Thanks, Google: The Ten-Dollar Website

Last week, during my "Entrepreneurial Linguist" presentation in Vienna, I addressed the importance of having a website. Our web guru, IT superhero, and general guardian angel, Tom Gruber, did some research for us, and he came up with the following recommendation.
Many of our fellow language professionals don’t have websites because they can be quite expensive. Google to the rescue! Thanks to the smart folks at Google who created Google Apps and Google Sites, you can register and manage a website for just $10 a year. While you won’t have a top-of-the-line website, you'll get an easy-to-manage site with an associated e-mail account that gives potential clients a quick overview of your services and qualifications. Our recommendation is to at least include sections on About, Contact, Services, Rates, Qualifications, Clients, etc. Be sure to keep things simple and easy to navigate: your goal is to make sure the customer contacts you after visiting your site.

Sign Up at Google Apps for the Standard edition. You can find a Video Tutorial here. After a few minutes, you can activate your e-mail account and start building your new website with Google Sites. And no, you won't need the help of a web developer to get started: building a website is as simple as editing a document. Questions? Google help center will most likely have the answer.

Of course, we also like supporting other small businesses (web designers, etc.), so if you'd like to spend a bit more, look for a local specialist, who should be able to build a basic website and maintain it for a few hundred dollars. Have fun with your site! We'd love to hear your experiences.



7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Though the Google Sites service is great (well, the price can't be more competitive...) I still miss some more personalization of the content and the design. This is why I prefer to stick with Wordpress. It is a extremely reliable and powerful CMS which allows you, not only to manage and maintain a blog, but also to do the same with your own personal and customized website. For those like me who are not professional Web designers, I believe it is a great tool.

Judy Jenner and Dagmar Jenner on March 12, 2009 at 9:39 AM said...

Agreed, Olli, we hear Wordpress is fantastic as well. It's also a great tool that we will certainly mention when asked about how to get an inexpensive website going. Thanks for commenting and thanks for reading!

Thomas Gruber on March 12, 2009 at 10:35 AM said...

@Olli I agree Wordpress is phantastic but you need a little more knowledge how to order a domain and install Wordpress on a server although it's fairly easy at most webhosts.

I recommend Google for people with no webknowledge at all because its cheap and super easy. And i think Google will add services in the future.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the post, very informative! Now, as a newcomer to the world of entrepeneurs I have a question: do you need to be incorporated as a business to sign up for google apps and get a domain and website?

Judy Jenner and Dagmar Jenner on November 19, 2009 at 4:56 PM said...

@Anonymous: thanks for your comment, we are glad you enjoyed the post. And no, you don't have to be incorporated or anything -- these apps are available for everyone. Happy website designing!

Thomas Gruber on December 21, 2009 at 7:19 AM said...

Google Sites has added a lot of new templates: http://www.google.com/sites/overview.html

Thomas Gruber on December 21, 2009 at 8:15 AM said...

I've just played around a little bit and build a site in 5 min http://sites.google.com/site/grubertom/home

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