In this post I will tell you how you can increase your site’s popularity by creating a forum (message board).

Many people prefer websites that have either a forum or a blog as, this way they can easily contact the webmaster and they can ask for tips and advice from the community. So, a good way to increase your site’s popularity and credibility is to add a forum or a blog to your website and interact with your visitors.

How to Add a Forum

If your web host (the one that hosts your site) offers a forum platform, you will have your forum up & running with a few clicks (and with no cost). You will have both your website and forum hosted on the same account.

If your web host doesn’t offer a forum platform, you will need to buy a forum software that is compatible with your hosting. A well-known forum software is vBulletin. But this way you will have to pay both for your web hosting and for the forum software.

My recommendation is to pay attention when choosing your web host. Make sure it offers a platform so that you can add forums, shopping carts, datafeeds, blogs and other server-side functionality, as well as unlimited disk space and unlimited monthly traffic, so that you can extend your website whenever you want without extra costs.

Here it’s a list of cheap web hosts that offer all the above mentioned features.

I didn’t plan to insist on this topic on my blog, but, as a result of the impressive number of emails I received, I have decided to talk a bit on this topic too.

Basically, in order to create a website you need a domain name (yoursite.com) and a web hosting (the space and the tools you need for your website – your website cannot exist without a web host).

I usually recommend people to choose the web hosting first as there are many web hosts that offer the domain name for free when choosing one of their plans. The web hosting is compulsory, so, I would recommend to buy the domain name only if you don’t receive one when buying the web hosting plan.

Free or Paid Web Hosting?

Free Web Hosting

If you plan to create a website for personal use, just for fun, it’s ok to choose a free web host. The free web hosting company will display banners, pop-ups and ads (from which that company will earn), but this shouldn’t bother you, as you don’t plan to make money from it anyway.

Paid Web Hosting

If you plan to make money with your website, you should make a small investment and buy a web host. Today you can find cheap web hosts (under $3/month) which offer the domain name for free, site builder, uptime guarantee, shopping carts and other features to help you create a professional website.

This way you will be able to add Google AdSense ads, create online stores, sell ebooks, sell space on your website etc.

Besides these, the most important factor in making money online (whatever your online business it) is credibility. People never use their credit cards or spend money on sites they don’t trust. So, a professional-looking website is a “must have” if you want to earn online.

I personally don’t know a single person who has a successful online business with a free website.

How Much Does It Cost to Create a Website?

It depends on the number of features a web host provides, on the type of business you want to create and, of course, on how much you can afford.

You can create a website with medium features (but looking professional & being ready to make money with it!) you can choose one of these cheap web hosting plans. – it will cost you under $3/month.

For advanced websites (with many features, including marketing help & SEO), you have to choose a business web host. – it will cost you over $4/month.

Once you have chosen your web hosting and registered your domain name (given for free by all web hosts aforementioned), all you need is to use the free website builder you will receive to create the “look” of your site and add images and content.

I would definitely recommend BigCommerce. Why?

Because it’s very easy to setup (you’ll have a professional-looking online store in less then 5 minutes!), your store will be SEO optimized by SEO experts and of course, they offer lots of features like 50+ payment methods, 12 shipping methods, PayPal and Google checkout support.

When creating an online store it is very important to make sure your web host provider supports as many payment methods as possible, so that your customers will be able to pay with the method they want.

It is very frustrating for a customer to find the product he/she wants and when he/she wants to pay….SURPRISE! The online store accepts only PayPal when he/she doesn’t have a PayPal account and wants to pay with credit card. That customer will go search for another store…

Another thing I like about BigCommerce is the fact that they provide affiliate conversion tracking, so that you can create your own affiliate program to promote more effectively your store (an affiliate program can increase your sales with more than 300%).

They offer 50+ store designs and 28 built-in marketing tools. With their drag and drop design customization, your store can be “ready” in less than 5 minutes.

You can try their 15-day FREE trial here.