It’s extremely important for every business to have an internet presence in today’s economy, and that means having a website up and running. If you don’t have a big budget, that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck, it just means you have to know how to spend the money you do have.

There are a few expenses you’re going to have to drop money on regardless of your budget, and your skill set. You’re going to need a domain name for your new website. Registering a domain name is a quick and easy process, and it will only cost you around $10 per year. Once you have a domain name, you’re going to need to invest in a web hosting package. Web hosting can cost anywhere between five dollars a month, to several hundred a month. When you’re first starting out, even if you’re anticipating a lot of attention for your website, it’s best to go with one of the cheaper packages. Chances are you won’t need the features and benefits provided with the more expensive packages in the beginning, so don’t spend money on them.

Once you have a domain name, and a place to host your site, it’s time to worry about actually getting your site up and running. There are three routes you can go here. You can either build the site yourself, pay a freelancer to build it, or pay a firm to build it. There are a lot of great options for building your own site. Blogging platforms like WordPress can be installed directly to your hosting account for free, and they make set up a snap. There are also a lot of software options available to make designing a site easy. If you already have Microsoft Office, you probably already have Microsoft Publisher. Publisher makes it fairly simple to create a nice looking website in a fairly short amount of time.

If you really feel like you can’t handle setting up the website yourself, then you’re going to have to pay someone. If you’re on a budget, you’re going to want to avoid design firms. Their prices reflect all  of the costs involved in running a large company. Freelancers, on the other hand, will generally be able to product a high quality site for you for hundreds, rather than thousands of dollars. Just be careful about who you hire. Either use a site like Elance to find a designer, or get references from them before hiring them to do the job.

Don’t be fooled into paying exorbitant amounts of money for a website. By being careful with your money, you can get your site up and running quickly no mater what your budget is.