Read:August 2009

Tightening our belts, helping people and making money. Are you in?

How much’s a site?

You'll get long and short answers depending on whom you ask that question. Here's a short answer you'd get from us; "A website can cost you as little as $20 and as much as $20,000 or more." It all depends on two things - what you know and what you want. What you don't know could cost you. What you want... Could cost you too, depending on what you know or don't know. Is your head spinning already? To get it straight with the long answer, click read more below.

How can a website cost you as little as $20? Simply put, if you knew enough of HTML to build a website then about $20 is all you'd need to set up the hosting and a domain name. Perhaps a little more for e-commerce websites, but here's the real catch - this $20 is going to be your average monthly upkeep, and you'll have the annual domain registration fee (between $9.95 - $39.95, depending on the registrar you use) plus any other optional services such as private registrations via proxy (to protect your privacy) and secure socket layer (SSL) certficiates for websites handling money online. There's ongoing software upgrades and new technologies are always coming out that make your websites look even more yesterday by the day. So maintenance and keeping up with the times can cost a lot more than just $20 a month. Many people don't realize about this upkeep and end up being unprepared when it hits them. A smart web developer would make sure their clients are well aware of these ongoing and potential future costs.

On the other hand, how can a website cost $20,000 or more? A big factor in many over-sized IT budgets is lack of oversight and planning. Another factor is called "scope creep", which is what happens when a client comes in and changes their mind or wants to add more things during the development of the website. Like any building or automobile, a website is made out of parts, or components. The more parts you add to it the more expensive it's going to be, and all of these parts don't cost the same. Want a fancy Flash presentation? A good Flash developer can cost you over $200 a hour, or a mediocre one maybe $50-75. You might get a student to do it for $15 a hour, if you knew people. Keep in mind you get what you pay for, in terms of quality. The same goes for the design of the website itself - maybe you gotta have that cool logo you can put on everything besides the website? That can cost you between $700 - $1400, depending on who does the designing and how good and/or resourceful they are. We're not even talking about the code, yet! There's basic HTML/CSS, with developers at pretty reasonable hourly rates, but then there's full-blown content management systems giving you blogs, vlogs, forums, social sharing and everything else requiring more extensive, specialized software or skills. All these options and more come in different prices and sizes so if you want a website that has the best of everything be prepared for a monster budget!

So how do I get the website I want and pay as little as possible for it? First, take care of what you don't know and manage your expectations. You're not going to get a website that does what YouTube does for a couple thousand, for instance. Do a little research on what you want or hire professional web consultants like us to help you find out your options and what they'll cost. Always do comparison shopping amongst products or contractors. Pay attention to every detail and fully participate during development. Making a phased plan for development, ie. come out with a few features in version 1, then add more features in later versions, etc., helps to stretch out your budget to manageable portions over time. Doing your due diligence like this goes a long way towards getting you want you want at a price you're happy with.