January 1 rolled around and I couldn’t wait any longer – I bought a domain and set up my brand-new site, email list, and social media in just TWO DAYS.

Yes, that’s totally possible if you know what you’re doing! It’s ALSO possible if you don’t know what you’re doing – see below for my recommendation for setting up your website quickly and easily.

Listen to the episode right here

And subscribe with your favourite podcast app

If you enjoy it, please give it a 5⭐ rating and review in your favourite platform – it really does make a difference. Thanks so much!

Resources mentioned

I mention the following resources in the podcast when I talk about my website setup.

Some of these links are affiliate links, meaning I will receive a commission if you purchase via that link (thanks!) – see my disclosure here.

Podia – easiest way to start a site and email list with any type of digital product.

Podia’s How to Start a Website course. Just follow along and you’ll have a gorgeous site, quickly.

Interested in my blog setup?

Like I said, this is not a setup for beginners!

I use Cloudways hosting, Divi theme on WordPress, MailerLite for emails, and ThriveCart and Learn+ for checkout/courses. I use Canva for all graphics. Phew!

Business Idea Blitz – my free online course that helps you nail your perfect (and profitable) business idea, so you know EXACTLY what to put into that awesome new site of yours.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Kelly Kotanidis, and welcome to Online Business from Scratch, where I am taking you behind the scenes as I build my new online business from scratch to a full-time income while making sure it’s a great fit for my travelling homeschooling life. I’ll be walking you through everything I do and why so that you can follow along and build your own flexible online business quickly and efficiently.

And guess what? It is the 2nd of January, my holiday is officially over, and I’m on day two of my new business. I’m not meant to be so excited about actually starting work again, am I? But this is business; it is exciting. And I welcomed the new year by registering the domain name businessinyourbackpack.com. So you will notice that it’s quite travel-focused with the backpack and all, and that’s because I kept getting pushes towards it to the point where I joined a new worldschooling group two days ago, and the first post that popped up was how do you pay for travel, and the second was asking about high ticket affiliate marketing. And it feels like I see stuff like that all the time, which is obviously the algorithm but also because that’s what travelling families want and need.

Now, I have known that for years, so focusing on them makes a lot of sense, especially considering we spent over 6 years travelling, so I know this stuff. I know what it’s like working with crappy internet and jet lag and bad lighting. You know, welcome to digital nomad life, everyone. So, no, just kidding, it’s not usually that bad, not all at once anyway. But realistically, the content will still be suitable for homeschoolers, who are also my people, but as I always say, get specific and niche down so people know exactly who you’re talking to.

So, because I already had the base and know the technology, I’ve got the domain, I’ve got the site with a couple of sign-up pages, I’ve set up MailerLite and authenticated all my emails, I’ve installed Google Analytics and my plugins, I’ve made a logo, which I’ll probably change in the future, but I figured done is better than perfect, and I’ve claimed all my social media handles even though I don’t plan on using most of the platforms.

Now, two days is obviously unrealistic for all of that if you have never done it before, especially with the more complicated tech setup I have, but then I also think that if you go with something easy like Podia, you can get it done very quickly, and so that’s why I recommend Podia to everyone who doesn’t know how to do all this stuff already. I always say choose the easiest setup so you can focus on the content because the content is the most important part.

And when you start a business, you have to learn and do so many things in limited time, and you’re far better off to focus on creating content and products and services rather than working out how to integrate your site to your email list or why your foot loeroks all bodgy. But I was really happy I could do it all so quickly because it shows me that these skills are worth it. I can make stuff happen quickly. I can set up the base of an entire site, something that would cost me thousands to outsource or would have taken me months when I started. I can smash it out in a couple of days, and it doesn’t slow me down.

So, I don’t have my content ready yet, but I have the site. Now, why would I do that when I recommend the opposite? Why am I being a hypocrite, huh? It’s because I have a free workshop and a waitlist, so they can be there for me to share while I work on the content in the background. Plus, I’ve got a lot of nearly done content. There’s not a lot else I need to do before it’s ready to go on the site. So, I’m pretty much at that stage of needing a site to put it on, and having it there means I want to have something on it for people to see, so it’s a push to actually finish the post because that last bit of getting it onto the site and polishing it by adding images and spacing and formatting is often the hardest part. It is a little bit tedious.

I celebrated my new site by sharing my free workshop on a worldschooling group with no promo rules, but the post got declined, so hopefully that’s not a sign of things to come.

So that’s about it for the week. It’s pretty quick update for an entire week. But we also packed everything we owned into our car and trailer and spent three very long days driving 2,800 km from North Queensland to Melbourne, so really all I’ve done apart from that is start the site in two days of a manic flurry of churning through all the tasks, ticking them off one by one and getting high on the resulting dopamine.

My husband has had enough experience to recognize my hyperfocus mode, so he mostly left me to it, but he did also feed and water me and make sure that I kept healthy hours, that I didn’t skip my runs, and remembered to interact with people, all the things that I may forget when I’m totally absorbed in something. So thanks for that, husband, keeping me human.

Now, if you’re listening to this and thinking, “Oh my goodness, I don’t know how to do any of this, and it all sounds awfully complicated,” then I have solved your problem. Or I should say, I actually planned to solve your problem by making you a checklist and linking each step to a tutorial. But when I started doing that, I realized that I would be reinventing the wheel because Podia have already done it.

They have an incredibly comprehensive online course that walks you through setting up your domain, your homepage, your navigation, your emails, making it all look beautiful and professional, and it’s free. Your site at that stage is completely free, and the course is also free. So, you can get completely set up with everything you need, even products if you’re ready for that, very quickly without paying anything at all. I highly recommend it. There is a link in the show notes. It is a great no-stress way to get started without getting bogged down in tech stuff or freaking out at the cost.

Just remember, don’t do this until you have a great topic. You can do my free Business Idea Blitz course for that and also do some research on what people want and plan out a bit of your content. So if you’ve done all that and you’re still, then you’ve got a great business idea, so go and get started at Podia. And if you do that, please send me the link to your new site. I would love to see it.

So, thank you for listening. I will be back sharing my next online business steps very soon. I’m on a bit of a roll right now, so hopefully I will have some good progress to tell you all about. I’ll see you then.

Thanks for listening!

Got any questions? Feel free to to drop them in the comments below.

Pin it for later