Top Tips For Starting A Website With Little Money
In launching My Marketing Auditors, I have come across many helpful DIY tips and tricks for launching a website with a small budget, which I have decided to compile into a list to help entrepreneurs get started.
– This will include some very basic website and marketing tips as well as basic business suggestions.
First of all, I highly recommend a WordPress website for anybody with a business who wants an online presence. If you are selling products, you can always update your WordPress site with a free WooCommerce plugin to start selling. It is very convenient!
Getting a website up and running can be easy enough, however, there are some key factors to consider.
- First, if you go to a digital marketing agency, they will charge you anywhere from $3-5,000 + for a website, standard.
- If you go to a freelancer, you may pay a little less, but it’s harder to trust their work.
- Definitely DO NOT get an HTML site
My advice is this: find a website that you like online, chances are it was built with a WordPress website and chances are they used a themed template to build it. Go to WordPressTheme Detector.com. Type in the domain name (www.whateverwebsite.com) and it will tell you the theme that it was built with and a lot more useful information.
Next, go to themeforest.net and buy that theme. It costs about $50-60. If you are looking for a cheaper option, you can always go to wordpress.org/themes/browse/featured/ for a free theme.
Now, here’s the interesting part. As I’ve said before, almost ALL digital marketing teams do their web development in India, it’s just a fact. That’s where I did mine. I used an excellent team in India called NSquareIT Digital Agency and they have good reviews on Google, including one from me (their link is also in the footer of my website). I paid under $500 and they did an amazing job, even adding a couple of bells and whistles that were new to me, such as child theme, which is very helpful. If you want to search for your own team, I recommend a site called www.freelancer.com/. There are developers from all over the world on the site, there are tons of reviews, and they will put in bids on your request.
Whoever you go with, your web development team should at least install the YOAST plugin, Google Analytics, and Webmaster tools. They should also submit your sitemap to Google so it can be indexed. To make sure it is done, you go to www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url to officially submit your website to Google. This will help speed up the SEO ranking process and is highly recommended. (You’re gonna need a Gmail account to set up your Google Analytics, so have that set up beforehand.) To check your sitemap, type “site: (name of website)”
So, to summarize, find a website you like, figure out which theme they used, buy it for $50, and then pay an expert Indian team under $500 to develop it for you. You’ll save THOUSANDS of dollars!.
Okay, now you have a website.
If I were you, I would let GoDaddy take it from here. They have so many convenient offerings for small businesses. I’ll review some of the major ones. First of all, they answer the phone 24/7 and are super knowledgeable and friendly, which can be a total asset to any business owner.
There is a onetime charge of $50 to get started. The domain costs about $12/year, privacy is $10/year, and as low as $8/month for hosting. Email costs about $24/year, however, if you purchase a year-long hosting plan, they throw in an email for free. An SSL secure website certificate costs about $60-$70 a year, which is very important to have. Lastly, they offer a website security package that includes daily website backups, and website security for about $36/year, totally worth it. Remember, GoDaddy always has amazing special promotions, so shop around a little bit.
Next, you are gonna want an IStock account to get quality images for your website and blog posts. IStock images cost between $12-$36 (1-3 credits) each, however, you can buy bundle packages starting at 10 credits for $40 and up. You can use these images as you please, without copywrite infringement. These will be the images on your website.
You need to create a Privacy Policy page and a Terms of Service page for your website. To avoid any legal entanglements, I would pay someone to create them for you. Now, I’ve seen lawyers try to charge upwards of $100-$500 for these. However, www.fiverr.com/ is an excellent way to get them done inexpensively and legitimately. I paid literally $5 for mine. A lot of people just like to go and copy some other website Terms of Service and Privacy Policy but, that’s opening yourself up to major legal issues. Take my advice, use Fiver!
Wrapping it up, you’re gonna want a Branded Logo for your website and social media. I would recommend freelance graphic designers; they are talented and not nearly as expensive as the big digital agencies. Offer them an hourly wage, somewhere between $30-50 an hour. If you want more concepts, hire a few designers and get them all to submit ideas. If you want to get a template logo, a cheaper option would be www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php.
You are gonna want a main logo which is usually rectangle long-ways, then you want a square version for certain social media accounts, and lastly, you are going to want the various Favicon sizes that WordPress suggests. Make sure you get the .png files, which support transparency.
Consider getting some professional photos done for the website. First, look through your Rolodex. Most people know someone who is at least semi-professional at photography, who will do it for cheap. If not, get a freelancer. Again, these shots don’t need to be amazing. You just need a decent photo of yourself for your website. It’s always a good idea to have real pictures of you and your team as opposed to stock photos of people.
Lastly, if you are a new business owner, you need to get a business license, for which there are essentially two options. One is the fictitious business name option, which costs about $100 (in Los Angeles) or, option 2, an LLC, which I believe ran about $600. If you can afford it, I would definitely recommend an LLC, especially if there’s ANY chance of you getting sued.
Now, do some basic SEO research, and remember, its all about keywords, and (original) content is king.
I hope this article was helpful for anyone starting a business or trying to get a website. For more information, call My Marketing Auditors today!
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