Website: Own
First you’ll need somewhere to store (or “host”) your site. Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) may offer this, or you can sign up for a paid account with a hosting company. I pay about $25 a month to host my PhotoSecrets.com site.
Domain Name
The primary part of an Internet address is called the “domain name” and is relatively cheap. I pay about $10 a year for the domain name “photosecrets.com” which, considering it’s such a significant element of my business, is a great deal. However, the hard part is not paying for a name but finding one.
Domain names are available on a first-come-first-served basis, and many of the good ones have already been taken. Your chosen hosting company likely allows you to search for domain names. If not, try DomainDiscover or GoDaddy. I couldn’t resist getting AndrewHudson.com.
Design
Once you have a site, you’ll need to design some pages. Apple users can build web pages with iWeb. Adobe provides sophisticated web-page design programs such as Adobe Dreamweaver. Or you can “code” a page using “HTML” (Hyper-Text Markup Language), which is what I do.
Design and test the pages on your computer, then “upload” them to the “host” and instantly your photos are available on the Internet.
What to Include
Make sure to add text to describe the pictures so your site will get found on search engines such as Google. Include an email address and/or phone number so you can be reached. You can include copyright info if you like (e.g. Copyright Jane Doe 2011). Don’t fret about people stealing your images — magazines and other companies respect copyright rules and besides, an image on the Internet is usually too poor quality to be printed properly.
