In order to build your home based business online, you must get a website. Ok, so that seems obvious...but some things aren't so obvious. At least not at first. If you're in direct sales or network marketing, you may have a company provided "replicator" website, meaning that your is just like everyone else's. That's no good. Why? There are several reasons why you need to get a website of your own.

Get a website so that you can get free traffic.

If you get a website of your own, you can optimize if for search engines and get totally free traffic. You typically cannot change a replicated website, and if you can, the changes you can make are extremely limited. If you're serious about taking your home business online, this is a bad thing, because you will need to be able to make changes to your site in order to optimize it for search engines. What good is having a website if noone can find you?

Get a website so that you can be unique

Honestly, no matter how impressive the company website is, most people's eyes just glaze over when they get there. There is usually too much information, the product and opportunity are all running together, and it's difficult to contact anyone real if you have questions. It's intimidating. If you are sending traffic to a company replicated website with classified ads and business cards, you are losing money.

You want your customers going to your site so that they can get a feel for who you are, and why they should be doing business with you. You can let your personality shine through!

If you get a website of your own, you can have a newsletter to keep in touch with your website visitors, run specials of your own, have contests, etc. You can get creative with your marketing.

Get a website and get publicity for your home business

When you have a website you can create a powerful free publicity campaign with press releases. You will have a place to publish your press releases, wow your site visitors with your media attention, and also give the media a place to easily get information about your business.

Get a website and the world is your market

Why limit yourself to just one geographical area when you can get a website and market to the world?

If you have young children, you can do more business from home instead of spending so much time doing the "grip and grin" around town. Of course, there is no replacement for the old fashioned, high touch feel of home parties and the like, but more and more people are searching online for the products and services they need. Why not market to those people too?

Get a website...a real one

One mistake a lot of work at home moms make is that of using the free webspace that they can get from their Internet Service Provider. Big mistake. Why?

Because if a woman in business is unwilling to spend a few dollars a month on paid hosting, it screams "not a real business" to the customer. You want the world to take you and your business seriously, so act like a business person and shell out for decent web hosting.

Free hosting usually puts ads on your website that you cannot control, or annoying pop ups. At the very least, they limit what you're able to accomplish by offering cheap looking templates and cheesy stock photos.

Get a website so that you can earn money while you sleep

That may sound farfetched, but your website can "sell" for you, educate your customers and train your distributors, while you play with the kids, nap or clean the house. Isn't that what we're trying to accomplish with our home based business? More life and less work?

My recommendation? I love the Fast and Easy Website Builder and prefer it over all the others I've used.