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.

Do What you Love and Serve the Greater Good

by Sandy Penny, WritingMuse

If you have a passion for something, you will always be able to do a better sales job. I love to write, and I love to share with others, so my profession as a freelance writer and marketing consultant is the perfect combination for me. I get to do what I love, and my enthusiasm stays high while I do it. When I help others do what they love, I serve the greater good. When people are happy with their work, they tend to treat others better, and the benefit just keeps on rippling out.

I heard a staggering stat on Oprah the other day: 85% of the workforce is unhappy with their jobs. Wow, that's big. No wonder we have so many social problems with 85% of the people spending a third of their lives doing something they hate to do.

If you are trying to create a business that offers a product or service that you don't love, it's going to be more difficult to be successful. Take a look around and see if there's something you can do that you like better. Choose joy in your life and work.

Businesses always have aspects of the work that you may not like, for instance, deadlines, taxes, accounting. If you concentrate on doing what you love to do and tell other people about it, you can become successful enough to hire other people to do the jobs you hate that they may love.

What do you like to do? How can you incorporate more of that into making a living?

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Back in the 70s when I was managing a secretarial service for someone else, I decided that I wanted to start my own business. Although I had experience managing a secretarial service, and I was good at it, I had no interested in that being the business I started. The problem was that I had no idea what I really wanted to do, so I started what I call my personal "program" to find out.

I wrote down all the things I love to do: Writing was top of the list, spiritual exploration was next, personal growth followed, spending time with my son, graphic design (also experienced), having enough money to pay my house note, car note, insurance, monthly expenses and some left over for spontaneous fun.

Hmm, that really didn't equal any business that I could think of, but I wrote it down and concentrated on it. I repeated it to myself and told others about it as often as I could (a technique from Think and Grow Rich). I even set a deadline for when I wanted it to happen, the end of November (only two months away). Some people might think that's a tall order, but I was new to the whole positive thinking movement, and as a Leo, I just thought I could do anything. At least I was willing to give it a shot.

In the middle of November, I was attending a spiritual/holistic event. Attendance seemed low, and I was wondering why. It was a great event. Several people came up to me and said basically the same thing, "We need a newspaper where we can advertise these events so we can get more attendance." After about the fifth person said the same thing, a lightbulb went on in my head, and I thought, "I could do that." I started going down my list, writing and spiritual exploration, I could attend events and write about them. Spending time with my son, I could work from home and be able to pick him up from school, and I could save the daycare costs. So far, so good.

The only thing was, I didn't have any money to invest in startup. I was making a good living, but not too much to spare beyond my bills. I knew there used to be a newspaper similar to what I had in mind, but it only had events listings, no articles and no resources. It had closed recently, and I wondered why, so I found an old issue and called the number on it. I reached the answering service and a woman who would become a mentor and encourager in this venture. She gave me the list of all the previous advertisers. I called them up and invited them to a party. At the party, I introduced the concept for my newspaper, The Rising Sun, and asked for input on what they would like to see in the paper, what it should look like and feel like, and what would serve them best. I presented a prototype I had designed and one article I had written. I sold enough ads that day to launch the paper. I just kept taking the steps as they came to me. I didn't question it. When people told me I couldn't support myself with a free paper, I ignored them and surrounded myself with those who encouraged me.

From the first issue forward, I supported myself doing what I loved. Everything on my list at the time was included in that paper, and I loved doing it. It was hard work, and some of it was challenging, like delivering 3000 bundles every month, but I even solved part of that problem. I had an advertiser party every month so advertisers could take bundles to their own businesses. The party was fun and built a solid community of advertisers who loved and supported the paper and who felt like their input was valuable. It was a huge success, and eventually I sold it when it was time to do something else, and when it stopped being fun for me.

Remember to keep evaluating what you love about your work or business, and keep adding more of what you love and find ways to hand off what you don't love to others who do love it. The more you engage your passion, the more successful you will be, and you will live a life of joy. After all, it's all about the lifestyle, isn't it?