Bob Molluro ⋅ Wilmington, DE Benchmark Consulting Services ltd. ⋅ 30 years experience

Ryan be careful on this one. After you have implemented all the great ideas you heard you will be able to say you have the 1 billionth and 1 website on the web.
I am about to offend everyone who posted information on what you should do. My question is how much money have they made doing what they advised you to do.
Yes having a bare bones website may give you some credibility that you have a real business with a name and location-you will be hard pressed to go much further on a very limited budget.
The truth is there are a few guru's that are making millions of dollars by training people on how to effectively use the internet to make sales. Most of the rest are making sales promises and getting unsuspecting people to pay them. As the client you actually end up spending money without a return.
Two of the best in the business are Frank Kern and Jeff Walker. Their webinars are very informative and free.
Frank will tell you to make money on line you need a list. The list is names of people you have built a trusting relationship with. It is very inexpensive to email to your list. If you can get 1% of the people to open the email and buy something you can succeed. You can promote your products or others that you endorse. Sounds great.
Now let's look at the rest of the story. Frank has been doing this for about 15 years. He has 100,000 people on his email list. He makes millions of dollars every year. However for a very long time he was like the rest and made no money.
Here are some of the steps:
1) Build a trusting list
2) Drive traffic from your list to your website
3) Get people to give you their email address
4) send them to your sales funnel
5) Convince them to buy your stuff.

By the way you need to be an expert in each step I mentioned or hire an expert. Frank is driving much of his traffic today using Facebook ads. To have an effective ad you need targeted demographics. Effective ad copy is used to get people's attention. Skill in split testing your ads to determine in advance which ones are more likely to pay off. Frank gets lots of business because his staff knows exactly how to do all this. Frank spends about $100,000 per month on ads.
I hope you realize by now that suggestions like SEO optimization are never going to get you high rankings on Google. It will just put more money into the pockets of the person you hire.
Do the bare bones simple stuff and don't invest in internet marketing at your stage of the game.

Mike Cottell ⋅ Glen Head, NY Michael T Cottell Consulting ⋅ 42 years experience

Hi Ryan, you have been given some great advice by Martha and Deb, I will share one thought as you think about your website. . Get someone, it can be the webhost platform, to talk you through SEO-Search Engine Optimization. If you are looking to drive business you must carefully think through how your website will pop to the top of a users search amongst the countless options out there. You need to think about what content will be in your site that the search engines will pick up relevant to the consumer search. Be careful here, there are people that do this and will charge you for it, but you have to be sure you get a reasonable fee that your business can absorb and will drive results. Just as an example, play with this idea, by typing into a search engine what your business will do and see how many options pop up. Depending upon your business, it could have a range of small to over 30 million+ search options. If you do not want to use the website as a tool for e business or to drive traffic into a brick and mortar facility, but use it to send existing customers for a view of your services, than you don't need SEO and the cost of setting up a website is significantly lower and the project much smaller in scope. GOOD LUCK to you Ryan and thank you for your service.
Best Regards, Mike

Greg Buxa ⋅ Oconomowoc, WI Thrivent Financial ⋅ 4 years experience

I have a very good friend who does this for his business. Pro military, supports operation finally home. Great guy. I can connect you if you would like? Need your number for him to call unless you prefer to call him.

Stefan Beyer ⋅ Kirkland, WA Wipro Ltd ⋅ 12 years experience

For the creation of your logo, etc, you might want to hire a Graphic Designer. They should be able to also set up the look and feel for your site, and some might work with common web design tools so they can be applied directly to your site (unless you pick the DIY option from your hosting site like godaddy.com).

Emanuel Carpenter ⋅ Alpharetta, GA SDR Master Class ⋅ 20 years experience

Ryan - I highly recommend you check out the website Fiverr (https://www.fiverr.com/). You'll find lots of vendors who can create websites, blogs, logos, and more on the cheap. Most basic gigs start at $5.00 but the add ons you'll need will cost slightly more. You'll want to first register your URL at a site like GoDaddy.

Hope this helps,

Emanuel

Charles (Chuck) Postma ⋅ Muskegon, MI Alcoa ⋅ 42 years experience

Ryan,
Thanks for your service, sir! No one has mentioned this in the previous posts, but there are several website hosts like go-daddy.com that you can purchase you domain name and set up a small-get-you-started website for a couple hundred bucks. To maintain the site it might be between $100-$200 annually. If you know windows software you will be able to do the work yourself. I've created 3 sites using feature laden hosts. Depending on your product these sites will allow you to take orders and receive payments for your product and put the money straight into your bank account. For even less you could consider a sellers account at Amazon.com for $40 or so a month.

Good luck!

Chuck

Deb Yeagle ⋅ Tampa, FL Plan To Win, Inc. ⋅ 39 years experience

Ryan-
Thanks for your service!
Martha makes some good points and like her, I suggest you consider some basic questions about your brand and messaging - all based on the type of business you have and what makes your offerings unique - before setting up a website, designing a logo, or developing a market campaign.
I used wix.com to develop my website and they have a blog with lots of great ideas on branding, messaging, and marketing. I would suggest you take a look at these to give you some ideas. Here is a good one to start with:

https://www.wix.com/blog/2016/04/how-to-build-a-powerful-brand/

Feel free to message me with any more questions you might have.
Thanks again!
Deb

Ryan Brown ⋅ Melbourne, FL Patriot Investment Partners ⋅ 2 years experience

Ms. Johnson,

Thank you so much for your feedback. You mentioned a lot of things that I haven't thought about, so I really appreciate that. I will be sure to keep everything in mind.

Ryan