This is a basic start for beginners into the world of web design and hosting. In this article we won’t be covering such subjects as locating and researching niches. Our goal here is to get you, the beginner familiar with the groundwork of a marketing website. The address (URL) for a website is a domain name is that is typed into an Internet browser (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Netscape) to enable visitors to access your website, without having to undertake the much harder task of remembering your site as 263.119.69.12 or whatever the numbers might be.

You will find that the domain names are very distinct, giving you only one of each, an example being eBay.com .However, you will find there are an assortment of extensions; the most familiar being .COM, .NET, .BIZ, .ORG & .INFO.

Beginners, along with anyone else can register a domain name with a wide assortment of authorized registrars. The most popular length of registration time is typically for 1 year, with other time spans ranging from there up to ten years. A domain name is renewable and generally is priced from $5.99 up to $9.99 or more for the preferred extension of dot com. Lesser extensions can be purchased for as low as $1.99 but are felt to not be as effective as the original dot com.

After that, you will need "hosting" on the Internet so that your visitors and prospective customers can access you website 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You are actually buying disk space on a server and bandwidth on a monthly or yearly basis.

Your choice of hosting will depend on the type of website you are going to build. Most beginners start with a cheaper shared hosting plan, and later advance to a reseller’s account, virtual private server or dedicated hosting package.

In addition to disk space and bandwidth, further items to consider should include the number of subdomains and add-ons permitted, the type of control panel, etc - things that you will obviously pick-up as you gain experience.

Lastly, you are ready to build your website. Web design is not as complex as it once was, with the availability of a variety of graphical web tools now on the market - my personal favorite is XsitePro. Aside from a web design tool, you will also need a picture/graphic editor. The one I like to use is Adobe's Photoshop.

By surfing around the web or using search engines to view the top sites in the market you’re aiming for you will get design ideas from the other websites. Don’t outright copy a particular site; just take the best ideas from each to base yours on. A more simple option would be to buy a web template. These start around $9.95 and go up from there. Template Monster is one of the best of these providers and has a huge selection to choose from. At point the beginner now has his web presence and Is ready to move onto the more in depth subjects as advertising, SEO and affiliate options.

Bob Rude makes his living online with internet marketing and copywriting. When his not involved with marketing he can be found playing poker online. You can find him at http://www.KillerNetIdeas.com