No matter what type of work you choose for working from home, whether you’re employed, own a business, or work as a freelancer, having a website will:

1. make you come across as more professional,
2. help to build your brand, and
3. bring in more work.

Potential customers and employers will usually do their research before buying from you or hiring you.

Google and Facebook will usually be the first place they look.

If you Google your full name in quotes, what shows up in the search engine?

Is it good, is it bad, are the results about you, or someone else with the same name?

Creating a website with your name as the web address will put the real information about you at the top of the search results.

Getting started

Are you a creative person? Are you willing to put in the time to create a basic website and write some content to introduce yourself, your skills and your services? If so, then the quickest route would be just to create a website yourself. It takes hardly any time to register a domain name, and there are always excellent deals out there offering a domain name and hosting at a special price. Usually, the domain name will be free, and the hosting will cost a small fee.

However, if you hate doing this kind of thing, are not a technical person, and you know you’re never going to get around to doing it, then it’s probably better to pay a professional web design agency to create the website for you.

The price of web design can vary to different extremes. If you wanted something quickly, you could buy a Fiverr.com gig, and someone will upload a site within an hour, yet on the other end of the scale, a fully-fledged, professionally designed full website could cost hundreds of dollars.

How to create your website

First of all, we need to figure out exactly what you’re going to use your website for. If it is to be a simple “online business card” style site, with only the bare minimal information and contact info, then it would be helpful to use a website builder like Mobirise.com, Weebly.com, and Wix.com. These offer a very easy design environment, enabling you to see and edit your website in real time and edit each page like a Word document.

If however, you are looking for something more complex, with the ability to add a myriad of different plug-ins which enable virtually anything you can think of, then WordPress is the way to go. WordPress is a free, very easy to install, super easy to use content management system (CMS) and website creator.

WordPress is used to create nearly 30% of websites worldwide. Notable websites using WordPress includes New York Times (NYTimes.com), National Geographic (NationalGeographic.com) and People Magazine (People.com).

Another benefit is the fact that most hosting companies will provide the resources for a one click install of WordPress. By just logging in to cPanel and clicking on the installer icon you can have a WordPress installation within minutes.

Once installed, you can choose a WordPress theme of your choice, related to your business. There are tens of thousands of free WordPress themes out there, and some pretty amazing paid versions as well. It’s a simple matter of installing the one you choose, and your website will be transformed. From there, it is just down to you to write the relevant content and create the pages you desire from the WordPress login.

Creating a website for your name or your business will be very beneficial.

1. It lends you instant authority,
2. shows you are a serious business person and
3. inspires trust.