The Freelance Bookkeeper

Do you have a website up and running, telling the world about your freelance bookkeeping services?

Your website serves as your virtual business card. Without one, prospective clients may wonder how serious you are about your business. Even if you only plan to serve clients within your local area, I highly recommend that you consider putting up a website as soon as possible.

If I had it to do all over again, knowing what I know now, this is exactly what I would do, immediately upon opening the doors to my bookkeeping business. I’d do it by using a WordPress blog as my main website.

WordPress is the best kept secret for a fast, easy, and cheap online presence that can give you a great looking site in less than an hour. No kidding!

For the price of a Web hosting account (at the moment, less than $5 a month!), you can have a do-it-yourself website. And you don’t need the technical abilities of a programmer to do it either.

In fact, this site that you’re reading right now is a WordPress blog. And believe me, I really didn’t know what I was doing when I created it. I’m using The Freelance Bookkeeper site as a traditional blog (online newsletter/interactive web log), but the WordPress software has since been improved so much that you can now use blogs very effectively as your complete business website.

Some of the advantages of using a WordPress blog over static HTML pages are:

1. It’s like an entire website in a box, using pre-made designs called themes, and there are zillions of them available for free. You can also change the colors and design of your website instantly, whenever you want, with just a few clicks.
2. You can add and update existing pages without the need for special technical skills or software, and the navigation and organization of the information on your website is updated automatically for you.
3. It’s an all-in-one solution. You can do everything a traditional Web page does AND have your own online newsletter to help your prospective clients get to know, like, and trust you, as well as highlight the services you offer, all on the same site.
4. They pull more traffic. If you update your website regularly, the search engines will send you traffic faster than a regular website. They just LOVE WordPress blogs.
5. They are easy to customize. If you want special features added to your site, you’ll find many, many mini-programs that can enhance and add functionality to your site, most of which are free or inexpensive. These are known as plug-ins and widgets.

Are you convinced yet that a WordPress blog is a great idea for creating your business website?

If so, I’ll bet you’re wondering how to do it, huh?

Here’s everything you need to put up your WordPress blog as your business website quickly:

A domain name and a hosting account. That’s it!

You can buy them separately if you like. Or, if you use the hosting company I use, you can get your (first) domain name registered free when you open a new account. I use and highly recommend Lunar Pages because they have great customer service, they’re reliable, and they offer a lot of what I need for the price. I’ve used them for several years now and have been very pleased with the results.

But if you’d rather shop around, be sure the hosting company you choose uses a C-Panel interface with Fantastico (which is where the WordPress software is available for free, along with many other free programs).

You can also get WordPress software free by downloading it from WordPress.org. However, unless you are somewhat of a techie, I suggest you use Fantastico, because it is the simplest way to set-up and install the blog on your hosting account. It takes only a few clicks. Fantastico will also notify you and help you install software upgrades when they become available.

You could also get a blog without the need for a hosting account by using WordPress.com, where they will host your blog for you. But I don’t recommend that. It makes you look less professional and gives you less control over your website. They have also been known to deactivate blogs without warning.

If you want specific guidance in the nuts-and-bolts of putting together your blog site, you can also find free video tutorials by simply typing “WordPress tutorial” in Google. WordPress is extremely popular, and tons of free support is available so that you can be up and running with your blog very quickly.

So what are you waiting for? Get your website up this week and hang out your virtual shingle for your freelance bookkeeping business.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR OWN BLOG OR E-ZINE? You have permission to re-publish it, as long as you include the following author’s bio and link:

Gabrielle Fontaine, PB is a freelance Professional Bookkeeper and Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor. She also publishes an interactive blog especially for bookkeepers who are ready to break free and run their own home-based bookkeeping service. Get more information at http://TheFreelanceBookkeeper.com

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