Owning a piece of the Web

I have finally taken the plunge! Accepted my commitment and finally bought my own domain, www.mylittlebaker.com.

As I receive the confirmation and the access details for my site I felt relief, excitement and uncertainty of what I did, after all it is my own money that I used in buying the domain and a one-year web hosting package. If I fail in this venture there is no one to blame but myself.

At long last I own something, a piece of "property" that is in my own name and is a part of something BIG. I now OWN a piece of the WEB, and as an owner I have a commitment to use it to share information and to enrich the content/information found in the World Wide Web.

I've been planning to put my hobby/home-based business online for a few years now, and last November 2006 I finally did it. I started planning all the details for my online business summer of 2006, looking for a name, deciding on what do I want to place on the website and looking for my options in payment and delivery of goods. There were several reasons why I decided in putting up an online business:

• To make it easy for my current customers and friends to view my products since most of them are online
• To reach out to new customers
• To make easy to market my products, I usually print brochures and give copies to prospective customers.

At first I planned to just get a free website or even use a blog to market my products online but when attended DigitalFilipino. com Club’s 23rd Networking Event last Oct 20, 2006 about Lessons Learned in Selling Products and Services Online: Featuring club members: YesPayments.com, Jovel Cipriano of PinoyDelikasi. com, Jay Frank De Jesus of TitikPilipino. com, Abby Ongyanco-Lim of Virramall.com, and Roy Platon wherein they shared their experiences in managing their online business. I realized that their “name” or “brand” is one of the key to their success. Like in any kind of business, you must create or have your own brand because it will be your representation to your market, and since having a website levels the field for businesses your name must stand out to get noticed.

It took me half the year to look for a name that best describes my products and to ensure that it is unique I checked the Department of Trade and Industry's Online Business Name Registration System and look if the domain name I want is still available. I panicked around October when I checked if littlebaker.com was available and to my surprised someone already owned it, I got sleepless nights after that because since August I've been planing to purchase the domain but I was still saving for it at that time. So finally by the last week of October I had enough money to buy my domain and webhosting, luckily mylittlebaker.com was still available and the name was much more appropriate because I named it after my son who is always present while I am baking.

Once I had decided on the name my next step was to look where I can register my domain and get web hosting. I used search engines, ask friends and acquaintances if they know a good web hosting provider and click domain registration ads. I finally found what I was looking for when a former student of mine working in a web service provider company(their hosting prices are expensive) gave suggestions on where to look for cheap web hosting solutions for beginners like me. There were so many packages available for web hosting, I based my package on the disk space allocation and the monthly data transfer allocation, this is crucial for me because my site is mostly made up of pictures of my products.

And after that the real work began in occupying my own piece of the web.