greetings…I had designed and used a website through microsoft small business free website hosting for a couple years. Now they quit and I need a new host. As a newer inspector and not really getting much business off the website, i need to look for something free again. there is myriad links which advertise ‘free website’ hosting but its not really. wondering if anybody has encountered the same situation and come up with a solution.
mike in MN
Mike… perhaps the poor results you get from your free website, are the results of your ‘Free’ Website!
Not including referrals, approx. 90% of my new business is a result of one of my websites.
You get what you pay for.
Mike,
As Jonas said, you get what you pay for. It is one thing to be careful about your spending but trying to run a business using free stuff, whether a website or anything else, is usually not a good strategy. You would do better to have a website, get a few jobs and walk to the inspections to save the gas money. At least you would have the jobs. This way, you have nothing. Free websites are not really free. They make their money by selling their stuff. They are getting you to do their advertising for them.
I apologize if I sound too harsh but that is the reality of running a business. You are going to have some expenses. Some of those expenses get you work. In terms of costs, home inspection is one of the easiest businesses to get into. A tank of gas these days can easily cost between $50 and $100. You can have a very nice website for an entire year for the cost of a tank of gas.
What George said, a free web site always comes with a hitch or limitations. I paid about $100 for domain name heb hosting and it comes with tech support. Like $100 for the year. Then you can work on your own SEO, and get the site you need and have it found (a web site no one can find is worthless).
That being said it takes months to climb the search engine ranking. My site has been up for about 3 moths and still only up to page 2 on google. You need to be patient, maybe try google ad words to get some clicks before you rank highly in search engines…
Hello Michael Inwards,
My name is Danny. I work with Nick over at InterNACHI. I have a great low-stress and low-cost solution to help you compete with the other home inspectors in your service area.
I can help you improve your inspection company’s visibility with a world-class website that you and I will design together. We can create a business website that meets your customers’ demands, and we can do it all on InspectorPages.com.
As you know, first impressions are key in the inspection business. Home buyers are online touring new homes, shopping for mortgages, researching schools, emailing their real estate agents, and looking for home inspectors. Your website is your first impression, so let’s make it work for you.
InspectorPages is your doorway to new business for only $15 a month. InspectorPages is offered in cooperation with InterNACHI, the world’s largest inspection trade association, and built on top of WordPress, arguably the most stable website platform in the world, used by 14% of the world’s 1,000,000 biggest websites.
Don’t let business pass you by because your prospective clients can’t find you on the Internet. Create a professional web presence by taking advantage of this essential and low-cost marketing opportunity!
InspectorPages features:
• More than 100 beautiful and customizable themes;
• The ability to edit your site easily anywhere using WYSIWYG, so you don’t have to know HTML;
• 24-hour tech support and video tutorials that you can watch anytime;
• Robust forms;
• 1GB of online storage;
• SEO-optimization;
• Automatic backup;
• Unlimited bandwidth;
• And more!
Access InterNACHI directories:
• FindAnInspector.US
• InspectorNow.com
• InspectorSeek.com
• InspectorLocator.com
• http://www.nachi.org/directories.htm
Website Examples
http://bluelizardhi.com/
http://westlighthome.com/
http://rdthomeinspection.com/
Please contact me at support@inspectorpages.com so that we can get started today!
Bingo.
Should we mark this as SPAM?:mrgreen:
I’d mark it as “Free and Subsidized Website Hosting for Members”
That is a false and misleading statement. It may be subsidized, but it’s certainly not free.
Nope. The website hosting is and always has been free. Read the next to last line in this bulleted list: http://www.nachi.org/one-click.htm
thanks for all input, i glean what i can from all input even negative. actually microsoft had a pretty nice free hosting which came up with no popups or ads. just my site (which i designed and it was pretty cool i might add) and nothing else. so educate me (not being sarcastic i really want to know if im missing some boat) what is better about ‘paid’ over ‘free’ if they both display the same site. the visitor cannot distinguish and think lowly of me since i have a free site. maybe theres something i dont know. i thought for sure i would encounter somebody else with the same question or who had been there.
also im in a more back woodsy hick type area and pretty sure the majority of my inspections come from realtor referral. thats part of the reason i dont want to invest to much money in something i dont think will pay back. but im willing to say i was wrong to learn something lucrative.
thanks for any continued feedback
mike in MN
Let’s try this…
I will no longer offer you advise to improve your website situation…
I am based 265 miles from your base town…
Since your join date of December 2010, I have performed 3 inspections in your general area, and receive inquiries every couple of months.
All of this business and much more comes from my websites.
I also have “Freebie” websites… I use them to establish my domain names while in Google’s sandbox…
I have two “Paid” primary websites (at this time).
Good luck to you. If you will not invest in yourself, why should your potential clients???
Mike, It is about one thing ROI, (return on investment). In the case of a free web site theres still a time investment.
In the case the site is really indestinguishable to potential clients, the thing i’d consider is this (i’m not an expert at web site stuff):
part of the SEO process is properly titling and tagging your pages to be found by google etc…My friend (a landscaper) had a free site and the page looked nice, problem in the domain name read like www(lanscaper guy business).com/(free site host name, etc…)
That stuff after the dot com, helps search engines find your site, he was unable to alter that stuff and could only have limited search engine visibility. Building your own site you can put your key words there to increase visibility, and visibility is the entire reason for a web site.
My 2 cents. I am not sure how your free host works but thats my biggest flaw in the limited experience i have with them.
Thanks Mike, that made some sense to me. Being a ‘grandpa’ and pretty much a learner in the area of internet activities, theres so much I do not know but want to learn. Your reply opened my eyes to some stuff. I will start researching more website options.
thanks again
mike in MN
Our sites are $25/mo. Here’s some things your free site from MS doesn’t provide:
Ability to schedule an inspection online
Ability to sign a contract online
Live support on phone, email, ticket, live chat
Support that helps you with your site and how to optimize it
Classes taught around the country on how to optimize your site and use social networking for your business.
Ability to intergrate news feeds into the site
Ability to easily exchange links with an existing link directory
40+ home inspection specific templates, and a lot more.
HIP Sites (paid) have inspector #1 in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Brooklyn, Queens, San Francisco, San Antonio, and dozens of other huge cities. InspectorPages (NACHI’s service) and ours are dedicated to inspectors, that’s all we both do, so we do a great job at it!