Can You Build a Website for Free?

There are many places that say you can build a website for free. Maybe you can, but is it worth it?Can you build a website for free? That's a question I hear all the time. Yes, you can build a website for free, but you really don't want to. The better question is what parts of a website cost money?

The Problem With Free Websites

There's no such thing as a free website. Somebody incurs costs - server hardware and software, Internet connectivity, domain registration, electricity to keep it all running. The person who pays for it all owns the website.

There are plenty of services that let you create a website for free, but you don't own it, they do. That means they have final say over what you can publish. WordPress.com, Blogger.com, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, etc. all allow you to post content for free. They can also take your content down at any time without notifying you.

How would you like to spend years publishing content to have it all disappear one night while you sleep. You wake up in the morning and find it all gone.

Pay for Your Web Hosting and Domain Registration

Go ahead and pay for your web hosting and domain registration. That gives you control of your own piece of real estate in the Internet. Nobody can tell you what you can or cannot say as long you don't violate any laws or copyrights.

You can get started for under $100 for your first year and the price is well worth your peace of mind as you go along.

It does take a little more effort at first to get everything set up, but once it is up and running it really isn't that much different than if you were using one of the free services. No, I take that back. It is different. You have more options available to you. Those free services can be very limiting.

After Web Hosting, Can You Build a Website for Free Then?

Yes. You can build a website for free once you take care of your hosting and domain registration. A whole bunch of blogging coaches just cringed 😉

Annual hosting and domain registration is all that I have ever paid for my websites and I currently have 5 of them active.

Everything else you need you can get for free. You can also find all of the information that you need to successfully run your website for free.

WordPress is free (the software from WordPress.org this time, not the service from WordPress.com). You can get free themes and free plugins to customize WordPress.

The Internet is full of free information about how to build a blog, use WordPress, and make money from it all.

There is Still a Cost Though.

There is one caveat. Anything worth building has a price, and that includes your website.

When I say that you can build a website for free, I'm talking about currency - dollars or whatever you use for money. You don't have to pay money to build your website.

The alternative price to money is time and effort. It will take you time and effort to build your website and get it profitable.

Consider this. You can get free maintenance on your car, if you want to do the work yourself. You can also build a house with free labor - your own labor that is. I think you will agree that in both cases it will probably take more time and effort than if you paid someone else.

Why I Chose the Free Route

I pay someone else to do most of the maintenance on my car and I rent my house, so I'm not responsible for maintenance on it. Car maintenance usually requires special tools and it just isn't worth my time (at least for now).

I did create my websites myself and continue to maintain them myself instead of paying someone else. Here's why.

First, building a website with WordPress is easy. It takes less than 15 minutes to purchase hosting, register a domain and install WordPress on it. At that point you have a functional website.

Second, building a website doesn't require any special tools other than a computer connected to the Internet. Most people have all the tools they need.

Third, and most important, my websites are business assets. All of my income comes through them. I have to know how they work.

Consider this. If you had a machine that generated all of your income would you be comfortable not knowing how it works? Would you leave yourself completely at the mercy of some maintenance guy? What if the machine breaks down and your guy is away on vacation? You're stuck.

You have to know how your website works. Once you know how to take care of it yourself then you can pay someone else to do it if you want. Now you are in position to understand the value that you are getting because you know what the person is doing, and you aren't at their mercy should they disappear.

How Do You Build Your Own Website?

I'm so glad you asked.

No, I don't sell a coaching package where I share all of my knowledge for a monthly fee.

Actually, I give away everything I know absolutely free. I'm building a membership section on this website where I step you through everything I did to build my websites to where they are now.

It is targeted to network marketers and affiliate marketers. The information is all the same, just the approach is specific to what I do.

What Do I Get Out of It?

In the program I recommend the hosting company that I use. If you choose to use the same company then I may earn a 1-time affiliate commission.

More importantly, I hope to build a community, a tribe if you prefer, from the participants. Blog commenting and social shares are very valuable when you want to build a successful website. My hope is that the people who decide to play with me will stick with it, visit every one else's blogs and share their content on social media.

Everyone wins.

Your Turn

Can you build a website for free? No, not completely for free. You should pay for hosting and a domain so that you own your work. Beyond that everything can be free.

Thank you for reading this today. What do you think about building a website for free, or for low annual cost I should say? Leave me a comment below and please share this post with your followers on social media.

If you are interested in looking at my free membership website just enter your first name and email address in this opt-in form and I'll get that information to you.

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