You have a business and you think you need a website but you’re not sure what to do next and you’re afraid it’s going to cost you.
Think blog! You don’t have to become a
“blogger” if you don’t want to. Instead, you can use the existing and very powerful tools for blogging out there to build your own website for your business. You can add your own pictures and e-commerce buttons and wind up with a fully functional marketing website for your business in a few hours or even minutes.
There are
stand-alone blogging solutions and
hosted blogging solutions. Stand-alone blogging solutions you have to download and place on your own server and have to maintain, therefore they
stand alone on your server. A hosted blog is hosted or kept on a server by "them."
To start, you want a
hosted solution such as
Blogger or
Wordpress.com where you can register, log-in and set up a website in minutes. Then you can add photos, write copy, add pages as necessary, and you have a business website.
That's it. Cost to you? $0. You'll have to contend with the hundreds if not thousands of templates available for these solutions to determine how your new site looks. So, your site will not be unique. But you can edit a fair amount of your site, including the header art that would most likely contain your logo or branding. So, for no cost you will have a branded and fully functional and
findable e-commerce website.
This all assumes that you've stopped, sat down and asked yourself what you want and need your website to do as well as say about you. But that's for another Guide.
Have fun making money!
Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done
Find a Hosted Solution
Check out these hosted solutions
Blogger and
Wordpress.com.
I recommend: Blogger Wordpress.com
E-commerce Buttons
If you want to sell products right off your new website,
Google Checkout is the simplest solution, allowing you to add Google BuyNow buttons wherever you want on your site (most likely next to your product photos you just added) or Donate buttons if you're a non-profit.
Paypal is also a good solution, but Google Checkout charges you less.
I recommend: Google Checkout Paypal
Fully Customized
Now if you want or need your website to be unique, you turn to the
stand-alone solutions such as Wordpress'
downloadable solution that you then upload to your own server, which you can find at
Wordpress.org. You'll incur minor costs for your web host or "server" as well as your domain name. But most likely you've already paid for a domain name, even if you're using a hosted solution as described above. However, downloading Wordpress from
Wordpress.org is free.
I recommend: Wordpress.org>
Learn More About Blogging Platforms
Specky Boy goes into more detail about other available stand-alone blogging platform solutions. You'll need to know some XHTML/CSS coding to really be able to roll up your sleeves and get under the hood of your new site. But as I said, your cost will only have been your domain name and your host. Go to
Wikipedia.org for an overview on blogging.
I recommend: Specky Boy Wikipedia.org
Hire a Designer to Do What They're Great At
Now that your business is up and running and online you can turn to a professional to develop a design for you so that your website will be completely unique and professional. This is not an opportunity to nickel and dime your contractor simply because you've "already done all the work." This is an opportunity to place all of your "design" dollars where they count the most, with a designer thinking only about making you look great, instead of worrying about back-end technologies.
I recommend: www.AnAdGuy.com
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