Web design has come a long way since the early days of the world-wide web. There are tons of do it yourself web solutions and hundreds of low-cost options to choose from. With such a saturated market it can be hard to figure out which options would work best for your company. Here I try to outline some of the best insider tips for designing your very own custom website. These low-cost options are great for small to mid-sized businesses who want the most bang for their buck. Tip #1: Leave Google AdWords Alone: Google AdWords is only effective if you have a larger budget to spend per month. A few hundred dollars a month won't get you too far, especially if your market is saturated with online ads already. Instead of AdWords try targeted advertising on local mediums. Things like the SuperSaver, RedPlum or the ValuPak can get your name in front of thousands of local people. Services companies do exceptionally well with this form of advertising, and the monthly cost can be as low at $150 per month. For 10,000 potential views, this isn't bad, and worth the cost to try out. Tip #2: Write your own blog: This is virtually free (get it, virtually?!), and a good way to get yourself ranked a little better in Google. If you aren't good at writing, come up with some topics and hire an article writer. A quality article will run you anywhere from $10 - $15 per article. But if you are savvy you can get a few posts out of one article. Since it's important to try to get your web linked in many different places you can take your article, re-write it, add a new paragraph and some new/different information to it and create a few different versions of your article. You can then submit these articles to article sites like HubPages and E-Zine to get a little more exposure. Make sure you don't submit exact copies of the same article, that's not going to help you in the long run, and could get you in trouble with the article writing sites. Doing this consistently, at least once or twice a month, is a great way to get some free traffic to your website. If you obtain email addresses, it's always a good idea to send an email about newest posts to subscribers. Repeat visitors can often bring in new business if you keep in the forefront of their minds. Tip #3: Outsource: Outsourcing is a great way to get a lot of work done for a fraction of the cost of large web design companies. You can either find a local freelancer, or find someone on sites like Fiveer.com, or Freelancer.com. To find local web designers you can check out sites like Craigslist, or do a search in your local Chamber of Commerce Directory for web solutions and service companies. Freelancers can generally cost less than large web design companies because they have cut out the overhead, and generally only focus on one or two clients at a time. If hired monthly, a freelancer can easily maintain and take care of all website needs for a much lower cost than hiring a full or part-time employee. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9358788