Building a website used to be a very tedious and complicated process, and you’d have to pay hundreds or thousands (or even millions) of dollars to have one built. Today anyone can build a web presence – including a website – without any technical knowledge, as well as it is expected of you. Your business will be not taken these days seriously if you do not have an online presence.
Here are some of my suggestions on how to get started if you are on limited budget:
- The obvious one is to start a blog; and my #1 recommendation is www.wordpress.org . With www.wordpress.org you can download blog templates to your local folder and use your own domain name as your web address. What I like about www.wordpress.org is the ability to set up your blog to look like a website, with several pages.
See some of the sites I host with www.wodrpress.org below (the ones that I host with HostMonster).
The simple alternative is to start a blog at www.wordpress.com or at www.blogger.com. At these sites anyone can have a blog up in minutes.
Here are some other website-building solutions:
- http://www.HostMonster.com provides unlimited hosting for unlimited websites for about $140/year – this is a great choice if you build your own site AND if you plan to have several sites.
I host with HostMonster http://www.discSalesStyles.com , http://www.PaidSpeaker101.com , http://www.disc411.com , and a few more (these are all blog-sites that I set up through HostMonster)
- http://www.GoDaddy.com will provide you hosting for one site for about $4.00 per month and/or a simple siteBuilder (WebSiteTonight or SmartSpace) for about $5.00/month.
See my site at http://www.CommunicationSkillsMagic.com that was set up with a SmartSpace webBuilder at GoDaddy.
- I built my first site – which is still my main site – at http://www.QuickBizSites.com . Here you can build your site very easily right away, without paying up front… then if you want to keep it, you’ll pay $19.95 per month (a pretty high fee, but a great deal for non-technical people, which I used to be when I started in 2003 – and I’m still only at the beginning of my learning curve). Visit www.egSebastian.com to see the site built with QuickBizsites builder.
- Recently I discovered http://www.homestead.com/ – a friend of mine is using it for several of her sites. I digged around a bit and I think it’s a great service and it only costs $4.95 /month. Visit my friend’s site, built with this service at http://www.wellnessatyourdoor.com/ 6. I also found a completely FREE webHosting service, complete with site builder. You can find it at http://00WebHost.com — They have hundreds of great looking templates and you can upgrade to a paid accoung ($4.95) in exchange for a promise of higher uptime. If you are on tight budget, I’d definitely try the FREE version first. (I tried it briefly with a test site – http://makemoneyfromhome411.com – and it seems to work just fine…
Of course, if you have a special vision of how you want your website to look, and you can afford the fees of a professional designer, then you might want to take that route. Using a designer is also a great idea, as it allows you to focus your time on your strengths and on your money-generating activities.
However, if you are on low budget, I hope you can use some of the above tips and develop a strong web presence. And don’t forget, these days video rules, so take advantage of www.youtube.com, www.vidler.com, and other video hosting sites. A simple search for “post video” will provide you with a large number of video hosting sites.
See you on the web!
… and send me your link to your new site – make me proud J