Do you want to start your own blog or online business? Do you wonder where to begin without spending a lot of money and time?
If you have no previous experience about how to build a new blog or site, the first thing may to come to your mind is that:
- You need to spend hundreds of dollars on website-building companies, as they usually price their services between $500-$700
- You need a lot of money for web-hosting services, registering a domain and services related to it.
Well, this is what internet marketers want you to believe and they are happy you do so…
The truth is you can achieve all this spending very little money or without spending anything at all!
So to make things clear, for starting your own online site or blog all you need is:
- A domain name
- A web-hosting service (free or paid)
- A platform (CMS) like WordPress
So there are two ways to go:
First option:
If you want just a personal blog to express your opinions & interact with your audience you don’t have to spend even a single penny!
All you have to do is:
- Select a blog provider like WordPress or Google Blogspot ( i highly recommend those two). These serve as web-hosting providers and CMS in the same time!
Blogspot is easier for beginners and more simple to use, you don’t even need tutorials in most cases.
WordPress is a bit more difficult if you just start, but it offers more choices & themes to choose from. You may need to watch some tutorials if you need to add more advance features to your site.
- Select a name for your blog. It is totally free but its downside is that your domain name will include Blogspot.com or WordPress.com at the end (e.g mysite.wordpress.com). This is totally fine if you don’t care for monetizing your site.
Whatever platform you chose to start with, just visit their sites. Both platforms are very self-explanatory, so you can start right now even if it’s the first time you create a website!
Second option:
If you are thinking to start your online business without paying for web-construction companies, you are in the right place! Although you have to pay some fees for a domain name and a web-hosting server. It is essential as with a totally free website you lose much credibility.
- Select a web-hosting provider (such as Siteground , Bluehost or any provider you want). The price for the average package is about $100 per year. Although you can have more than one sites with the same account
- Choose your domain name. It costs about $10 per year. Web-hosting providers often include the registering of your site name in their package. Otherwise you can choose a different provider to register your domain name.
- Select a platform (CMS) such as WordPress or Joomla. I highly recommend WordPress as it offers many useful free addons & lets you choose one out of thousands pre-built themes. All you have to do is to change the names of the tags of the pre-built theme. Do check out WordPress website builder for quick and easy setup your very own first website.
And that’s all! Within 10 minutes, you can set your website online!
Feel free to share your experience with us about your first steps in website creation & ask any questions!
Chris Kostopoulos
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Chris, we all want to create a perfect website and Wix definitely makes website building easier.
Well written… nice job
Thank you James!