Welcome
This site is intended to be a resource for small businesses trying to separate the truth from the hype so they can make the best decisions for their businesses on how to present themselves online.
This site is intended to show you what a FREE WordPress.com site can offer in terms of a small business website. I prefer a hosted WordPress site, which offers more flexibility in both function and design. To see my “real” business website and all of my FREE articles on building your own small business or non-profit website, go to www.smallsiteworks.com.
As a point of reference, this site on WordPress.com was completely FREE to build. I haven’t even registered a domain to forward to it (though that can certainly be done that for as little as $10 a year).
For comparison, my “real” business website cost me a total of $136.64 to set up ($15 for the domain, $50 for the software to design the custom theme, and $71.64 for three years of hosting). My recurring costs for the site will be just $15 for each of the next two years for the domain renewal. Even if my webhost doesn’t offer another special on multi-year hosting, it will cost me no more than $60 a year for the hosting. That means my total annual website costs will be no more than $75 a year. For that small cost, I get considerable more customization and flexibility as well as access to the database that powers my content (no risk of my site going dark if Blogger or WordPress.com decide to shut me down or change their business models).
