Selling on Instagram and can't pay for a website yet?

If you sell on Instagram and can't pay for a website yet, put this month into your Instagram bio and a pinned post, not into free tools. Skip the made-up Google Business Profile address and the free site you'll abandon, then watch your own DMs for the signs that a website would pay for itself.

On October 9, 2026 we offered a jewelry maker who sells through Instagram a one-page website, built first, paid for only if she kept it. (We also included the first 3 months of our care plan; that was a one-off offer to her.) She answered within minutes: "No, thank you." She didn't have the money.

That's a fair answer. I'd rather she spend nothing than spend badly, and the honest list of free options is short, so this part is short too.

What to do this month without spending anything

Your Instagram profile is where buyers already find you, so start there. Your bio should say what you make, where you ship or meet buyers, and how to order. Then pin a post, or make a highlight, with your prices, sizes and shipping. A buyer who can see the price and the shipping before writing to you has one less reason to wait for a reply. You get fewer sales stalling in the DMs.

A free link-in-bio page is fine as a menu: one link to an order form, one to a price list. It isn't a website, though. It won't come up on Google, and you don't own it. Treat it as a signpost.

What I'd skip, even though it costs nothing

First, a Google Business Profile with a made-up address. Google gives a Business Profile only to businesses that serve customers in person, at a location or where the customer is. A maker who only ships orders usually doesn't qualify, and you shouldn't make one with a made-up address to try. If you do meet buyers in person, our guide to setting up a Google Business Profile in Canada covers doing it properly.

Second, a half-finished free site. Starting one feels like progress, but a site you abandon keeps sitting there with old prices on it. A stale site looks worse than none. Builder plans aren't free either: when we checked on October 11, 2026, Squarespace and Wix plans in Canada started at about $21 a month, billed yearly. That's a bill every month for a site you may not have time to finish.

One rule if you spend anything at all: buy any domain in your own name. With us, once a Page Cove site is paid for, the website, its code and the domain belong to the business.

When a website is worth paying for

We don't go by an order count. The page is worth it once your customers start asking for it in their own way:

• someone asks, "do you have a website?"
• the same price, size and shipping questions land in your DMs every day
• people want to buy but don't want to pay through a message

It's also worth it when you want to be found by people who don't follow you yet. Google and answer tools like ChatGPT read and link to a page with your own words on it. Nobody can promise where that page will show up, and we don't.

My test is one you can check yourself: if one or two extra orders would cover the price of the page and those questions are already coming in, it's time. The current price is on our pricing page, and the one-page website explained shows what goes on the page. If the questions aren't coming in yet, keep working on the bio and the pinned post. Then look again.

One case changes my answer. If you need a full shop with a cart and stock tracking, that's a bigger job than one page. Ask for a quote on that instead.

When those signs show up, we'll build your one-page site first, with no deposit, and you pay only if you approve it and want to launch it.