I Want To Start A Tutorial Site. I Need A Little Help Though...

I hate it when companies do that, its quite very frustrating and annoying... I consider that a dirty move lol.


I know that it seems to be a popular tactic with businesses nowadays though. Sadly

 

@op, it seems that you are doing your research before you start, so cudos. But it sounds like noone is really giving you the answer that you need.
Your budget seems to be the tightest constraint, where you mentioned that you have enough for 3months of hosting as well as a domain name. The issue is that it *could* take you longer then 3 months before your site is earning any sought of income via advertising, so i dont want you to fall into a trap where after 3 months your end up struggling. So heres some of my tips:

1. Take a look at x10hosting.com. They do offer free hosting, (I would always recommend paid hosting), x10hosting though is highly recommended by many, and its something where you could upgrade to paid hosting (x10hosting has both free and paid hosting) as soon as you start getting visitors and see some earnings coming your way.

2. If you look at adsense, the minimum payout level is $150! So even if you earn $15 per month from the get go, you need to keep the site online for 10months before you see any money at all. As an estimate, (varies greatly) you can expect $1 per 1000 visitors. Im not trying to discourage you, but give you some ideas on what to expect.

3. You mentioned working with youtube as well as the site. Well, make certain that you have alot of the content ready, and write up all of your articles before you start the site. You dont need to put all the articles on the site on day 1, but you will be busy with managing and promoting the site. Alot of people start the sites *then* start the content, and IMO, they are doing it backwards.

4. I havent tried anythemes at all. But this is where free hosting becomes useful. you dont even need a domain name to try this, but just sign up for free hosting and try a few templates and see how you go.

5. I do think that using a wordpress site is perhaps better then creating one from scratch. Im using dreamweaver to create html/css sites and for these sites, I spend more time maintaining and improving the site then creating the content; whereas my goal was to spend more time creating content and or better features then site maintence. Wordpress themes often can be tweaked easily enough and then your done.

Sadly there are no free or budget themes that I can recommend. Others in the thread mentioned free "restricted" themes that can be upgraded later, and you know what, perhaps try them and see if they work for you. If they work well and meet your requirements then you can choose to upgrade once you get some cash from advertising.

When your site is setup and working, let us know so we can see how you went.

 

LMFAO...
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Piixel, my vote is against free hosting... Go with quality hosting and your own hosting that you don't have to worry about some other idiot on the server crashing their site and the server and your site being down as a result. Dude might as well have been telling you to go to Blogger...

 

Dude, you missed my point entirely. Im not here to discuss quality hosting, and if you read my post in full, you will see that i did say "I would always recommend paid hosting".
My point is that if he has barely enough money for 3 months hosting, (he didnt specify how much that was to cost him), then what is the point of hosting a site if you cant afford your servers to run after 3 months? is he meant to work hard for 3 months then delete everything? If he really cant afford more then 3 months hosting and has no other options then really whats his chance of success? It might be better for the guy to revise his expectations, (or even look for cheaper quality hosting), rather then start the site, end up working hard for 3 months with no money and nothing to show for it.

If someone has NFID about servers, sites, or themes, or is developing a site at home and may want to upload it to a live server for testing and development, then it is perfectly reasonable for them to be able to join free hosting for "mucking about" while they work on their site, and once they are ready and are certain they can afford to, to move up to paid hosting.

I cant remember any examples from the top of my head, but there has been a few times where i have seen people talk about starting a forum, then its, "hey come check out my forum" then 6 months later they sell there VB script for 1/2 price and their site is gone. I just dont want that to happen to this guy.

Hell, Id be happy to give the guy some space on my servers if it wasnt for the fact that the last time i helped someone out it bit me in the arse.

 

blah blah blah

 

When I mentioned that I only have enough for that, that just means that is my current budget, I am sure I will be able to amass a little more money to continue the hosting by the end of the 3 months. I hope to anyhow, the reason I may not however is due to me currently being out of work and off my feet a lot (not too well) but this is the perfect time for me to get content created for my site and still be productive in some way...

I remember using them a few years back, they were the best FREE hosting service that I had used ever, if I did go that route I would still use my own domain though! I will look over their paid hosting and see what they offer.

I had no idea that was the minimum payout level, I thought it was around $50... I expected it to be tough to reach a stage where the site could maintain itself, I understand that it could take some real work and all but I'm willing to put the effort in as I would be doing this anyway as I don't want to do it for the money but if it happens to generate some I could better the user experience and help the site become ever more better!

I had planned on created a fair amount of content before launching the site as in the past I have seen people (friends) start a website and not many visitors would stay as there were literally a couple of articles and a video then on top of that they didn't quite update the site often at all... I would love to steer clear of that kind of problem. I aim to have at least five to ten articles, written and twenty plus videos recorded for the release of the site. (Twenty because I know there are certain limitation within YouTube for the video length)

I would prefer to use that free Wordpress theme mentioned by TIEro as the free theme for now and then go from there, once I see how the site is doing I will grba that Genesis framework and create my own customized version of a theme from that, as it all uses wordpress nothing about the articlesand content should be affected at all.

Yeah, not to mention I have no real experience outside of tutorials I follow along in regards to HTML/CSS and honestly outside of this site and or other personal sites I may require in the future I don't think I would ever really utilize the skillset if I were to go off and learn them myself. My passion lies elsewhere so I guess using a framework and or a theme would be perfect for me its just a matter of the "right" theme, I believe that is where the framework comes in!

Personally I think that will work best for me, using that free "alltuts" theme just until I can scrape together the cash for that $59 Genesis framework would be ok, Some of the themes that come with the framework if you pay a little extra would be a nice starting point considering they are completely customizable and such but I might just grab the core framework and hit the forums to learn how to use it to create my own theme. For what I need I don't believe it will be too hard, after reading up on the framework and all of what I have heard it shouldn't be too out of reach and most importantly shouldn't take nearly as much time as creating my own theme from start to finish.
I will be sure to let you know but it may be a short while before I launch the site, I wanted to give myself some time to look into everything and then some more time to create content so the site will have some material for the visitors.

I appreciate your response, it was nice of you to share your thoughts, honestly I would prefer to go with paid hosting even if it is a cheaper hosting plan it would be better than FREE hosting, however if it came to it and I could not afford to host the site I would probably go to free hosting or just simply stick to YouTube as a last resort (I doubt this will happen) but I would like to have a site running for this project. I think it will do well! I am trying to find a little work on the side that is short term so that I can continue to fund the sites hosting. Not going too well but I am sure something will come up...​

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Kind Regards
The Piixel Monster

 

I haven't known about Blogger or similar sites for long and the thought had crossed my mind to just personally make some videos here and there and post on a blog like site, but I decided against it.


Servers crashing would suck but he didn't mention to use FREE hosting as a permanent solution and as a temporary thing it may be a good thing to consider but if I can avoid it then I will.

Money for this project is a little tight, which sucks. When I had more money I had less time now I have more time than I could ever imagine and so little money to spare it's troubling lol. I don't want this to stop me though and I will pull through it, I'm a really dedicated person and I will see the project through even if I have to revert to creating the content for a couple of months on YouTube and then creating the site after... I wouldn't mind if that's what had to be done!

Paid hosting is where I aim to go though so not to worry too much =]


Thanks for the response...

 

Well I thought that I would be at least spending about £5/month minimum for hosting and the domain costs about £6.99/year and then I had some cash left over but nothing that would allow me to get any bad ass hosting service for a while. When posting that I had about... £40 to put into the site, including domain and hosting. So I am sure that I can afford some form of basic hosting for a while. I just don;t want to go with a hosting plan that strains if there are active members upwards of a thousand.

I wouldn't simply delete everything! IF I really couldn't keep the site up, I believe I mentioned in my last response... I would simply leave the videos on YouTube, back the articles up and find a way to get the site up once I have a little more of a cash flow, however another alternative would be to find a friend that wouldn't mind helping out in return for some help with something, I am sure that I wouldn't have to quit the site after 3 months just at the time of posting that was all that I thought to be able to afford there and then... So although I have said that of course I should be able to draw funds from some form of freelance or outsourced work that I can get done from home that I could then throw at the hosting.

I understand why you have suggested free hosting and all that which you have said in the last reply to my post so thank you for that and I have thought about it...

I can truly say that I have no idea about "developing" a site myself... I have ideas and such and I am able to create content for the site and all as well as design sites within Photoshop or GIMP but ultimately when it comes to developing I am a complete noob. I hadn't thought about using the free hosting to tinker, I had used it for that in the past about 3 years ago though, but the thought seriously slipped my mind until you had mentioned it, I was ready to get hosting when I needed it and tinker with the theme there and then, I suppose it makes more sense to get everything prepared and ready to simply upload and go from there... So thanks for mentioning.

I have seen this happen more often than you would think too... It sucks to say the least but I wouldn't just quit on the site and such as mentioned previously there are other alternatives to shutting it down. If it came to where I didn't have the time to continue with creating content I would try my hardest to find someone that could and was willing to... That had some form of passion for what I was trying to achieve, that was I could ensure it would continue. At least finding a few other artists that would like to share their knowledge in my place whilst I was away from content creation for whatever reason, of course the hosting costs would still be there but I don't plan on being home bound forever! and money shouldn't be as much of an issue after four to five months from now.

How did it manage to bite you in the arse? if you don't mind my asking... I understand if you wish not to share but I am a curious person lol.


Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts!


Kind Regards
The Piixel Monster

 

This sounds really interesting and I'd be interested in helping you out for free but at the moment I've got my hands tied. I've messaged you with my Skype details, add me and I'll help you when I can or along the way.

Amazon allows everyone access to their micro tier free for one year. I could help you get a decent LEMP stack installed with Wordpress. This would leave you to find a suitable theme, customise it then start posting tutorials.

 

I will add you on Skype later today and hope to with you about this =] I appreciate the offer I didn't realize that Amazon did that!

 

I agree with Indyonline. I invested in the Genesis framework and I am very happy with it. It's a great product with great support.