Starting your own self hosted website - Bluehost, Weebly and Wordpress

The easiest way to list and sell things online is via a sales platform such as Ebay, Etsy, Amazon, Big Cartel etc.

Everything there is set up for you, you just need to set up your shop with things like banners and logos and then add your items and start making money.

You can direct traffic to your shop via social media, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or maybe a blog.

You could also/alternatively start a self hosted website, to either advertise your products and direct traffic to your store, or use the website itself for selling your items.

The big advantage of self hosted websites is that they don't have a subdomain name hanging on the end of your business name. For example, the blog your are reading now is a free Blogger site. The name of it is sellyourknitting.blogspot.com.

It would probably sound more professional if the name was simply sellyourknitting.com, for example.

It is the same with Wordpress blogs. The free blogs are name.wordpress.com, rather than name.com.

Free website and blog platforms also contain advertisements that you can't control, and are limited when it comes to growing and monetising your website.

And platforms such as Etsy, Amazon etc, do get pretty good traffic, but you have to pay for listing and sales fees after you sold something, and this can really add up.

Many self hosted websites have store front and checkout facilities, where you can list your items and have complete control of your website and finances. And no subdomain on the end of your shop, which really does sound more impressive.

It is actually very easy to set up your own website.  I would recommend using Wordpress, as you can blog about your products and also use their Woocommerce plugin to sell them.

I also think that Wordpress is one of the easiest websites to get up and running. All you have to do is register a domain name with a company such as Bluehost.  You may think that this is expensive, but if you click here you can access a special offer where it costs less than 4 dollars per month.

Once the domain is registered on Bluehost, with just one click you can install Wordpress and get building an amazing looking website. Then you can blog and sell and really build a successful business.

Wordpress itself is completely free to use. You could invest in some extras, the amount you would need to spend really depends on what features and plugins you want to add to your website

A free alternative to signing up with a company such as Bluehost is starting a website on Weebly.  Here you can set up a blog, website or an online store completely for free. The free version will give you a subdomain name, you can upgrade for your own .com and can do this either directly through Weebly or via a company such as Bluehost.

You could definitely set everything up for free on Weebly and see if you like it, before going ahead and upgrading. I like that you can sign in there via Facebook, one less password and log in to remember.

Their websites are visually very attractive and, in my opinion, much easier than say Wix. Wix gave me a headache and I gave up on there when I tried to set up a store. Maybe that's just me though, many people love it.

It is certainly worth considering starting a self hosted website. The internet is extremely competitive and visual based, and a self hosted website is really the only way to be unique and stand out from the crowd.