Finding the perfect birthday gift is a very tough job. Especially when the recipient is somebody very close to you. You spend hours, days, and even weeks looking for the perfect gift. In your head, it should not be something that was hastily chosen. It has to be something that is not only nice but also useful.
With all the things you can buy in a shop, it is really hard to find a unique gift you can give. Items are too cliché while giving flowers or chocolates shows very little effort. A great birthday gift should not just embody your feelings towards the recipient but should also show your dreams for him/her.
So how about giving somebody a website?
Does it really sound that weird? Hey, it’s already 2017 and almost everybody has some kind of presence online. Although it’s nice to have your Facebook account on LinkedIn account, having a personal website is still better. Heck! Even our family plumber (who has been in the business for 40 years) has his own website.
The thing about giving a website is that it is not borne out of vanity. A website is a very important tool for anybody may it be a simple fellow or a professional. With enough customization, a website can turn into a place where you can tell a story to a hub for people with various ideas. The possibilities are endless! Not to mention the fact that owning and managing a website is as easy as pie.
Before, in order to have a great looking website that runs properly, you had to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to get it to the point where it looks the way you want it to. Today, $59.40 will give you a great website with great hosting and a personal domain(how to here). Add a little more and you will have the chance to buy a theme or use our free theme for your site. With a template, you can customize your site easily without having to spend years and years of learning how to code. An hour of reading through the documentation will give you enough knowledge to tweak the template to suit your needs.
With all of these things said, there still lies a reason why giving a website as a gift is always a good thing.
Have you ever heard of the term “online presence” or “online reputation”? Basically, they work the same way as your regular reputation but the difference is that your online reputation can easily be researched with a simple search in people’s favorite search engine. Do me a favor and try to search yourself. Tell me what you see. Sometimes you can see your social media accounts or other accounts or mentions from the past years. You may also see some bad stuff about you online. The problem here is that without a way to control your online presence, a bunch of stuff can come up during a search. Worst case scenario is that a person sees your last weekend pictures complete with you being drunk or doing weird things.
Having a personal website will do your online reputation a favor by being a central location for everything about you. People from all walks of life can use a personal website and it doesn’t have to be about business. You can use it as a portfolio site or even as a no-so-private diary. A friend of mine even used it to post some of his personally made recipes and is now getting some following. This was a guy who barely started to learn cooking but now has over 100 followers asking how he keeps his steak moist every single time.
Overall, giving a website as a gift is not just because it’s a fun thing to do. It’s actually something a person can use. Not only that, it will also help him/her out in cases where they might need some help with their online reputation. If you care enough for the recipient, give him/her the gift of security and creativity by giving them a website of their own. Just don’t forget to give them a crash course on the Internet if needed. This way, they can completely understand what they have and what they can do with it.
Finding the right gift for somebody is always a hard task. Of course you can take the safe route and just go for chocolates and flowers for the ladies or tickets to a home game for the guys. But where’s the fun in that?
You have to think two things when choosing a gift. First, the other person should appreciate it. You can’t give a baseball bat to a girlfriend who knows nothing about baseball because that is just plain weird. Secondly, it should serve a purpose. The purpose can be as simple as making that other person happy or it can serve a larger purpose in his/her life. The choice is yours.
That’s the reason why we spend hours after hours thinking of the perfect gift for another person. But it seems like one option is overlooked more often than not.
Most of us think that brands or businesses are the only ones who should have websites. I mean, they are there so people can look them up, right? Plus, they must cost a fortune to set up not to mention the other stuff you need to pay to make them look good. Having a personal website seems a bit unnecessary if you ask a regular bloke.
But is it really?
Have you ever thought of giving somebody a website as a gift? Think about it. It is the perfect gift for anybody. It doesn’t matter if the recipient is the CEO of a company or a roommate who has a knack for the arts. Everybody deserves a website of their own.
At this point, you may be asking… “Why?”
Well, there are a lot of reasons why people need their own website. Here are just some of them:
- They can use them for their business. Not all businesses have their own websites because some business owners think that setting one up and managing it is a total waste of resources and time. If the recipient is a business owner, go the extra mile and give him/her a short lesson on why they need a website. Remember that a good website is needed if you want to survive in this digital world.
- Professionals can use a personal website as a contact page. If you’ve lived in the 90’s then you can remember flyers or ad pamphlets given by local service people telling you that you can call them if you need something done. Why don’t you take this to the next level and use a personal website to announce to the world what the recipient does. He/She can be a painter, writer, plumber, astronaut, or physicist but the purpose of the personal website stays the same – to advertise a person’s expertise. So if you think your recipient is a great professional and more people should recognize them then a personal website is a good option.
- It can be an avenue for expression. A personal website does not have to be all about what you do and how good you are at it. It can also be about what you think and feel. A lot of people use their personal websites as blogs. A blog is a website that contains various entries that may or may not revolve around a certain topic. If you think the recipient is the kind of person who has a story to tell or who can share his/her feelings and opinions freely, a personal website is indeed a good option.
Giving away a website as a gift is not only ingenious but also quite thoughtful. It is the perfect gift for the very digital-centric world. A website usually won’t cost you much. You can set up a website for 1 year for under $60. With new technologies surfacing every day, managing one is easier than ever.
Still, you might want to think about giving the recipient a crash course on the Internet. It is known that most businessmen and professionals don’t have their own websites because they don’t know how it works. So how about this, instead of just giving a website add in a short tutorial on what it does and how it helps them. This will ensure that your recipient will see the real beauty behind your gift.
Learn how to and gift a website now. It might just be what your friend/ parent/ sibling/ lover needs.
Why giving a website as gift is good idea?
It was the year 2005. Having your own website was every person’s dream. Imagine having your own personal domain where you can do anything, post anything, and just be anything you want to be on the Internet. This domain can be seen by millions if not billions of people. You can be selling something, telling the world of what you think, or just plain storytelling. A personal website was more of a pipe dream than a reality 10 years ago.
So what happened today? Is having your own website still a dream a lot of us like having?
Lucky for us these days, having your own website has never been easier. Here are some reasons why:
- It’s relatively cheaper to own a good website now than before – Owning a website means you should get a domain name and a hosting service. The prices from 10 years ago and today are quite the same but with some differences. Before, you can’t get 1 gb storage from a shared hosting package for less than 100$. Also, you were so limited in bandwidth before that your site goes down after the hundredth visitor of the day. If you are aiming to use your personal website more than often, it would be easier and much less stressful to have one now than before
- It’s easier to set up a website now than before – before, setting up your own website was very hard (not to mention very limited). Ordinary people had to get use to certain programming languages in order to create a website. One of the most common one was HTML. With HTML, you can create a simple and static page. The only problem was you had to do everything manually. And by saying everything, I mean every single line of code should be typed in manually. This was no problem for experts but this created a very large barrier of entry for your everyday ordinary people who wanted their own sites. Nowadays, you have backend platforms such as WordPress and Joomla. These frameworks basically do the dirty work for you. A little bit of tweaking will make your website a personalized one and you don’t even have to understand how the code works.
- Websites these days are better but not necessarily hard to use – There was a time when people had to settle with static pages because going beyond that means having to learn a lot of complicated things. You were so limited with how your website looks like because to ask for more means having to spend hours more in learning how advanced code works. With today’s technology, websites work better and are faster but aren’t more complicated for the ordinary folk. You still had to read a “manual” of sorts to get the hang of it but once you do, changing the site into whatever you want it to be is much easier. This is aside the fact that various add-ons and plugins provided for free from developers make managing and keeping a website much easier than usual.
- The benefits far outweigh the costs and stress of owning a website In retrospect, this should not be included in this list but I just had to mention it.
Easy or not, having your own personal website is a big positive.It doesn’t matter if you are a professional, an artist, or a vocal individual. A
personal website can easily become your “home” on the Internet. This will be where people can know more about you, find out what you do, what you think, or how they can contact you.
If you are still hesitant in having your own website, just do this for me. Go to our how to page and in 10 minutes you will be able to set up your first website tell me if you still won’t be swayed.
Ultimately, owning a website is not really about it being easy or complicated. It’s all about what it does for you as a person. Will this give your business more customers? Will this enrich your hobbies? Will this benefit other people who want to learn more? Think about what you can share to the world. With that in mind, you can easily create a website around that idea.