General FAQ
The reason we do this is simple: it’s a great way for us to build connections with entrepreneurs who might hire us for larger paid projects as their businesses grow. 97% of the people for whom we’ve built website for free have been happy with the results and 10-20% go on to hire us for other paid projects down the line. They might hire us to build more complicated websites, an app, or do ongoing development work for them.
To put a website online – and to keep it online – you’ll need web hosting, which costs a few dollars per month. We cover our website development costs by asking you to sign up for web hosting with one of the most popular web hosting providers, Cloudways, using our affiliate link. (That affiliate link also has a special discounted rate that we’ve negotiated with Cloudways specifically for our clients.)
When you use our link, we get a commission. This commission is paid to us by Cloudways. You pay nothing extra yourself. Cloudways has a Money-Back Guarantee so if you change your mind (for example, if you start with us and then decide you don’t actually want a website), you can always request a refund from them.
That’s it! We simply recoup some of our costs by receiving the affiliate commission when you sign up for web hosting.
To have a website online, you have to pay for web hosting. The only alternative to this is services like Wix. With Wix, however, your domain will look like yourdomain.wix.com (that is, it’ll have the word “wix” in it). If you want your own website (not a sub-domain of Wix), with an actual URL (yourdomain.com), web hosting is required.
You can learn more about how websites are set up here: https://websitesetup.org/ You’ll see that the first step is to get website hosting.
We won’t request your credit card. We won’t have you sign any kind of payment contracts with us. Nothing like that.
What you will need to do is to sign up for website hosting (which is what you’ll need to put any website on the internet, and its just $11/month). But the commission we receive from the hosting provider is paid by them, not you.
If you’ve already bought a domain name, that’s great. If you haven’t chosen one yet, that’s completely fine. We’ll show you how to do that.
Process
You can apply here.
We carefully review every application that comes our way. Our Applications Committee considers the following:
- Do we like the concept for the website?
- Is it ethical?
- Is this a highly complex website that’s outside the scope of our free-website program?
We review most applications within 48-72 hours, and accept approximately 30% of those who apply
Design
WordPress, the most popular content management system for websites. In fact, about 30% of the internet runs on WordPress. In our opinion, it’s the best platform to use for the vast majority of websites (unless you’re looking to build something that’s super complex).
WordPress is free to use, and we’ll be able to load it onto your web hosting platform once you’ve signed up for web hosting.
We build people simple but professional websites as part of our free-website program. We don’t do highly complex websites with lots of bells and whistles.
Nope, definitely not. We walk you through everything you’ll need to do in a clear, step-by-step way. Plus, once we’re done working on your website, we’ll send you a detailed instruction video showing you how to make additional edits and changes to your website so that you won’t ever need to hire a website developer.
The best way to ensure that your website looks really good is to use a professionally designed template. These are website designs built by professional graphic designers and they will make your website look great.
There is a whole world of amazing professional WordPress themes out there, and we’ll explore that all with you and help you to make a decision about which website template is right for you. Once you’ve decided, we’ll ask you to let us know how you’d like the template changed or edited, and we’ll get to work on getting your website to look the way you want!
Assuming you get back to our emails promptly and don’t request any complex additional features, we aim for a completion time of no more than 3 weeks. If you take longer to think about your content, design, logo, etc., that’s no problem for us and we can work at your pace.
Once we’re done working on your website, you’ll delete our user account (which is what gives us access to the back-end of your website) and we’ll have no additional ability to make edits or changes. We will not own your website nor control it in any way.
We don’t provide long-term support for free, no. However, unless you’re building something highly complex, you shouldn’t need our support.