Do I really need a website if I get work by word of mouth?

Here's how word of mouth actually works now: your customer says your name at a cookout, and the other fellow pulls out his phone right there and types it. If nothing comes back — or worse, somebody else's shop comes back — that recommendation just died in his hand. A site isn't there to find you customers. It's there to catch the ones you've already earned.

It doesn't need to be fancy. It needs your name, what you do, the towns you cover, real photos of real work, a phone number that's tappable, and a way to book or ask for a quote without calling — because half the people under forty would rather do anything than make a phone call. That's the whole spec.

The .com matters more than people think, too. A shop whose name is on somebody else's domain fights confusion forever, and the registry answers in a second whether yours is open.

In a barn raising the site is the second gate — the .com at $99, the logo and a live site right after. Half the barn in, you're a registered Indiana business with a website under your own name.