This is a question that gets asked a lot and I thought I’d take out the time to answer it. If you’re running your own home business, do you need to have a website? Well, the answer isn’t as black and white as most people would like to believe. So what I’m essentially going to do is cover the pros and cons of not having a website.

First off, let me clarify what I mean by having a website. I’m referring to a site that is clearly your own. In other words, you’ve paid for the domain and the hosting for that domain. I am not referring to these free platforms like Blogger or other sites that “give” you a site to put some stuff on. I mean let’s be realistic. In order to do business online, you have to have an online presence…even if it’s just a Blogger blog. Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s answer the question.

Having your own site gives you many advantages over not having your own site. For one thing, you have nobody telling you what you can and can’t put on the site. Yes, some hosting companies will not allow certain subject matter. But that’s clearly spelled out in their terms of service BEFORE you purchase hosting with them. Somewhere out there, there’s a hosting company that WILL allow you to put what you want up on the Internet…no matter how repulsive it might be to the rest of the world.

In addition to this, having your own site allows you the flexibility of design, product distribution method, and so on. With some sites, you are greatly limited to what you can do with the page. Some have few design features and others have none at all, so what happens is you end up looking like everybody else out there. This is not good if you want to differentiate yourself from the rest of the world.

However, having your own site doesn’t have its drawbacks. For one thing, there is the monthly and/or yearly cost of keeping that site going. Depending on your needs, this can run into a lot of money. If your business is just marginally profitable, or not at all, this can be a hardship for some people.

Also, having your own site means that YOU have to watch out for it. This means a ton of stuff including, and not limited to, watching out for hackers, keeping track of the domain blacklisting, maintaining any updates of scripts used and so on. A free platform will usually do all this for you so that the only thing you have to do is run your business. Site maintenance, especially if you have a lot of sites, can be a time consuming process.

So as you can see, having your own site is not all roses. There are problems and responsibilities. But overall, having a site is more profitable than not because you have more flexibility and can differentiate yourself from others because of custom design.

In my opinion, the pros far outweigh the cons.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!