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robyoungsr
08-13-2014, 12:37 AM
I am trying to find the best way to make my own website for my new credit repair business. Most of the companies I have talked to want a whole bunch of money to design and host my site. Is there a cheaper way to build and maintain a website of my own so that I can update it as my business grows. If anyone out there has some information for me, get in touch with me as soon as you can. Thanks

billbenson
08-13-2014, 06:36 AM
WordPress is most practical way to put up a site right now. You can add your own pages after the fact. There are plenty of tutorials on the web on how to use it or get a dummies book. There are also a lot of professional designers out there that work with WordPress. They will give you a more professional site that will do a better job of selling your products or services.

As for design and hosting: Never host your site with your web designers. Also don't register your domain and host at the same place. There have been plenty of scams for doing this.

Blessed
08-13-2014, 08:36 AM
What does everyone here think of GoDaddy and their website "design" software?

I have a friend who sells homemade, boutique hairbows for little girls (trust me the market is much bigger than I would have thought and I have a little girl!) anyway - she's been doing well simply selling on Instagram, but now needs to move on up in the world and start a website, she's been told that the GoDaddy software would be easy to use and just to do that since she bought her domain name from GoDaddy.

bjay99
08-13-2014, 08:37 AM
I agree and suggest wordpress. Start simple while learning.

Harold Mansfield
08-13-2014, 09:22 AM
WordPress is most practical way to put up a site right now. You can add your own pages after the fact. There are plenty of tutorials on the web on how to use it or get a dummies book. There are also a lot of professional designers out there that work with WordPress. They will give you a more professional site that will do a better job of selling your products or services.

As for design and hosting: Never host your site with your web designers. Also don't register your domain and host at the same place. There have been plenty of scams for doing this.
Obviously I agree with WordPress, but even more so I agree with the "never host your website with web designers". I'm sure there are exceptions, but for the most part it's a bad move for you that locks you into whatever terms the web designer sets. Furthermore, there's no reason for it. There are plenty of hosts these days that will walk you through the process of setting up your own hosting, in your own name that you control completely...and offer 24/7 phone support if you need them.

Hosting and Domain registration at the same place isn't as shady as it used to be and a lot of those companies are gone now. If you host with a decent company, many will give you your first years URL registration with a year of hosting, or some kind of discount.

Is it easy? Not at first, but you will eventually be very happy that you decided to learn a few things for yourself and get your own hosting.

The only exception, in my opinion, would be if you use a service like a website builder. I'm not a big fan of them, but I understand that's all some people need. Just make sure that you own your URL, and that you have the ability to take your content and leave at anytime.

The last thing you want to be is at someone's mercy where they have complete control of your URL and your business website and you don't have access to anything.

cathyc100
09-14-2014, 02:45 PM
Any "free" service will give basic features but if you want more it is going to cost. If you are on a budget, it can be challenging so you can do something simple as Weebly.com. They have an easy to use interface and you can get a domain name via godaddy and redirect to the site. They also have the mobile conversion that is done automatically so you are mobile friendly which is really important. My business is web design and marketing. I am happy to discuss with you your needs and can work with all budgets to find a good starting point and keep improving on it as the budget allows. Get in touch if you want to have me see what we can do.
I have actually been looking for credit repair and would be interested in learning more about your business.
Get in touch.

<please set up a signature through Settings>

cathyc100
09-14-2014, 02:51 PM
The Godaddy website builder is easy to use. I have built a couple of sites for clients on their godaddy site builder. Not a bad place to start at all. Also, godaddy has 23/7 customer support and it's good. I build websites and mobile apps as a business and would be more than happy to answer any questions and help where I can.

David@ZeroZen
10-30-2014, 11:09 AM
I am trying to find the best way to make my own website for my new credit repair business. Most of the companies I have talked to want a whole bunch of money to design and host my site. Is there a cheaper way to build and maintain a website of my own so that I can update it as my business grows. If anyone out there has some information for me, get in touch with me as soon as you can. Thanks

Hey there Rob. This is a great question. Here are some things to think about.

1. Do you know how to create a website to get the most conversion from each visitor?
What I mean by this is: The whole point of creating a website in the first place is to create a space online where people can find and learn about your products and services. In most cases, buy them or get in touch. A website that doesn't capture information from visitors, doesn't convert visitors to prospects, or better yet... become a paying client is about as worthless as not having a website. Actually - it is worse! If someone comes to your site and they have a horrible experience, they will NOT come back.

Also - what is your time worth? If it takes you a month, 2 months, 3 months to get a sub par website online, this means you have likely missed out on 2 months of missed opportunities plus dedicated your time trying to figure out how to build a site that is actually not good for your business anyways.

Think about it this way - If you were an accountant, would you invest in cheap accounting software built in china that has bad reviews and is full of bugs just because it was $10? If you were a painter, would you buy cheap canvases from a thrift store? If you owned a restaurant, would you serve food on paper plates? Why? Because it makes your business look cheap. If you business looks cheap to consumers, they will think the whole experience is cheap. People like LOW COST, not cheap.

Invest a little money into your web presence and don't try to go at it alone. Eventually you will realize you need a "real website" and over the 6 months it took you to realize that the site you built does absolutely nothing, you could have been making money and building your online presence.

Hope this helps.

CJTodd89
12-12-2014, 07:34 PM
I've heard about wix.com on the radio. Supposedly free and easy. I didn't put a whole lot of time into it, though. Couldn't hurt to look at it.

LarsJ
12-12-2014, 09:11 PM
Don't let designing a website yourself scare you off. You CAN design a website and if you do there is a good chance you will know how to fix it yourself if it doesn't quite look right. Wordpress has been mentioned quite a few times because it is not proprietary design software where you are stuck with that provider/host and they control everything. You can host it wherever you want and there are some gorgeous designs out there. As long as you can get Wordpress installed and setup the database with a username and password you are about half way there. Many providers will (or should) help you with this to get you going.

Do you have a domain registered already? It should be done with a domain registrar so you are 100% you control and own it and no one else. Then you can point it to wherever you are hosting your site.

Give Wordpress a shot as it might just work for you. If you don't try you will never know :) Then there are many Wordpress themes/designs available for less than $99 or so depending on what you want that you upload & install. Oh, and Wordpress is search engine friendy too!

J from Michigan
12-13-2014, 02:50 PM
What does everyone here think of GoDaddy and their website "design" software?

I have a friend who sells homemade, boutique hairbows for little girls (trust me the market is much bigger than I would have thought and I have a little girl!) anyway - she's been doing well simply selling on Instagram, but now needs to move on up in the world and start a website, she's been told that the GoDaddy software would be easy to use and just to do that since she bought her domain name from GoDaddy.

I use it and it is pretty easy. Easy to work with as you can drag and drop pretty much everything, if you choose.
But it can be quirky sometimes. Not enough to frustrate too much, and it's mostly within tables that I have any issues.

As Cathy said, the 24/7 service is something else that keeps me with them. They really are helpful.
And, I'm not certain if it's coincidence, but I speak to the same rep quite frequently... and he's familiar with our other discussions.
(not just looking at notes, I can tell)- VERY cool!

You get limited access to Fotolia images, which is nice.

And finally, there is a section that you can copy your pages to an identical mobile page. And then edit them in their mobile version.
So, I don't need worry about my site being "responsive"- it just swaps the page to their own separate mobile version.

My real gripe is that if you want to switch to the new version of page designer, you lose your previous pages.
- so you'd have to start all over, and I'm not ready to do that.. my current pages are doing to well for that.

But your friend won't have to worry about that, since she is starting fresh.

TejasWebHosting
01-06-2015, 04:35 PM
Word Press is the most practical and most of the sites we host people use word press. It is user friendly and pretty simple, I have had customers who have never made a website be up and running within hours. It is fun to play with as well!

stage3
01-08-2015, 05:12 AM
I am trying to find the best way to make my own website for my new credit repair business. Most of the companies I have talked to want a whole bunch of money to design and host my site. Is there a cheaper way to build and maintain a website of my own so that I can update it as my business grows. If anyone out there has some information for me, get in touch with me as soon as you can. Thanks

I am a bit late to the Party but here is my 2 cents, as a Web designer myself creating your website is only half the battle.

You do have to realize that just because you have created a website it doesn't mean it will connect to your target audience.

Also remember an attractive well designed site will keep your customers interest.

I have seen countless customers ask me why They have little or no visitors etc... and the reason is SEO. Search engine optimization is the next thing you will have to tackle to have a website that actually connects to your target market. When you actually have a website that is high on google and has a good rank...you can consider yourself an accomplished web designer!! :)

Cheers

scottb
02-20-2015, 06:56 AM
I tend to agree with stage3. Creating and setting up a website is actually the easy bit :)

You won't have any difficulties there(and if you do there is help at hand). The real risks are around your product, market and customer.

o) What is the problem are you trying to solve - bad credit :)
o) Who are your typical customers
o) What is unique about you, your unique value proposition
o) What is your solution
o) Through what channels will you be able to access these customers

Setup the website fast and then start trying to validate your assumptions about these risks. You will most likely find that you need to change your business model to something completely different but that is normal and the sooner you start iterating in that manner the better.

3iinfocom
02-27-2015, 10:01 AM
Instead of using site builder tool like wix and others. .you should contact someone(newcomers but expert) who design your website in your budget. There are number of things not covered in such template or site builder tool. So I suggest you to design your site by professional because you are likely to enhance your business by using website. your site is not just web identity of your business, it is a potential medium of driving customers.

CutStreamWebDesign
02-27-2015, 11:55 AM
Godaddy is super easy to use and you can virtually always find excellent coupon codes on retailmenotdotcom that bring the one year cost of a domain and hosting under $20.

I've never used any of the free site builders but I can vouch for the wonders of Wordpress - though I think developing in it isn't quite as easy as people make it out to be - the difficulty significantly depends on how comfortable you are with technology generally and whether you have more time than resources at your disposal. If you do decide to hire a designer/developer I would expect a clean starter site with CMS (allowing you to make updates yourself) to cost between $400-1000 depending on the vendor (the low end of that range would be for a purely informational site while the higher end starts to incorporate some more advanced features like payments and maybe some membership features though probably not on the latter).

Good luck!

Harold Mansfield
02-27-2015, 12:31 PM
If you do decide to hire a designer/developer I would expect a clean starter site with CMS (allowing you to make updates yourself) to cost between $400-1000 depending on the vendor (the low end of that range would be for a purely informational site while the higher end starts to incorporate some more advanced features like payments and maybe some membership features though probably not on the latter).



That range is the very low end and you can't really make definitives on price like that for an entire industry. We aren't all the same and every situation is different. No way you can know a price without knowing the specifics of each project.

But I will say this, you can save yourself money by just being prepared with some basics. After the technical specs, most times price variables are dependent on how prepared the client is with their own information.

CutStreamWebDesign
03-01-2015, 12:44 PM
After I posted I considered editing the price out for some of the reasons you mentioned (lack of detailed specs + broad range of providers) however I left it because that is an empirically legitimate range for "starter" sites if you go through a budget vendor on freelancer.com (admittedly if I had included all vendors I know/all types of sites, the top end of the range would be higher - so mea culpa regarding that objection - though I don't think it's inappropriate to read between the lines a bit on the post per the notes below).

I have some experience with credit related sites and most repair sites I've seen are one-person informational operations with limited products/services - admittedly that's an assumption I made/applied to the OP from the limited details he shared but I felt the caveats I added were sufficient and I wanted to convey to him/her that there's no need to feel paralyzed - though that betrays my implicit point of view that bootstrapping and forward movement are generally the right answer when it comes to new small businesses.

Anyway, this exchange is probably a useful qualifier, so thanks.

Harold Mansfield
03-01-2015, 01:24 PM
I just got a call Friday that started out with some issues I hear all the time. He spent 20 minutes telling me how disappointed he was with speaking to so many designers that demand to know what his budget was before they would speak to him. And it didn't matter what he said, they all came back with proposals that left much to be desired and were always at whatever max he said.

My process is simple. I don't care what your budget is. Once I know what you want and need, and when you need it...I give you a price. Your price is the same as the next guy who calls and wants the exact same thing. So for me I don't care what your budget is. My price is my price no matter who you are. If it fits your budget, great. If not, maybe we can discuss some cost saving measures that will still help us move forward.

And I see this a lot. So many service providers base the price on how much money the client has. Not an actual scale of the work compared to their rate. This is why people don't trust us.

CutStreamWebDesign
03-01-2015, 02:12 PM
I just got a call Friday that started out with some issues I hear all the time. He spent 20 minutes telling me how disappointed he was with speaking to so many designers that demand to know what his budget was before they would speak to him. And it didn't matter what he said, they all came back with proposals that left much to be desired and were always at whatever max he said.

My process is simple. I don't care what your budget is. Once I know what you want and need, and when you need it...I give you a price. Your price is the same as the next guy who calls and wants the exact same thing. So for me I don't care what your budget is. My price is my price no matter who you are. If it fits your budget, great. If not, maybe we can discuss some cost saving measures that will still help us move forward.

And I see this a lot. So many service providers base the price on how much money the client has. Not an actual scale of the work compared to their rate. This is why people don't trust us.

I see your frustration and it makes sense to me. We're talking about related but different ideas to a degree though the information gap that exists between clients/designers and the ethics involved in dealing with that gap are important to all areas of this discussion.

tfot
04-13-2015, 08:05 PM
I would suggest you buy your domain through somebody like GoDaddy.
Then sign up on something like Weebly.com or Wix.com or Imcreator.com or Webs.com for free.
These are all website builders online that will host your website free of charge and are reliable and easy to use, no coding is needed as they are all drag and drop based.
Select the option that lets you use your own domain.
Done.

turboguy
04-13-2015, 08:57 PM
I pretty much agree with what everyone here is saying. I see no problem with having your domain registration and hosting at one place as long as it is someplace like GoDaddy or Hostgator. It is more convenient in many ways but under no condition should you get your domain name through someone creating your website.

I have no first hand experience with Wix, Weebly or GoDaddys site builder. I have heard comments that Weebly was easier than GoDaddy. I should suggest Wix since I own stock in the company but I don't really know much about how easy their site builder is to use. I think it is pretty easy.

A lot of people recommend Wordpress and Wordpress does seem to be taking over the internet. There are a lot of plusses. I am playing with Wordpress for the first time right now. I would not agree that you can have a site up and running in an hour if you have never used it or created a web site. I probably spent 10 hours watching youtube videos on it and then another 10 or 20 hours looking through templates (I guess I am too fussy). I probably spent 4 hours trying to get wordpress set up with an hour and a half of that time on the phone with GoDaddy support (they were wonderful and I can't praise them enough). I have only spent an hour or so in the control panel but at this stage can't get it to do a thing. My other thing with Wordpress is to me unless you can really do a lot so many of the sites look similar, drab and cookie cutter. My plans had been to convert three of my sites to WordPress and I started with a site I didn't care much about and may eventually drop but have been underimpressed with WordPress enough so far that I may just go back to DreamWeaver for the other two.

Harold Mansfield
04-13-2015, 09:30 PM
My other thing with Wordpress is to me unless you can really do a lot so many of the sites look similar, drab and cookie cutter. My plans had been to convert three of my sites to WordPress and I started with a site I didn't care much about and may eventually drop but have been underimpressed with WordPress enough so far that I may just go back to DreamWeaver for the other two.

Just wanted to jump in on this statement.

So many WordPress sites look alike because people think building a website is easy, and try to do it themselves even though they have no idea how. So they are limited to what they can figure out, and whatever options the template offers and that's all they can do. So they look alike.

Whether you use WordPress or something else, if you have no knowledge of the web, design, copy writing, using fonts, colors, images, calls to actions, SEO, Marketing and so on and so on...you will not build a great website. You just won't. No one will ever come up with a drag and drop system that teaches people how to build a website. They'll just make it easy for you to put up pictures and words.

People have gotten a false sense of security with WordPress over the past 2-3 years. It's true that it is one of the easiest CMS's or website builders to manage and it is very flexible, and it's possibilities are almost limitless. But it's not easy. You won't be a wiz in 2 weeks just because your host has one click install (Which Go Daddy has by the way. Don't know why it took you 4 hours to install it).

If you want to build something professional, original, and custom...you need to know something about the web, and design. That includes HTML, CSS, Photography and using images, SEO, a little PHP will help, and actual marketing. If you don't know these things WordPress can't do it for you.

The web is hard. You you have to learn stuff. There is no package you can buy that's going to make your site successful or even make one $1. If you don't learn these things and you do it yourself, your website will always look like it was built by an amateur..because it is.

So now when people ask if WordPress is something they can do on their own I tell them only if they are willing to learn. If not, and it to make you a web wiz who'll be designing beautiful websites in weeks, don't bother. There's nothing out there that's magic and that you won't have to learn how to use properly. Nothing.

Want to build a great website? Learn.
No shortcuts exist.

I said this before...the web is the one place where people imagine all this great success and revenue, yet it's the place where they cheap out the most and spend the least amount of money.

turboguy
04-13-2015, 10:02 PM
Nice post Harold. I think many of the things you said are the same as some of the thoughts I have had after playing with WordPress for a short time. I think to really get the kind of site I want it won't be drag and drop. I do know a fair amount about HTML and CSS but have only played a bit with PHP.

I do think most people would install Wordpress in a few minutes. I probably spent 20 minutes because I was installing it in a sub domain and wanted to double check and make sure it was installing where I wanted it. Part of the time on GoDaddys support was switching my sites over to a newer faster server and not just fixing my wordpress install. I won't get into the other whys but most people would find Wordpress easy to install.

krymson
04-14-2015, 11:23 AM
To expand upon Harold's comments...

There are certain design trends out at any given point and time. People want to keep up with trends and then you see a flood of similarly designed templates. Don't believe me check out Website Templates | Web Templates | Template Monster (http://www.templatemonster.com) , You'll see that around half look pretty close... That's just because of current design trends.

I tell businesses and other people this... If my water heater breaks I'm not going to try and fix it, because I don't know how... I'll end up breaking something else or doing more harm in the process. Unless your profession is web design and digital marketing, don't try to do it yourself, you'll more than likely do more harm than good. Make the investment to do it right the first time, it will benefit you more in the long run.

billbenson
04-16-2015, 11:24 PM
To expand upon Harold's comments...

There are certain design trends out at any given point and time. People want to keep up with trends and then you see a flood of similarly designed templates. Don't believe me check out Website Templates | Web Templates | Template Monster (http://www.templatemonster.com) , You'll see that around half look pretty close... That's just because of current design trends.

I tell businesses and other people this... If my water heater breaks I'm not going to try and fix it, because I don't know how... I'll end up breaking something else or doing more harm in the process. Unless your profession is web design and digital marketing, don't try to do it yourself, you'll more than likely do more harm than good. Make the investment to do it right the first time, it will benefit you more in the long run.

While I agree 100% with Harold, everybody should build either a html website or CMS website (hobby sites). How else do you expect to learn what goes into building a website, managing a site development site if you are a corporate marketing manager, or manage your web designer.

The concept that site builders will rank well in the search engines is unlikely. But the concept that a cookie cutter WP site won't make you money is nonsense. A professional website will likely make you more money, but you have to know how to pick the right professional to design the site.

krymson
04-17-2015, 10:06 AM
While I agree 100% with Harold, everybody should build either a html website or CMS website (hobby sites). How else do you expect to learn what goes into building a website, managing a site development site if you are a corporate marketing manager, or manage your web designer.


I will agree with you here... but the keyword is HOBBY SITES. Nothing that's for real branding purposes though. You're going to want your brand to have its own identity. If you're going the same route as everyone else, you get lost in the mix. I recently wrote a post on title tags, Keyword Stuffed vs "Clickbait" style. Most people use the Keyword stuffed titles "Keyword | Company Name" or "Company Name | Key Phrase" and if you do a Google Search, more than likely 80% of the results are going to follow that format... and it's a proven format, but if you're following that format, your site get lost because everyone else is doing that. Now if you have a creative sentence in there incorporating your keyword, you'll probably get a little bit more attention, because it's different.

That's why I say. Have it done right so you establish your own identity not blend in.

billbenson
04-17-2015, 08:41 PM
Well, I think you should use the title tag. But a different title tag that matches the content for the page. Also, the page should address one and only one subject or product.

As for the hobby site, that is great for marketing managers, small business owners etc. But for many it can lead to a web design or online marketing career. Say a 16 y/o ambitious kid studies and makes a ecommerce site. Even though its not the greatest site, he could be making a few hundred bucks a month by the time he graduated from high school.

Take someone who is unemployed and can't find a job. He also could do the same.

In my opinion, the objective of a hobby site is a site that can land you in the top 5 on G. But you can combine that with something that makes you some money.

krymson
04-20-2015, 12:26 PM
Well, I think you should use the title tag. But a different title tag that matches the content for the page. Also, the page should address one and only one subject or product.

As for the hobby site, that is great for marketing managers, small business owners etc. But for many it can lead to a web design or online marketing career. Say a 16 y/o ambitious kid studies and makes a ecommerce site. Even though its not the greatest site, he could be making a few hundred bucks a month by the time he graduated from high school.

Take someone who is unemployed and can't find a job. He also could do the same.

In my opinion, the objective of a hobby site is a site that can land you in the top 5 on G. But you can combine that with something that makes you some money.

That's how I started out over 10 years ago. My friend and I built a site for our skateboarding videos, and I was early in high school and been in love with it ever since. My fiance hates it because it's all I talk about and want to do. But she knows its passion and desire, and it's paid off. I'm 26 landed a decent full time job as a web developer at a cloud security company, and I get to run my business on the side until I can make the leap into running my business full time. So no, you're honestly right because that's the path I took in high school.

veritasvisions
09-18-2015, 01:29 AM
Honestly, I think it's best to just hire it out and pay the money because you'll spend way too much time building it that you could be using to get sales for your business.

billbenson
09-19-2015, 04:23 PM
Honestly, I think it's best to just hire it out and pay the money because you'll spend way too much time building it that you could be using to get sales for your business.

And if you don't have the money to do that? Or maybe you want to learn something about web design?

Olson
09-23-2015, 04:51 AM
The easiest way is to use site builder. I used Strikingly and Instapage. Very simple and beautiful constructors.

glord
11-15-2015, 01:32 AM
The easiest way is to use site builder. I used Strikingly and Instapage. Very simple and beautiful constructors.

I have tried Wix and Website.com and I prefer Website.com because it gives you a free domain name.