If you’re starting a business and don’t have much money to spend, it can be hard to know where to invest your funds to increase your revenue.
In this blog post, I will share 10 areas where I would invest my own money if I had it.
Building a website can be time-consuming, especially if you have no clue what you’re doing! It’s not impossible, but it does take time to get it right!
So, ideally, you should invest in a professional designer and/or developer. This will be the fastest way to get what you need for your website without spending too much money upfront.
Plus, designing something yourself vs hiring someone can take months or years before it’s done – so that is an investment of time as well!
Investment: A Professional Design & Developer – depending on the type of site you are building, this can cost anywhere from US$250-US$50,000+ (I’d recommend at least $500). Do make sure that you do your research if you decide to take this route. Too many folks get caught out by going cheap with a designer/developer. You want a website that will work correctly – it’s worth spending a bit extra on it!
However, as the purpose of this website is mainly to talk about building a website for free yourself – I will take you through areas that you can and possibly should invest in without having to spend too much!
These are my personal favourites, but I encourage you to do your own research.
Tip #1: Hosting – one area you shouldn’t go cheap on!!
Affordable hosting can still be of high quality, so long as you’re looking to spend at least $10 per month. Free hosting providers may be cheaper, but the quality they provide falls far below what long-term site owners need and deserve.
Hosting should include WordPress.org installation, email address, speed optimisation and security at the very least. Cheap hosting can really let your down – it’s simply not worth it! I am currently using siteground and I have to say I am quite impressed with their service. I opted for the Grow Big plan and currently have 8 websites under it. So far, speed has not been an issue.
Investment: US$7 – $50 per month
Tip #2: Get yourself a good domain name.
The perfect domain will not only look great in your browser bar, but it’ll get you the right kind of traffic when people do an online search for what they need from you – and this is especially important if you’re selling something. Try to keep it as short as possible – you want a domain name that’s catchy and memorable and easy to type!
Investment: Varies! However, if you don’t have a great deal to spend, I wouldn’t spend it on a premium domain name – some of these can go into the thousands to hundreds of thousands!
Tip #3: Are paid plugins worth it?
In some instances, you can get away without having to buy any plugins. However, the more plugins you have on your website, the likelier it is that plugin conflicts will arise with updates.
Before deciding to take the plunge and buy a plugin or even install a plugin, check out the reviews of those plugins, how many installations have been made, how often are the plugins updated? Generally, the more often plugins are updated the better! And most importantly, do you really need THAT plugin.
For example, if I’d paid for elementor pro on this site, I would not have needed the additional design plugins. I would only have needed 1 plugin to make design changes to this site – not 3! Also, if you have an e-commerce website, it is essential that you have top-notch security!
Tip#5: Speed for User Experience
first, ensure that everything is optimised before adding it to your website. You may be able to get away with just using free plugins for speed, so I wouldn’t rush to invest here until you’ve fully optimised your website.
Tip #6: SEO tools such as ahrefs, semrush can help you find your keywords and look into the market research which is invaluable for beginners like me. Unfortunately, they don’t come cheap but what’s worth it? A good SEO tool will cost around $40 per month even if it’s only used for a few months; I would be able to get in-depth data on where to start with my search engine optimization/keyword strategy.
There are workarounds to these, but these tools really do make a difference; unfortunately, they don’t come cheap. A good SEO tool will cost you around $40 per month. Even if it’s only used for a few months, it may give you a clearer idea of where and how to get started on SEO/Keywords.
Tip #7: Invest in a great content writer. No point investing in someone who is mediocre; you need someone who understands content and SEO. There are tools out there that can write for you like conversion.ai – you can sign up for a free 5 day trial with this link, after that it is quite costly, but totally worth it if you wish for your content to fly off the page!
Tip #8: Ads – I’ve found Facebook ads to be more likely to lead visitors, and they are usually less expensive than Google Ads. I don’t always have the budget for Google Ads anyway – it has a great effect on my traffic but can be unruly, and I even find it hard to outrank stronger players in certain markets unless
Tip #9: Customer relationship management (CRM) is a really important part of any business, but it could be especially critical for those with online presences. Fortunately, there are plenty of CRM tools on the market to help you keep track of your website’s data and make life easier when sending out emails or other messages like social media posts – I am currently using the free version of hubspot, which covers all my current needs.
Photography
Photography is a great way of finding your business’s personality. t can also be used to convey what you’re trying to say with the site design and content in an interesting, engaging manner that will help people connect with it more easily.
If you don’t have any photography for your website then stock photos are helpful. There are many sites out there that offer free stock pics. Check my free resources page.
Tip #10: Hire a graphic designer to do some custom designs for your website, this may be creating your logo or other graphics for your website – you want to stand out from the crowd!
I hope these ten tips have been helpful for you to make some decisions about where to spend money on your website.
There are so many more areas that I could mention, but this is a good starting point and hopefully, this post has given you some ideas of what might work best for your business. Check out my post comparing Elementor Pro to the elementor free version.
