How important is it to have visibility online? Do you rely on having a Facebook Page for your business? Do you need a website? There are self-employed folks or biz owners working from home or wherever they may be providing remote services and guess what? They have no website and they are only on Facebook using FB page as their “website”.
I don’t understand why people only use Facebook as their business page. Do you think that everybody uses or have facebook account? Well…. The answer is no. There are people who don’t use FB and you are missing out to potentially reach them. There are people who don’t like that platform, perhaps it’s a small group of people but just know not everyone has a facebook account. If you are truly wanting to reach potential clients in my honest opinion, having a website is key.
If you are only on Facebook, just know you are agreeing to their terms and conditions. If Facebook believe that your you violated something they can delete and remove your Facebook business page. Facebook can shut you down. They actually have the rights to shut anyone down on their platform. Facebook is like your “landlord”, they own the property. You don’t really own your content on FB page. Think about this, what will you do if all of your customers that is in their platform the FB database are suddenly gone? Do you understand the consequences of this?
Any of these big tech giants on social media like Facebook, Twitter are just a small example of them owning your content and they have the right to delete your account if they see or feel you violated their terms or conditions. Sure, it’s alright to use FB page for your business but don’t put all of your eggs in this one basket! If you don’t have a website right now, TODAY, you are putting all your eggs in this one basket!
On the other hand if you have your own website that you are hosting, this “land” is yours. As long as you’re paying for your own hosting you have better control for your own content. You own all the information, you own “land”, this “virtual piece of real estate” of your online business.
There are many content management system. Perhaps you have heard of Drupal, Wix, SquareSpace, Joomla, Shopify, WooCommerce, or WordPress? These are just a few examples of using certain content management system to build a website.
WordPress (WP) is a very popular one to use. Take a look at some of the different types of content management systems, google it and watch some youtube videos and see which one is easiest for you to learn. Or, if you don’t want to learn how to create your own website, which I understand can be overwhelming or you may not have the time to learn it or you are not the techie type, you can hire someone to do this part for you. I can help with this!
You can use free versions of content management systems too, especially if you are starting a new business and want to try a website platform. There is a free version of WordPress or Wix as of this writing. If you use the free version it will contain their names in the browser name. So for example, let’s say your website name is Piano people. If you use the free versions of WP or Wix the browser name or domain name will appear as pianopeople.wix.com for example. Now, if you have the paid or premium type of Wix you will get your own domain name and in the browser it will show up as Piano People dot com. And sometimes the free version is acceptable, depending on your type of business.
I do know a handful of small business owners who uses the free versions of WordPress. So they’re business name say, let’s use my example again, wordpress.pianopeople.com.
If you decide to buy hosting instead of using the free one, shop around for the best prices and reliability. I’ve use a few different hosting services in the past and now I use GreenGeeks. What I like about GreenGeeks is they’re fast and reliable speeds and the most important thing for me is Customer Service. When you call GreenGeeks they don’t talk to you in that techie way so you don’t understand what they are talking about with their techie jargon. They speak to you in plain, easy to understand way in “layman’s terms”.
If something should go wrong with your website and you cannot figure out how to fix it, you want to reach out to customer support for their help. You don’t really want to mess around with waiting for the tech people to get back to you in days, like some other hosting companies. You need help right now.
That’s what I like about my paid hosting services with GreenGeeks, they are always available, especially for emergencies. To be transparent, I use GreenGeeks and I also have an affiliate link. But, I am not getting paid because I mentioned them here. I am just a user with an affiliate and a paid customer of theirs and so far love them!
Another thing is that you will need to buy your domain name if you pay for hosting. Your domain name is what I mentioned before, let’s say it was called Piano people. You can buy your domain name from GoDaddy, Hostgator, and Namecheap. I myself have purchased domain name from all three in the past. But lately been buying them at Namecheap. With Namecheap it was easier for me to maneuver their dashboard to change pointing the my domain to my hosting service.
So what I mean is let’s say you buy your domain name from Namecheap. But you are hosting let’s say with GoDaddy. You will need to point your domain name to be hosted on GoDaddy. Of course, there are some hosting services that can do all this for you but you may or may not be paying extra for these services. I just do all of this myself and if I can learn this you can too!
In conclusion, again, think about how you want to be found online. Only on FB page? Or do you want to have the option of owning your own “virtual real estate” by having your own website that is self-hosted? I hope I was able to help you understand the importance of having your own website.
You can also listen to this blog as a podcast episode and visit my podcast page: 8th Level Podcast Listen to it here:
Disclaimer – I adde my affiliate links to NameCheap and GreenGeeks. This means that if you click on the links in here and you sign up for a paid service with them, I will get a very small commission. You do not pay anything extra by using my affiliate links.