You’ve registered your domain and your on your way to getting your business online. Now you’ll be receiving offers from all types of companies. They will help you design your logo, design your site, get you on the first page of Google. One email I consistently receive is notification that I must submit my website to search engines. Submit or face the dire consequences! For a fee, of course. Are these offers legitimate, necessary or scams? What is worth spending money on? The best way to ensure you’re saving money getting your business online is to be aware of what is essential.
What not to spend money on
I suggest you disregard most of those phone calls and emails. They are annoying and seemingly endless, but eventually they do stop. If you are looking for website/logo design, do your research. Don’t go with the cheapest offer or the lofty promises. Find out all you can about any potential company you might use. If you don’t know of a design professional and you’re considering using someone that has sent you an email, research them. Ask questions. Be thorough.
You can also ignore the submission emails. The ones that tell you you must submit your website to search engines or face penalties. This is just not true. Search engines crawl through millions and millions of web pages. Eventually, they’ll find your website. Also, search engines give no guarantee of ranking your page just because you have submitted your website. That said, you should submit your site. Doing this submission yourself is simple. Save some money with a few minutes of your time.
Many other registrars offer services like email accounts, email campaigns, extra storage and calendar programs. Before jumping on any of those services, make sure you need them.
Most hosting services (which you will need to get online) offer email accounts for free. There are also email campaign companies like MailChimp.com that let you use their services for free as long as you have under 2,000 subscribers. Extra storage is only necessary if you plan to have thousands of images or hundreds of videos on your website. Most hosting providers offer plenty of storage that you’ll never need to add more. Even having a rough idea of what you want your website to do will help you stay away from services you don’t need and save you money.
What to spend money on
Being thorough will make saving money getting your business online possible. If you’re going to spend money on any of the services offered by registrars, spend it on domain privacy protection. Looking to avoid all these phone calls and emails from providers, choose privacy. When you register your domain all your contact info is public. Registrars also sell your info to third-parties. By choosing this protection, your personal information is hidden from the public WHOIS database. A proxy service appears. You don’t have to worry about those annoying email offers.
In addition to protecting you from solicitors, it can protect your personal information including your email. Identity theft is always a major concern. There’s little reason to have your personal information out there to be discovered.
Prices can vary greatly from one provider to another. The cost ranges from a few dollars a year to a few extra dollars per month. Private registration services get to determine their rates without any oversight or control.
Saving money getting your business online
In summary, saving money getting your business online can be done by understanding what you really need. If you have an idea of the scope of your site and what you want it to do, you can avoid getting services or features you don’t need. Be skeptical of the offers that start coming in as soon as you register your domain. Have questions? Let me know if the comments!