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How to set up your business website for free |
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| Written by Dirk Röttges |
| Thursday, 09 September 2010 11:13 |
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Many small businesses here in Chile struggle with their websites. They can't keep them up to date. The person who once developed it (usually a friend of a friend) has disappeared; and the site can hardly be found on search engines, so little traffic is coming in.
When you start a business you usually cannot afford to spend a lot of money on fancy web design and Internet Marketing consulting. What you need is a site that shows who you are, what you do, what you offer and how people can contact you. With modern technology it has never been easier to create your own website with little technical knowledge. I suggest using either Wordpress.com or blogger.com. There are very good manuals for both services plus hundreds of videos on Youtube on how to use it. Domain The easiest and absolute cost free option is to use a sub domain like yourname.wordpress.com. If you are serious about your business you should have your own domain. If you like a .cl domain you register this domain with www.nic.cl (about 20.000 CLP / year). A .com domain is much cheaper. At GoDaddy.com you get .com domains for about 12 USD per year. You do not need to buy online web space, just the domain! Your Website Blogging software is the way to go. Wordpress or Blogger are the most popular tools. When you start your business and do not want to invest in buying online storage, you can use the hosted services of blogger.com or wordpress.com. However, their funcionality is limited, but often sufficient for starters. Posts (sequential information posted over time) can be published with no limits. Just create an account and get started. Link your web site with your domain If you have a .com domain from e.g. Godaddy you can point the domain to your Blogger or Wordpress account, so it appears under www.yourdomain.com. This is a free service for Blogger and costs 10 USD per year for wordpress. On Blogger, Wordpress and Godaddy there are manuals available on how to do that. Or watch this video. If you have a .cl domain it is a bit more tricky. You need a nameserver as NIC does not provide name servers. However, you can use free dns services like dnsmadeeasy. You might need some assistance of a professional at this stage. Email with your domain name It appears much more professional if you use emails with your own domain e.g. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it instead of using This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or @vtr.net. You can use Google Apps for free (up to 50 email accounts). This comes with 7 GB of free web space, the best spam filters and an incredible Apps suite that allows you not only to manage your emails but also share Calendars and documents. Start Building your site Now it is time to start building your site. Both wordpress and blogger offer a variety of pre-designed templates that you can use and adapt to your Corporate image and there are hardly any limits to your creativity. Look what you can with blogger: Watch this video:
In the next post I'll talk about putting content on the site, the hard work :) |