Although the economy has taken a turn for the worse, it still hasn’t stifled the entrepreneurial spirit. Many Americans find themselves seeking out innovative ways to “roll with the punches” so to speak. Others have even seized the opportunity to cash in while helping other business owners. One web developer says, “More and more I kept getting people just starting out with their business asking me ‘hey, what’s the cheapest way to get my business online?’ And after rejecting proposal after proposal, I would usually cut them a break and make a $100 page that says coming soon and has their contact information. But it took up time I wanted to spend on bigger projects so I started sending people over to FI-express.”
Favored Image is one such company that has tried to “cash in” on the economic environment while helping other small businesses by starting their FI-Express division. FI-Express has one website to choose from, it can be displayed in a variety of ways, it’s ready to go, and you can be online in a day or so. So for what one designer would do a single page, you can get an entire site. It’s clean and professional and can be upgraded when you “hit it big”.
There’s still the do-it-yourself approach, companies like GoDaddy have great do-it-yourself tools to make creating a website much easier than in previous years. Many companies have done just that.
So the big question is “What’s the cheapest way to get my business online?”
Well, either way will require a little effort on your part but we found that with a company like GoDaddy you can save the most money but you have to do all the work of placing the content into the pages and making them look right (which can be a lot more difficult then you would think because different browsers can display content differently), but it’s very doable for someone with a moderate amount of computer knowledge. Almost any problem you encounter has been encountered by others and you can glean valuable information from searching the web. But there’s still the group that doesn’t have the money or computer knowledge but really need to get online to boost exposure; for these people, a company like Fi-express may be their best option. “Businesses are hurting; we wanted to provide a good alternative to the high cost of web development. We hope businesses in other fields will follow suit and we can get this economy thriving once again.” Say’s Lead Developer for FI-Express.