the most important steps you need to take is registering a domain name and choosing a webhost to host your web site.