Previously, we have talked about how to make a webpage for your business. We discussed how important it is to have one if you plan on connecting with a lot of people and selling your services or products successfully. Now we want to talk about finding the right platform for your website and where to make it if you don’t have that much money and want something inexpensive.

How to make a free website for your business is easy – you just sign up for a free account in any of the following:

1. Blogger – Blogger has been one of the most popular and probably the first to offer free blog services in the internet. If your website is more on updating your customers about your business, then a blog format may be the right platform for you. You can sign up for a free account in Blogger and make this your website. You can always customize your layout in Blogger using CSS, or find free templates around the web that suits your taste.
2. WordPress – WordPress is also a great platform for your website. It works just like Blogger, in the sense that you sign up for a free account and you get a free blog in turn. The beauty of WordPress is that it offers a lot of free templates that are built-in and have great looking designs that will suit a business or any individual. You can also add widgets on the side columns like spam blockers or visitor count. WordPress is recommended for those who are looking for something more professional and serious looking. Also, Google indexes WordPress blogs pretty well so you can be sure that if you put in the right keywords you will show up in the search results fairly easy.
3. Webs.com – Like the first two, you can pick a web address to use as well as a template that you can customize later on. They offer two types of template: one has embedded advertisement into the site itself, and the other has the ad placed on top of the page. This service also lets you select a web package – there’s a “Free” option, so don’ worry. Webs.com offers a function, ‘Help Me Build My Site’, and this is useful if you are not very knowledgeable with HTML. However, if you want to do the personalization on your own, you can choose the ‘Start Building On My Own’ option. You will also be asked on what type of website you want to create. The following are the given options: Personal, Clubs and Groups, and Professional and Small business.
4. FortuneCity – This website offers you a lot of web storage space for a free account – amounting to 1GB. This is useful if you will be creating a website that has a lot of graphics and would make use of the bandwidth generously. It also offers a file manager that will help in organizing your files.
5. Google Sites – If you have a Google account (signing up is free), you can make a free website using Google. Google Sites offers pre-made templates where you can choose from a lot of designs for your website. Per their description, it boasts of the service as “powerful enough for a company intranet, yet simple enough for a family website.” You can also change privacy settings so that it can viewed in several ways: public and free for all, or only by people whom you have given access to.
6. Weebly.com – This service is quite popular among users and have even gained critical praise from Time and Newsweek. Weebly is an easy service that lets you create a free website and a blog. The beauty of Weebly is that it has an easy drag-and-drop interface that would be perfect for people who don’t have a lot of technical know-how. It also offers a lot of designs to choose from and free domain hosting.
7. Wix.com – Wix offers free Flash-based websites, so if you want something modern, stylish and something that will instantly wow people, then you might want to give this a try. However, you also need to consider your audience – Flash websites tend to load slowly in some computers, and some users don’t have the patience to wait for the whole thing to finish downloading before they can start reading what your business is all about.
8. Yola.com – Yola is another service that offers professional-looking websites in very easy steps. One advantage of this service is there are no banners or popup advertisements for your free account. It has a website builder to help you set up your site. They also offer 1GB worth of storage and you can create up to 5 sites.
9. Moonfruit.com – Moonfruit offers free websites and has its own do-it-yourself website builder that will guide you through the process. They also offer social networking integration tools, so if you want to link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, they make it possible. You can also upload your own images, videos and even music files. Moonfruit also offers third party content tools like YouTube and MySpace videos integration. There is also a free library of images, animations and widgets for you to use in your site.
10. Wetpaint – Wetpaint offers free website creation and a great community, too, where you can make new friends and network. If your website is about something you love and will focus primarily on that then you might want to check this service out. Wetpaint is described to great for small groups, fansites or classes. Their description says it best: “[Wetpaint is where you can] mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich, user-generated community based around the whatever-it-is that rocks your socks.”

Some things to remember: one of the most important steps in making your website is choosing the name of your site. Be careful in doing this because this will be what would represent you. Free accounts might not allow for much customization and will usually attach their company name to the URL. For example: yourname.blogspot.com or yourname.wordpress.com. If you can shell out some money, you can buy your own domain name and then apply it to the free account that you have signed up for. Blogger and WordPress allows this, so go ahead and opt for this if you think they’re the right platform for you.

Another thing you can do is research first on the names that you want and see if the name is already taken. If you find a lot of companies have already the same name, you might want to change yours a bit to be more unique.

Related posts:

1. Why Getting A Website for Your Business is A Great Idea