As a small business owner every penny counts! Don’t spend gobs of money building a super duper fancy schmancy web site until you can afford it.
Luckily, WordPress.com offers FREE web sites (with embedded blogging capability). They are EASY to set up and administer and save you lots of money while providing you the exposure your fledgling business needs. “You are not a real business, in 2015, unless you have a web site” TechyMike
More about WordPress.com after I show you the steps. I have been using them since 2006, on multiple web sites, soooo, I speak from experience.
ARE U READY to Get Your Business on the Web??
Homework Assignment: Before you sign up, think of THREE names for your web site (you never know, your top two choices might already be taken) and make sure you have a business email set up (I use Gmail).
When you are ready: Follow these THREE easy steps to a web site for your small business:
Step 1: Go to WordPress.com and click on the “Create Website” button
Step 2: Fill out the information requested on the top of the next page.
Step 3: Select the “WordPress.com Beginner” option as shown in red below. When the “Create Blog” button is available…..click on it!
About WordPress.com (from my perspective)
Web designers scrunch their eyes, smirk, and make funny noises when you tell them you are using WordPress.com for your web sites. Ignore them! All they want is to charge you gobs of money for something you can do yourself, at least in the beginning.
WordPress.com is:
- Safe (you cannot break it),
- Super reliable (I have seen it go down only once in 8, almost 9, years)
- Free
- Flexible (with hundreds of “themes” to choose from for the look and feel you want for your web site).
- And the people running it are super helpful and respond quickly to problems.
As a bonus….you are not stuck in “beginner” mode. If you are like me, you can add features as your skills grow, or you can move what you have built over the years to that fancy schmancy web site when you can afford it.
WordPress.com is a great place to start, to grow, and, then to leave if you have to.
And it is free. (did I say that already?)
My WordPress.com websites (note that I pay WordPress for .com domain names..see what I mean about growing your capabilities within WordPress?):
ForCarol.com: I purchased a premium theme (Lifestyle) for this web site so I had more flexibility with respect to columns and such. This is a hybrid web site and blog.
TechyMike.com: Hmmm, this web site. I keep playing with different free themes so it may change occasionally, just for fun. TechyMike is becoming a hybrid web site and blog, but, right now is primarily a blog.
TracyReaderDad.com: My book review site for Thrillers and Mysteries. This is my most viewed blog. TracyReaderDad is a pure blog.
AltamontCowork.com: I sold (will sell) AltamontCowork to someone on Dec 31, 2014. AltamontCowork was primarily a web site where I did a little blogging on telecommuting, coworking, etc. But you can see that, by transferring ownership of this website, WordPress.com has allowed me to move on while helping the new owner take over.
TeleBitConsulting.wordpress.com: This WAS my primary blog for many years. If you click on it you will be brought back to TechyMike.com. I added a “redirect” when I decided to move into “retired” TechyMike mode. But, I loaded all the content from TelBitConsulting onto TechyMike, going back to 2006, including my very first blog ever, so my hard work would not get lost. 🙂
NEED HELP?
TechyMike offers an INTENSIVE, but FUN, FAST PACED hour on the above subject with the guarantee that you will have a web site up and running in that one hour, and know the basics of administrating it!
The rest is up to you, I will teach you how to “fish”.
TechyMike: Technology Made Easy 