Domain Name and Website On a Budget

Artists typically don't have a lot of money to spare when starting out and the cost of setting up and hosting a website can be a little daunting. Prices vary however, on the smallest of budgets, you can still look professional with your website utilizing free web hosting services.

Domain Names

Although you can get by without a domain name (e.g. something along the lines of www.yourname.com) it really is an essential part of any website for a professional artist.

Without one you're likely to be stuck with a website address (URL) that looks something like www.yourwebhostsname.com/user/~yourname which is not only hard to remember but will also screw up your business card designs and be search engine unfriendly.

Domain names vary in price from registrar to registrar so shop around. You'll probably want a .com address, as these are generally cheaper and is the appropriate extension for artists (.net, .org etc. are for particular types of organisations).

Whether you choose to have a country code extension will depend on the rules for your country and whether it's really important that your site is recognized geographically by search engines.

For example, in Australia you can only have a .com.au (au for Australia) if you have a business name registered under a similar name as the domain you wish to register.

Generally geographical domain names cost considerably more and aren't really critical for most artists. Particularly if you intend to sell your art worldwide.

Note that you do not need to register a domain name with the same company that hosts your website.

Website Hosting

A website host is a company that offers space to store your website so that anyone, anywhere can access it 24/7. Almost every other advice site will tell you to stay away from free website hosts with reasons ranging from they're unreliable to having to put up with advertising on your pages.

However, for a lot of artists, a free website host will offer more than enough features for what they need. When choosing a free website host look for one that allows you to link your domain name to your site and preferably one that offers the ability to upgrade to paid hosting accounts.

If a free host also offers paid hosting, it's more likely their free service is going to be reliable because they are counting on their free service to encourage up-sells to their paid account.

A particular free website host that I recommend to my own clients is 50webs.com. (Note I'm not an affiliate, I used to use their service for my own sites). Their free account is advertising free and their domain name registration fees are competitively low - if you wanted to keep your domain registrar and hosting all in one place.

The only caveat is that 50webs is best suited to fully custom sites. If you have no web design experience and aren't intending to have someone design a site for you then you may need a different solution, such as Weebly.com (again I'm not an affiliate).

Weebly is also advertising free and comes with over 100 pre-designed themes that you simply choose and then can customize further, more in the manner of using a word processor than web design software. Weebly also includes a lot of easy to use features such as photo galleries, blogs and ecommerce - all of which could be useful to an arts based site.

Blogger Alternative

Free blogging platforms like Blogger.com can also be used in place of web hosting. I use it for my main TET website. You'll notice my own domain name is connected to it. It's worth thinking about. Blogs are highly recommended for artist web sites and, with almost unlimited free storage and fairly reliable servers, why not create your web site on a dedicated blogging site.

Blogger gives you plenty of templates to choose from that are easily customizable too.

You could also use WordPress.com if you're more familiar with that blogging platform.


As you can see getting a website presence can be as cheap as the cost of registering a domain name. Free site hosting services and blogging platforms are more than up to the job of helping you look professional when you're just starting out.

Once you start making some regular money having your own domain name will allow you to easily upgrade to paid hosting should you outgrow the free options.