Starting Your eLearning Website Does Not Always Require Spending Money
Orbis Research projected that the global eLearning market is set to boom with $275.10 billion in value by 2022. If you are someone who has the heart for teaching and wants to grab a piece of that gigantic pie, you should know that starting your own eLearning website isn't as hard or expensive as you might think. You could start one for as low as $0, no kidding! Here are 4 simple steps on how to get started.
1. Get A Domain Name
The most recommended domain name is obviously one that ends with .com. But the problem is knowing if a particular .com (top-level domain or tld in short) is available for the taking. Otherwise, you can consider alternatives such as .net and .co (.co is like a shorter version of .com). If you don't mind having a domain name ending with .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf or .gq, you could get one for absolutely free from Freenom.
If you still insist on getting that elusive .com you desire, you could append the name with a connecting word. For example, Pocket uses "get" in getpocket.com and so does award-winning Emirates Airlines with flyemirates.com with the word "fly".
Domain registrars, such as GoDaddy, are well known for charging unbelievably low prices for the first year, but backfires you by asking you to pay two times higher than the market price when you renew for the subsequent years. If you're planning for the long term, you should consider buying at Freenom or Namecheap who don't offer any bill shocking experience.
2. Find A Web Hosting Server
Web hosting services can either be free (for starters) or paid for those expecting higher traffic during the initial stages. The free hosting services are available from Byethost, that offers 1GB of disk space, and 5gbfree.com that offers exactly what they imply – 5GB disk space for free. You could use this free web hosting account with your free domain name from Freenom. This means that you can end up having a domain name as well as hosting space without spending anything whatsoever.
There are also hundreds of web hosting sites that you can pay to get the better capacity and features. They are plenty out there who offer hosting plans that are value for your money. You should get one with cPanel software, the world's most preferred web hosting management tool. Among other things, you should also consider a web hosting company with 24-hour customer support to get technical assistance around the clock. Picking a local web hosting company is also a good idea, especially when you are targeting only your local market. A short distance between your hosting server to your users makes your website loads faster.
For those who have Linux server administration skill, they can use Amazon AWS free tier that provides Amazon EC2 (cloud server), EBS (Elastic Block Storage), and CloudFront (content delivery network) for one year at no cost, as long that you stay within the limits.
3. Build Your eLearning Website
Nowadays, one can have a website up and running in no time thanks to WordPress CMS (Content Management Software). WordPress is known to be the best of all website building software with nearly 60% market share. In the spirit of open source, WordPress is available for absolutely free with thousands of free templates and plugins. The software capability is outstanding and the ability to enable you to create a perfect website is absolutely profound. Best of all, you can install a variety of LMS (Learning Management System) plugins, which can be free or paid depending on the one you prefer. For the free option, go for LearnPress.
4. Host Your Videos
Here are 2 popular options – go for YouTube for the obvious free reason if you don't mind the ads, and Youtube logo or Vimeo for a better premium option. To keep your users to stay on your site, you can remove the video title and info header on your YouTube videos when you're embedding them on your site. Or pay Vimeo to get a platform where you can host and embed your videos with 100% privacy and ad-free. Alternatively, you could also host for free on Vimeo via their basic plan, but keep your total video size to be under 5GB. Or if you're looking for free video hosting with less branding from the provider, check out Dailymotion.
So, you see, starting your own online learning site can be quite easy and exciting. With all the free tools and services at your mercy, you're more likely to be spoiled for choices than to burn a hole in your pocket. Starting your site is just the beginning, growing your eLearning business is another. For that, there are plenty more free business tools to drool over.
