As a new VA, I can’t afford a website

I’ve been corresponding with a couple of new Virtual Assistants over the past couple of weeks. They found me via different VA forums and started emailing me for advice.

One said she couldn’t afford a website yet and was asking me what she could do to promote her business online. This is my response to her:

“What makes you think you can’t afford a website?  The reality is you could get webhosting and a domain for a year for a very minimal amount of money (I provide this service and I know that other VA organisations do too).  And if the webhost provides WordPress (which is free software) you could have a site up in a couple of hours. There are tons of free templates out there, you don’t have to know web coding – the program works very much like Word in lots of ways and you can publish online straight away.  It would also mean you would have a domain address that is yours to keep, people could look you up and learn about what you do and you can update it anytime you want. www.wordpress.org has a free support forum and many of the VA discussion groups can help answer questions too.

I’m much more experienced with WordPress now but was a beginner around 6 or 7 years ago and I love the program.  I’ve learnt enough html to tweak the coding and make changes if I want to – but you don’t have to at all. You don’t have to have a business name – you could buy yourname.com if it was available or even yourname-va.com or similar.  I’m sure you’d come up with a few possibilities if you thought of it.”

So, if you’ve been struggling with the idea of whether you can afford a website or not, I hope the above helps dispel that problem for you.