I saw an article in the Macon Telegraph the other day about a big seminar in Atlanta where Google is offering free wwebsites to Georgia Small business. The stat is fairly amazing – that well over half of small businesses have no web presence at all.

You go to this event and can get setup with your very own template-based site from Intuit for free.

http://www.americagetonline.com if you’d like to register for it.

It sounds like a pretty good deal, until you look into the details.

The site AND the domain are indeed free – for a year. After a year intuit will charge $4.99 a month PLUS $2/month for the domain. That’s a total of  $83.88 per year – and there is no indication of how much bandwidth or data storage you are allowed under the plan, nor how many email addresses and how much it will cost to upgrade should your site need additional space, bandwidth, or other capabilities.

Compare that with the Business plan from MidGaHosting.com - $7.69 a month with a free domain name (so the annual total is $92.28 . For less than $10 more you get unlimited data storage, unlimited bandwidth, tons of email addresses, plus access to a significant number of FREE bonuses (see the list here).

You can even EASILY upgrade to a more robust hosting package if needed, AND there are many a-la-carte  upgrades available for the more technically inclined.

….and there’s even a template-based website builder, just like “their” plan.

I have a friend with a graphics arts business who is still using ###@mail.mgacoxmail.com as his primary online contact address. I was hassling him about it (he knows he should update, but hasn’t really had a compelling reason to do it). Below are the reasons I gave him for going ahead and setting up his own website:
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Here’s why you really should have your own domain:

1) Less cheesy email address.
2) Email address / website that reinforces your brand
3) A spot to sell your stuff, perhaps.
4) Search engine visibility

To get started, swing over to
http://www.midgahosting.com
Click the order button. To get started you really only need the cheapest plan.

The form has an option to find a domain – you can do .com or .biz – maybe even .pro.
(BTW – domains are case-INsensitive, so you can type them either way).

Select the US-based data center. There’s also an option to go ahead and install wordpress or any of a few dozen other packages.

BTW – one cool feature is that you can host 3 domains within the same hosting account…so you could then add mikeknapp.com to the same account for the price of a domain, install wordpress, and use THAT one to sell your art.

http://www.maconmacguy.com/compare-hosting/#explain
for a quick explanation.