Getting a Domain Name

ThailandTom

I have realized that to advance with any sort of way to make some money with what skills I have, I need a website. I have looked around several websites that offer free domain names and webbuilders, only one has seemed to be okay but the tools are very annoying and my URL did not work.

So does anybody know of any good website building sites that are free because I am not paying lol.

SattvaPaul

There are sites like http://www.moonfruit.com/, http://www.weebly.com/ and similar that you can use to build your own for free but they have limitations, I think you have to use their templates and they are flash-based. You could set up a blog at wordpress.com with your domain and find some good free template on the net (there are thousands). Otherwise if you want it to be custom you'll have to either make your own or pay someone to do it. Oh and I would discourage free hosting and such, they are far too unreliable.

Mountains

Agree about the hosting. You get what you pay for. If you get it for free, you'll have a very unreliable connection, low bandwidth, etc. It's more trouble than it's worth.

ThailandTom

I have actually used both moonfruit and the other one, moonfruit being the best IMO. But the tools are somewhat annoying to use at times and my URL did not work. I will take your advice on not using a free site as you get what you pay for.

Basically as I have said before I am not too business minded, but a friend of mine is. I am desiging these Tshirts and he is going to sort out the business side of it. But we do not know what would be the best way to go about selling out products. I would not mind also selling some of my design work if possible, but I do not know the legality processes and issues along with that. Can anybody shine a light here for a young nieve guy?

Hubris

Cafe Press is good for merchandising, and you might try GoDaddy.com for inexpensive domain.

Mountains

If you're wanting to do t-shirts, try Cafe Press or Zazzle. They do all the hard stuff. You just design the shirt, upload the design, and out the other end come the shirts.

If you design something, there's nothing to keep you from selling it. There's no legal issue whatsoever. You design it, it's yours, period. Only if you incorporate somebody else's trademarked logo or something do you start to get into legal issues.

ThailandTom

Ah cool, so that is fine then because I basically design the stuff so the copyright side of things is sound as a pound, unlessr I wanted to copyright a desin myself, that is a different matter. Thanks for the cafe press tip off you two.
Now, I and my friend sat down and tried thinkg of good ways of getting the Tshirts sold, there are obviously many ways, some cheap, some not, some good, some not. If you randomly wack a load of shirts on ebay, the chances of people stumbling across them are slim as there are so many shirts on there. So the logical thing would be to have either an online shop or a website. Advertising the location and shirts could be done also in many ways, buying a space in relevant magazines and putting info their, word of mouth is quite strong as well if they word is either a very good one or a very bad one. Generally speaking, people like to pass on info in convo which is really positive or really negative I have found.

Is there anything that anybody can add?

MindGate

I recommend Zazzle as well. I sold 1, that's right, 1 shirt on there. I was surprised I sold any at all.

praxis

Generally free hosts will have terrible bandwidth. There may be exceptions of course but not in my experience. A few bucks a month for paid is certainly worth it.

Other than that there are portfolio sites, though I don't know any specifically to recommend. Just do a search...

MindGate

www.circlepad.org

I could make a site if you wanted, for free of course. But hosting the site costs money. I think circlepad is fairly cheap though.

ThailandTom

Cheers mindgate, much appreciated. I will attempt it myself first I have looked around about domain names and I think it is probably better to pay say about 9 dollars a month or whatever it is due to band width, number of pages etc. If I fail horribly you would design a website for sure? I would try and offer you something in return, if there is something I could ever offer lol.

ThailandTom

Hey, Mr Mindgate. That circlpad is okay for designing, I can use it well and use my graphics in a decent manner that I wish. The thing is, I have not looked into the bandwidth or how great the actual finished product will be. I may end up spend x amount of time on it, and then it not being of any use. BLAH.

MindGate

Here is what I made with the free version.

www.circlepad.com/truebluebuddha

possibilities

I use doteasy.com , pay $25.00 per year for the domain name, and upload my pages. That's all. I have several sites there, and no problems; no advertizing on the pages of course. FTP uploads.

ThailandTom

Thanks for the suggestion possibilities. When I made a site on circlepad Minegate, it was slower than my gran. Could you build me a site please if I offered you the info and imagery etc. If you do not mind of course. Like I said, if there is ever anything I could offer back in return, I would, well within reason. I am not going to smite an enemy down of yours or something like that. PM me if you are up for it

praxis

I have a reseller account with hostgator, ThailandTom, with a lot of space that I'll never use, so I can give you a free account if you like. Ful cPannel access, email ect. You still need to own a domain however.

As a fellow graphic designer I know how important a website can be in getting work.