Getting an online presence without blowing your budget

When you are starting a business or are looking to expand, a website or an online presence of some sort you may have contacted website developers already getting prices in up to tens of thousands of dollars with many months of development on top.

If you are a small business odds are you don’t really need to pay that much and wait so long. There are plenty of great alternatives out there starting at FREE and even some with no technical skills required.

Here are just some of my favorite ones:

WordPress.org: If you would like to create a website with some functionality like ecommerce, newsletter or other, the free WordPress system can be easily downloaded and set up. There are many free plugins for it that will provide great functionality and free designs (themes) you can use. To set this up does require some technical know how, but if you buy hosting at a place like Godaddy you can get it with WordPress on it and this doesn’t require much effort!

1and1.com: This is your complete package. You buy a domain and can add on hosting and a website builder that is basically a drag and drop interface and comes with basic functionality. Good if you just want to have a sleek looking site with basic information on it. You can choose from a slew of designs that look great and then you just put in your information. With the hour you will have a full functional website for under 10 dollars.

FaceBook: I know it is not a website per say. But if you have a local business this is a free solution that will get you visibility and fast. You can set up a FaceBook business page and add your location, contact information, hours and share your services. When you add your location you will automatically get tons of views from local people and it is all free! They have a build in promotional tool for some cheap paid advertisement if you want more exposure.

I have written about more options in more detail in my free eBook you can download here.

Would love to hear if any of my fellow Steemians have other suggestions or comments.

Thank you for reading!