How To Build An Award Winning Website For Less Than $100

Do you wish you were able to take control of your own website? Are you tired of having to pay a programmer, or your website master every time you want to make a simple change, or add some content to your site? How about a redesign of your website that allows you to think through the process and be in control of its creation? What if you could build a website for less than $100.00?

If that sounds exciting but intimidating, then you’ve landed in the right place. Despite most people believing that you have to take a programming class to be able to create, build and manage your website…I’m here to tell you, you can do all of this and more – even if you have no programming knowledge whatsoever.

I know it sounds like a very tall order to take someone who has no programming knowledge, isn’t a geek, didn’t grow up with computers as an everyday appliance and teach them in a matter of hours how to create an amazing website and costing less than $100 to do it all (that includes hosting of your site to boot!). But that’s exactly what we’re going to teach you today.

>> At the bottom of this post is a FREE Video Training Series Offer to walk you through how to build a website for less than 100$  – and it’s absolutely FREE<<

Components Of Your Website

The foundation. If you have a good one, your web site much like your house can stand the perils of time. Otherwise you my as well pack up and run for cover because it’s just a matter of time before you’re forced to evacuate.

In the web world, this can come at you in many ways and forms including but not limited to viruses or malware infection, spammer prison (constant spamming from idiots), ransom for your site or domain (if you’ve had this happen you’re cringing now), or simply having your site become outdated and inflexible for change almost over night.

The sad part is that this is all easily avoidable and almost free.

Hosting

First it starts with a good hosting company. One that you can trust (has a great reputation, lots of clients, and isn’t going anywhere) This doesn’t mean a hosting company that’s super expensive. In fact the price in this industry doesn’t play a lot of reason until you start getting up to the traffic volume demanding a more private hosted server situation.

If you don’t have a hosting company or are not entirely satisfied with your provider, I recommend you check these guys out (bluehost). You won’t be disappointed.

approximate cost: $5.00 per month

Content Management System (CMS)

With the hosting resolved for less than a decent latte with bluehost, your next concern is a strong content management system (CMS). Now there are many reasons to go with a strong CMS backend but my favorite is the ability to allow you and I to control our website without programming knowledge. This includes;

• Creating new pages/posts
• Changing content any pages easily
• Adding rich media like pictures or videos
• Flexibility to change/add-on features later
• Security updated regularly as the web changes and threats increase
• Spammers blocked and kept at bay
• Large support group for questions and answers
• Search engine friendly so we’ll get found

By far my preferred CMS back-end (oh and the rest of the worlds too) is WordPress. The amazing part about WordPress is that not only can it do everything on my wishlist above, but to boot…it’s FREE!

If you’ve chosen your host correctly like mentioned above, then adding WordPress to your hosting account is a breeze.

approximate cost: Free

Your Design

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a challenge drawing a stick-man, never mind designing, color coordinating, and structuring a smart website design layout. So if the first two components didn’t scare you off from taking control of your website design, then this part surely did. I know it did just that to me for a long time.

The funny part is, that for a lot of people it’s the design itself that stops them from going forward with building a website. The aesthetics I mean. They don’t even consider the coding behind the design that can act like a road block to search engines.

A lot of businesses come to us confused about why they aren’t found in the search engines. When we look at the coding of their design and we find a cross between Medusa’s hair (on a bad day) and a food fight with pasta and home-made sauce. Lets just say the word custom in the design world, is not always a good thing.

So some of the key concerns you need to consider in your design is of course aesthetics, but beyond this you need to be concerned with;

• SEO friendly,
• Clean coding,
• Standard and easy navigation,
• Flexible and compatible with WordPress (no food fights here),
• Support (this one surprises most),
• Professional layout,
• And of course attractive (last and lowest on the list)

Seriously attractive should be the last concern. Of course nobody wants to pick a dogs breakfast for a design, but one persons masterpiece is another persons migraine. So its subjective and …oh boy don’t get me started on this one. Lets just say your website has a job to do, and look good is not a measurable goal.

Ok so with design having such a critical role in the components of your website design, this is where you need to pay out thousands to get this done right – right? Wrong!

But this is where you want to invest a little to make sure you meet the above list and more frankly, this is where you turn to a Premium WordPress theme. Emphasis on Premium!

We recommend Genesis WordPress themes for all the above reasons and for many more. Not only do they have amazingly attractive themes (I know this is last on my list, but I bet it’s still high on yours 😉 but more importantly their designs are heavily filtered for quality control to make sure security and cleanliness (the search engines like google love the easy clean design for crawling and understanding what your business is about).

Here is the amazing part. To pay for a “custom design” the calibre of what you will get in Genesis that is attractive, clean navigation, has a professional layout, and is 100% compatible with WordPress you could expect to pay thousands of dollars. And then still not be sure if the coding was clean or where support would be when you needed it. With Genesis you will be up and running often for less than $100. Absolutely amazing!

approximate cost: less than 100$

Content

This is incredibly important and you’re sure to mess it up at first. I mean think about it. Have you written something before, come back to read it six months later and said – dang I wish I could have changed that part. Of course you have, we all have. So although content is important, and I don’t want you to take this lightly, know that the ability to change your content as you grow in your own skills and things change, is more important. Hence the strong foundation above.

So with your content here are a few tips to consider when you’re preparing your pages and information.

Write like your speaking to your customer. It makes sense that how you speak to your customer should resonate with your customer that visits you online right? If it doesn’t resonate with someone, chances are (as long as your writing is resembling how you would speak to that person) they wouldn’t be your customer anyways – so who cares.

As a warning – know this…you are not writing a book for a Pulitzer Award. You’re writing to tell your potential clients. Do that! I know the grammar might not be right, and the words may be simple (that’s better by the way), but your future customer will appreciate it.

Use headlines and sub-headlines. As surfers we scan. Be sure your content is scannable and it flows when you scan. Is the logic there? Try and read your page when your done by just reading headlines and sub-headlines. Did you get the gist of what you were trying to communicate?

Use bullets and keep things short. Again emphasizing scannable content, bullets and short paragraphs (3-4 sentences) is key.

Use rich media an images. A picture can tell a thousand words. Make sure your pictures do. And if you can’t, then a video certainly will. Test how your market responds to different types of content.

Tell your visitor what they need to know. Your website can be a great filter for potential clients. Let it do its job by giving enough information to make sure your visitor knows what you and your product or service is all about before they ever contact you. Clients that hire us, often tell me they feel like they already know me when we first talk. That’s a good sign!

Content is important, in fact critical to your websites success. You can definitely hire this out (it’s not cheap) but before you do, you need to consider that no one knows your business as well as you do. So if possible, try to do this yourself. Even if you need a writer to edit your final drafts, at least the content will be rich.

approximate cost: depends on if you’re up to the task

The Process

That’s it! In 4 steps and with less than 100$ you’ve saved yourself thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars and you are in control of your website. Those steps are;

1. Get a quality reliable hosting company. We recommend bluehost.
2. Install WordPress on your hosting account. Good hosts will make this easy.
3. Purchase a Premium WordPress theme. We recommend Genesis by Studio Press
4. Write your content

4.5 ….have your content reviewed by a writer/editor

This process is easy and in fact to test it I tried it with my brother just last week. He needed a website, so I decided to have him build it himself (he’s not a programmer 🙂

In one night we had a brand new professional (and attractive) website up and running. Two weeks later he is still adding content, but he can and that’s the cool part. All of it cost him was less than a 100$ and a bottle of wine for his brother (me).

When we finished he said to me “Wow this was easy, BUT, I wouldn’t have wanted to do this without you sitting there beside me kind of walking me through the process.”

I thought that was fair. Having me kind of guide him through the process was valuable and certainly saved him a lot of time and frustration. So I thought about this and how I could help you design your website…

How To Design Your Own Website **Special Offer

I understand that as easy it is for me to lay out in four easy steps how to build your own website tonight and all for less than a 100$, it may be a little intimidating to most. Frankly this is what we do, day in and day out.

So after going through the process of looking over my brothers shoulder while he learned to build his first site, I decided I could do the same for you.

So I built a video course, that has over 20 hours of video training on how to build and manage your own WordPress site. Even though there is over 20 hours of video training, you’ll be up and running in the first 5 hours. The rest will give you amazing powers to manage and customize your site even further.

Now you’re welcome to buy the course for just under 200$. But as a reader of our site, I want to give you the opportunity to have the course for free. And its simple to do…

Simply buy your hosting or/and your WordPress Premium theme using my affiliate links (anywhere in this post) to make your purchase. Email me a copy of your receipt and I will give you instant access to our “WordPress Training – How to build your site for less than 100$” for Free!

That’s it, make your purchase using our links in this post, email me your receipt (support@gill-media.com) and my team will register you for instant access to our video based training.

The “WordPress Training – How to build your site for less than 100$” walks you through from start to finish how to build your own WordPress site, looking over our screens as we walk you through the process. With over 20 hours of video training, Free is an amazing deal. In fact what you save on purchasing the course will more than pay for your website and first year of hosting.

Love to hear your comments below. Feel free if you’ve watched our training to leave feedback for others on our course.