Guide to Low Cost Do-It-Yourself Web Design

Many new business owners assume that it costs a fortune to get a website up and running. It doesn't. These days, you can get a pretty decent job done for $500 or so by going with a consultant, or you can do it on your own for under $200. Creating a website on your own is nowhere near as difficult as many people seem to think.

Software
There are several Open Source (ie, free) programs out there that will let you put up a respectable website. My suggestion is to use Joomla.

It's a very powerful and flexible program. I used to create my site about small business taxes. It could be used to create anything from a simple blog to a more complex ecommerce site.

In my opinion, the only drawback to Joomla is that to the novice, it's not entirely intuitive. If you put the time in, you can definitely figure it out on your own. But if you want to get off to a faster start, you may want to look into a Joomla training program.


Literally thousands of ready-to-go (free) templates have been created for Joomla. With enough looking around, you're almost certain to find something that's fairly close to what you're looking for. Or, if you're willing to spend a little money, you can often find more high-end templates for $40 or so that will even come with support from the people that made them incase you have any questions.

Hosting
You'll also need to find a company to host your website. I use DreamHost. It costs me about $120/year. Dreamhost it known for being budget-friendly and for offering excellent customer service.

Improving Your Site's Appearance
After you've got your site up and running, you may want to add some pics here and there to jazz it up a bit. I'd recommend istockphoto. An unimaginably large selection of pictures for very cheap (as little as $1/pic).

Grand total cost: $120-$170.