How to Get Started on a Small Budget – Option 1- Get a Free Website
It can be tough to spend money on your coaching business if you have no clients, or aren’t earning much in your main stay. You don’t want to start spending money and go in the hole.
At the same time, you want a good website to help you look credible. You know people will check you out online as you start spreading the word.
It’s a catch 22. You want a website to help you get paying clients BUT you also want paying clients to fund the website.
So how do you create a good coaching website on a small budget? I’ll give you five options over the coming weeks. The first is …
Option 1 – A free minimal website.
Go for a very basic website. These consist of a handful of pages and a menu at the top for people to navigate around.
You can get free, simple ones from host companies or other web-based DIY building tools. Just search for “free website”, “free website builder”. For a smarter search to give you some advice on deciding which to use, try “free website reviews” or “top 10 best website builders”.
You do save money and with some decent copy you can make a decent presentation for what you do. While the design and layouts have much improved since the early web days, their layouts don’t guide you in how to generate leads or how to write content to generate a lead. That’s a bit more in the marketing smarts realm.
Wix and Weebly are two popular free online website building services. Also, most hosting companies offer a website builder tool either free or for a fee. Another option, especially if you intend to blog, is to use WordPress.com (it’s not the fully featured, customizable version that is all the rave).
These kinds of sites tend to be difficult to enhance, such as adding an email list or free download, unless you start paying monthly for access to these features.
However you go about constructing your website, you should make sure you’ve got a winning strategy. The Coaching Site Guide gives you writing formulas, website examples, and diagrams to ensure your website is designed for client-attraction. Learn more here.
Three tips to make this strategy work for you are:
(a) get a crisp, clean layout, aiming for simpler,
(b) and get one great article posted to that site to refer to prospects, and
(c) be sure to create a juicy call to action – to get people to contact you (make it irresistible).
In the coming weeks, I’ll go into four more options for getting your coaching website up on a small budget.
As a quick heads-up, the options are:
Option 1 – Get a free website (today’s article)
Option 2 – Barter with a pro
Option 3 – Get a friend
Option 4 – Find a low-cost freelancer
Option 5 – Do it yourself
If you’ve used a free website service or builder, post your website below and any comments on how you liked or didn’t like the tool would be great to share. Thanks.