FREE, FREE, FREE WEB SITES

Should you have a Free Web Site?

By Sandy Penny

I paid for a Web site through Yahoo for seven years. It was only $20/month, but over those years, I spent $1680. At the time I signed up, I was living in Houston, making plenty of money, and that was nothing. It was a bargain.

Since then, my life has changed. I have retired from the corporate world, and I have scaled back of my own accord. I did not lose my job or get forced to make the change, but I felt it would eventually come to that. I was mainly working in the financial industry at the time, and the writing was on the wall.

When I lived in Taos, their economy was shocking after living in Houston. The only jobs available to me were in the hospitality industry. I went to work at front desk of the Quality Inn for $7.50 an hour, moved up to $8.50 at the Taos Inn, and managed an Art Gallery for $10/hour. I was making that much money in 1970 at 20 years old. Fortunately, my little writing studio was cheap, and I no longer had credit card debt, having given it up after my last marriage. Fortunately, I had a few clients from Houston with projects I could do remotely to bolster my income.

The point is, I had to start examining all my purchases and be more frugal where possible.

I started looking at the monthly deduction from my bank account for my Web site, and as a writer, the site was not really performing that well for me. I figured I could just as easily use one of the free sites as continue paying.

My web designer friends talk trash about templated sites, but I find them usually easy to navigate, easy to build, fast to launch and easy to edit.

I Googled free Web sites, and came up with some good ones.

Most free sites have a lot to offer: free web hosting, free template choices, MS word style page editor, photo storage with access to photo editing tools, video features, blogs and forums, events calendar, and lots of widgets to personalize your site, PayPal and other payment options, social networking, traffic tracking, upgrades, and restricted access pages, if desired.

Domain names usually have an annual registration fee from as low as $5 to about $20/year, mostly around $12.95 for a .com these days.

You have to check out what the sites offer for free and what constitutes an upgrade. That’s sometimes difficult because they don’t give you access to the templates or identify upgrade items until you join them. Well, hey, it’s free, and you can always disable your account if you don’t like it. It does take some time to investigate, but to me, it was worth it. From investigation to launching the site, I spent 18 hours of my time. In Taos wages, that’s around $200 from start to finish.

The real test of whether you want a free site or not is whether you have the time to do the background work, the skill to use the site building tools, a visual eye for design, and the ability to define the content that will best serve your business.

I chose Synthasite, now Yola.com  for my free space. I liked their tools and their templates. There were a couple of things missing that I wished for, and over time, they have added those. After 8 years with them, I am still satisfied with the options they have, and the additions they continue to make.

I would like an automatic “sign up for updates” button, but it’s not offered. After doing the research, I signed up for a free account with MailChimp.com, where I can create sign-up forms and automatic mailouts for sites and blogs.

Yola also didn't offer tracking automatically. I had to add that from a third party. Now it does, but I still use my free account with StatCounter.com. I love the ease of use, and the depth of information it offers.

Check out my site at http://writingmuse.com. If you use a subdomain for free, you may have a small ad on the page from the free site. Check out this one of mine. It's a free site: http://simplewebclasses.yolasite.com/. With a paid account, you will get better templates, but if you are creative, you can use a plain template and make it spectacular.

For $12.95/year, I bought my previous domain name, http://writingmuse.com. Once you have a personalized domain name, you'll have to buy a hosting plan. I have Yola Silver. I can build up to 25 websites and point new domain names to them for the same price paid per month or per year. Choose your payment plan. You get a discount for the annual payment.

After trying out webs.com, formerly Free Webs, it was more difficult to use, has less file space, and large ads on your pages. Although it seems to offer some tools I like, email list building and web rings, Synthasite was easier, more user friendly. Honestly, Free Webs was not intuitive, and I'm pretty savvy. I'm glad now that I went with Synthasite. Webs.com own site is very well done and sophisticated, but it just didn't work for me. It will also be more crowded because it's being highly promoted, and I’m unsure of its reliability if it gets super busy. Since, as a writer, I don’t have or need millions of hits, I’m good with a smaller server for now. I also tried out 18 other free builders, and there were good and bad things about them all. I'm really happy with the choice I made, and I'm still with them after 8 years (now Yola.com).

Wordpress is big these days, but I don't find it easy to use at all, so I refuse to go that route.

So, free site or not? It’s up to you, but well worth exploring. And, there is no reason not to launch a business with a free site, because if you make money, you can always upgrade later. If you don't, you've only spent your time, not your cash.

Contact me at my email address: sandypenny@live.com for more information, price quotes, project discussion or writing, editing, or marketing/writing coaching assistance. Read my web samples at http://writingmuse.com. Check out my sample websites at http://simplewebclasses.yolasite.com/web-gallery.php. Let me know how I can help you.

To Blog or Not to Blog

As a corporate marketing writer for more than 20 years, I've seen a lot of changes in marketing strategies. One of the fastest growing concepts is blogging, the beginning of social network marketing. I posted my first blog on Geocities in 1998 and in 2005 posted on blogger when the concept was already well on its way to becoming the marketing venue of the future. The future is now. If you don't have a blog, you're just not making the most of your marketing opportunities.

COST EFFECTIVE: Blog sites are usually free, so you don't have domain name or hosting costs attached to them. You do, however, have to keep them current for them to helpful. The more you post, the more you show up on searches for the subjects you cover. Unlike the old days of the print newsletter (which I was a master of), you can't wait for three months to post to a blog or even once a month. Blogs are expected to have titillating tidbits every day or at least every week to maximize your return on the effort. That should not be daunting though. If you spend fifteen minutes writing a short client appropriate post every day or two, you'll quickly develop a following. People sign up to be notified when a new post hits their favorite blogs, and the more they know about you and your expertise, the more they will trust you as a vendor.

BE SPECIFIC: One of the best things about blogging is that the content is searchable by search engines, so the more you blog, the higher your products, services and opinions rank in searches. This is especially helpful to small businesses that don't have big budgets to buy higher positions on the engines, high-priced ads, or recommended site status. The more people search a particular subject and then choose your link, the higher you move on the list. Just be sure you choose subjects and key words carefully to get the right potential clients to your site. It does you no good to draw big audiences that don't really want what you have to offer, and readers get very annoyed by bait and switch tactics. So, choose your subjects carefully to contribute to your prestige.

SELL SOMETHING: If you are not selling something or linking to a sales site on your blog, you are missing the opportunity to take advantage of the "buy now in response to the article" syndrome. Even in the days before blogs, everybody in advertising knew that companioning an ad with an article was much more likely to generate buyers than advertising alone. Whatever you are touting in your articles should offer some kind of purchase opportunity. If you can't sell on your blog, you can at least link the article to a sales site where a purchase can be made.

That's my writing tip for today. If you'd like to blog, but don't think you're a writer or you need an editor to help define your content, I'm available. I'm available, affordable and knowledgeable. http://writingmuse.com 

Click the book cover to get your FREE copy from Amazon. 

t's a big help to those who want to self-publish.

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