Nowadays, more and more people are searching for a way to earn some cash online. One of the best ways to do so is by starting your own movie streaming website. After all, it’s an industry with tremendous growth potential, and the demand for digital video is expected to go up. Thus, you should really look into the opportunities such a movie streaming website can present for you.
There are a couple of steps you would have to take to make your own film site. First, you would need to buy a domain and hosting. Then, choose a way to build your website. Finally, you must think of ways to promote your movie streaming site. Let’s take a more detailed look at each of the steps you will have to go through.
1. Buy a Domain and Hosting
The domain is a crucial part of your streaming site. It will be your brand name and online address. It should be somehow related to your site’s purpose. Specifically, you should look to integrate keywords like ‘watch,’ ‘movie,’ ‘film,’ ‘free’ and ‘online.’ These will do wonders for your discoverability and make it easy for potential visitors to know what your site is about.
The domain extension will also need some thought. People perceive the .com ones as the most credible; however, they are very hard to take. Thus, you should experiment with different ones like .cc, .io, .wtf etc. Your hosting provider of choice should enable you to check which ones are available and buy them.
Furthermore, when it comes to hosting, you must use an offshore provider, and specifically VPS. Offshore hosting is preferential because you will be dealing with licensed content. If you want to go the legal route, well, you will have to pay unreasonably high amounts of money to get the license just for one movie.
An offshore host will often ignore any DMCA notices and keep your site running. When you’re just getting started, it will make more sense to start with it and then upgrade as you grow. You can find quite a lot of offshore hosting providers, but you should still make sure to check each one’s customer reviews and services offered.
Although this process can take anywhere between a few hours to a few days, it will be worth it in the long run. If, by chance, you want to start right away, then go for AbeloHost’s offshore VPS. They are accommodating and provide excellent value for service. Plus, you can easily buy the domain and hosting package in a single transaction.
2. Choose a Way to Build Your Movie Website
Generally, you have two options to choose from when it comes to building a website. The first is to start from scratch, and the second is to use a premade theme. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, so choose carefully.
Build From Scratch
If you prefer to create your movie site from the ground up, then you will need to either know how to code or hire a developer from sites like Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, and similar.
The advantages are that you will have a unique website that will be made precisely to your wants. However, the entire process will be long, tedious, and extremely expensive. In fact, you can expect to pay thousands of dollars for your film streaming website. Thus, it’s not in your best interest to go along this route if you’re a complete beginner.
Use a Premade Theme
A premade theme implies you will use WordPress. In fact, it will be a pretty good choice to do so because you won’t need to have any coding knowledge to build a professional-looking website. Keep in mind; you should use WordPress’ .org domain because the .com domain comes with its own hosting. Meaning, you won’t be able to make a movie site with it.
Furthermore, a ready-made theme will be much cheaper than starting from scratch. Honestly, you could even find free ones that will have features equal to the more expensive ones. Check out these curated lists of the best movie website templates, or just go with a Netflix clone theme to save yourself some time and effort.
The advantages are that it’s cheap and fast to make. Disadvantages – you will have to personalize the theme to make it look unique. Nevertheless, for a beginner, it’s the better choice of the two. Also, make sure you carefully examine each one’s price and features to ensure you have all the functionality you might need.
Free movie templates are great if you have a limited budget and are just starting out. Although their features will be somewhat limited to the paid ones. Truthfully, you can find premium movie templates that cost as much as $10 that will be enough for you to make a fantastic movie website.
Nevertheless, a paid movie theme will be a much better choice. You can depend on the developers for support when you run into any issues, and the features will be more and better.
3. Promote Your Movie Streaming Site
No matter how good your film website is, if you don’t promote it in some way, your efforts will be in vain. Thus, you must advertise it on social media and forums, and make sure it’s search engine optimized (SEO). That way, people searching in Google will find it much faster.
Furthermore, always post a link to your site when you’re promoting it; the name of the practice is backlinking. If you do, search engines will get a signal that your website is the right choice. Meaning, it will get a better position on search result pages. However, don’t spam; no one likes it, and will negatively affect your streaming site’s reputation.
For better visibility, you should focus your efforts on SEO. You should index all your pages with the major search engines, use the free Yoast plugin for the best results. The premium version works wonders, but more often than not, the free variant will be sufficient.
Then, you might want to create a blog with movie lists that will improve your authority with Google’s algorithms. Always aim for the first page in the search results for search terms like ‘watch [movie title] free online’ and so on. You can use Google Ads’ Keyword Planner tool for research. You don’t have to pay anything to use it.
Conclusion
Congratulations, you have reached the end of this mini-guide. You now have the necessary knowledge needed to start a movie site. As good as it will be to have a definitive guide, it’s best for you to learn as you go. That way, you will be able to make better adjustments specific to your website.
Let’s recap what you’ve learned. You need to pick a domain name that is relevant to your site. It will do wonders for your SEO. Then, find an offshore VPS host that provides the right services for your case, feel free to use AbeloHost if you want to save time on research. Afterward, choose how you will create your movie website. If you have a limited budget, use a premade theme; but the paid ones will usually offer better value and support. Finally, promote your site to accelerate its growth and improve the profit potential. Good luck!