How to Build a Free Website and Sell Merchandise

One of the best ways to launch a business or to make your current business available all over the world is by building your own website to sell your merchandise. Contrary to popular belief, websites do not have to be costly, nor do they require a college education to design and build. You can create a website for your business for free with only the investment of your time. On your website, you can set up a store that will enable you to sell your products to consumers worldwide.

Things You'll Need

• Computer Internet access Weebly or Webs account Paypal account Merchandise

Instructions

1. Sign up for an account at Weebly or Webs on the Internet. These two companies offer free tools to build a professional-looking website, as well as free hosting. Signup is simple. Confirm your account by following the link in the email you will receive. Log in to your account.

2. Design and build an attractive homepage, which is essential to drawing people into your website. This is the first page of your site and will determine if your visitors check out the rest of your site. Keep the color scheme simple and not too bright, and use an easily readable font. Choose a template from the hundreds available for the background of your site. Update this section frequently with information regarding sales and new products. Create a logo and post it on this page.

3. Create a page to display your products, prices and quantities available. Include a picture and short description of each product. You can make this an e-store page, which we'll discuss in a later step. Break your merchandise down into categories. For example, break down "Clothing" into "Men's," "Women's" and "Youth." This helps make your site user friendly and easy to use, and draws repeat customers.

4. Design a contact page. Your clients and customers must be able to reach you if they have problems with your products or haven't received their orders. Include your email address, mailing address and business phone number. Once you are finished designing all the pages, click "Publish," and your website officially will be up and running.

5. Sign up for a Paypal account. Paypal is a free service that allows you to set up an e-store with a shopping cart on your website and provides credit card processing so that you can take credit or debit card payments.

6. Sign up for a Google Adwords account and create target keyword campaigns to drive more traffic to your website and increase your profits.

Resources

• Paypal
• Webs free website hosting
• Weebly