W04 Reflection: Site Builder & Hosting

This week I chose to use Bluehost as the host for my website. The purchase price was a little bit higher than I expected because I didn't want to pay for 2 or 3 years at a time, and so the monthly price was a little bit higher. It included a domain name and integrates well with Wordpress.org. I've spent quite a bit of time over the last couple of days building my website, including a little bit of branding and design. I haven't found the templates extremely easy to work with, though it could be because everything is just so new to me. I will take more time to play around with it and explore the capabilities of the site. I've already signed up to be an affiliate with Amazon and I'm trying to decide whether I should also get another affiliate. I'm excited to learn more about how to make an online business successful and I hope to learn a lot of new techniques.

W03 Reflection: Sourcing the Product

My eyes were really opened to the various business opportunities this week. Being introduced to the idea of drop shipping made me realize how vast the world of business really is. I have several ideas for things that might do well in a drop shipping business, though I haven't decided whether that is the route I will go for my online business this semester. I also learned a lot about affiliate marketing, which I've been kind of leaning toward for my online business. I think, if done well, affiliate marketing could be very effective, especially for monetizing a blog with great content. I have so many ideas for posts I could create for a blog and how to create affiliate links for it. I do think that it may take longer to realize great profits from affiliate marketing, but it seems like it could be something that might snowball and eventually do very well. I’ll just have to put in the work and effort to make it successful.

W02 Reflection: Choosing a Business

I am so excited about everything I'm going to learn in my Web Business Creation class this semester! My mind has been racing with a couple of different options for online business opportunities that I could pursue, and the tools I've discovered this week will be so helpful it my future endeavors. The keyword planner through GoogleAds seems like it will be a fantastic resource. I also love reading the posts of my classmates on the discussion boards because it shows me how much I can learn from having mentors from different backgrounds and interest. Their perspective can be so different from mine, and we can each be correct.
This week I also found out that I can use my existing online business as my advanced internship, rather than needing to go out and find an internship outside my home. I am so excited to use an internship to build my business and branch out into areas of marketing, product design and development, and further building my brand. I believe that the concepts I learn in this class will be a valuable base for launching into my internship in a future semester. And that is what I feel is most important, using these classes to apply the concepts to my real life, and building a better business.