Blotter.com

Follow these simple steps to publish your company's website and save a bundle:

Buy a Name
For $35.00, register your new domain name at a registrar such as http://www.register.com

Host Your Domain Name
For about $200.00/year you can contract a domain name hosting service which allows you complete control over your domain name. For this price most contracts allow for at least 100 MB of webspace, 5 POP email accounts and 1 Gigabyte monthly transfer. Unlimited email aliasing is usually available.

Setup Company Email Addresses
Use your new domain name to personalize your email addresses. After registration, the online tools let you set up individual POP email accounts, or even easier to do is to assign aliases to your existing email addresses, sometimes called email forwarding (e.g., email sent to info@yournewdomain.com automatically forwards to your existing email address at bob_consulting8473@aol.com.). Your company's name can identify all your employees' email addresses, thus streamlining their identities (e.g., bob@yournewdomain.com instead of bob98434@aol.com; marry@yournewdomain.com instead of marry3834@aol.com; etc.)

Buy a Template System
For a one-time fee of no more than $500.00, contract any of the hundreds of companies which allow an individual to build a website through an Internet Browser using templates that allow for color and design theme assignment that will be consistent throughout the website.

Update the Information on Your Website
Update your website through an Internet Browser by accessing the online control panel associated with your Template System. Here you will input information via forms. Submit it, go back and do it again until you've got it right. With total control over your website, you don't pay a webmaster to make corrections or updates because you do it yourself any time.

Making Webmasters of Us All
—by Richard Aaron Wright

In 1997 the cost for a professionally built website began at ten or twenty thousand dollars, not including e-Commerce. Business managers in large companies rushed to establish their online presence while smaller companies looked on perplexed that so much money was being spent on new media that seemingly offered no return on investment. One twenty-something CEO summed up the mindset of the time when he said, "This economy has nothing to do with money and everything to do with image." He made millions employing this philosophy.

The smart companies who exercised temperance during those spendthrift years survive today because of their small investments when everyone else was betting the farm. Some of these same companies are the biggest skeptics on whether there are substantial benefits of having a commercial website at all.

Website design companies wish for the good-ole-days when they could charge an arm and a leg for a basic website. Yet, for $500 and a small amount of time, a business or individual can publish a website and fulfill the four necessities for a small business website: Identity, Mission, Function and Reference.

Anyone with an elementary knowledge of the Internet can build and manage a website inexpensively by buying a Template System. Chances are you already have a brochure or some printed information on your company that can be input into the templates and published on your new website.

Identity
Think of the website as an Electronic Business Card that is left on the world's bulletin board. In this section you should include the specifics about your business including location(s) and driving directions, a listing of employees and contact information for each, and all the details of how customers can contact the business.

Mission
Customers want to know that their business will be conducted with a company conscious of their past and present. Tell how and why the company began and what factors have served to grow the business since then. It is not uncommon for businesses to include plans for future expansion which further demonstrates the vision of the company.

Function
Perhaps the most dynamic part of the website, this section offers the opportunity to outline in detail what one can expect when employing its services. Products, services, pricing details and lots of explanations on exactly what will be provided to the customer. Here is where the marketing happens.

Reference
People like to know that a company has succeeded in the past. Concrete examples of successful business contracts can be input to this section. A listing of satisfied customers might be included here including their contact information with the mutual understanding that potential customers may contact them with questions. Nothing demonstrates success better than a good track record.