Staying Within Budget

The cost of a commercial web site can vary widely, and if you're not careful about getting a reputable web developer, can rapidly grow out of control. The best way to stay within your web site's budget is to plan it along with every detail of what your site will entail. To do this you need to know what the expenses are or can be.

First, be realistic about your web site's budget. If you want to pay amateur rates, hire an amateur or get a do-it-yourself program and hope for the best. Of course, that may blow your budget in the long run because you may find you'll need to have your web site completely redone at some point to attract and keep visitors and customers.

That said, most professional basic web designers start at around $100.00 per page, with many closer to $300.00 per page. Extra programming such as special scripts are usually at an hourly programming rate which can go as high as $250.00 or more per hour. If third-party scripts are used, you can often save many hours of programming time, but there are usually license fees to pay for the use of these scripts. These vary depending on the program or script. Also keep in mind that even a third-party script requires some extra time to configure it, customize it, and integrate it into your web site.

Basic expenses for a web site:

1. A domain name costs about $10.00 to $35.00 per year through a reputable domain registrar. You can usually get a lower rate by registering the domain for several years at a time.
   
   
2. Web hosting costs vary, starting at around $5.00 per month ranging upwards to $400.00 per month or more, depending on the web site's size and use of server resources. Expect to pay from $10.00 to $40.00 per month for a reputable, dependable web host for an average medium-size web site which will also provide domain-based email, forwarding, auto-responders, statistics and tracking, and other features to help you do business through your web site.
   
   What about "free" web hosting with "unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth" ? There are some reputable companies offering free web hosting, but usually with restrictions on space and bandwidth, usually at the cost of your own domain identity (you have to use an address such as www.theirdomain.com/yourusername/), and usually also with forced pop-up ads all over the place. The ones offering "Free Unlimited" hosting tend to be extremely unreliable, unpredictable, and also usually force pop-up ads all over your web site. This annoys visitors and makes you look unprofessional. Unlimited space and bandwidth really means "it's unlimited until the whole server crashes because of too-heavy demand on server space and cpu." With one of these "unlimited" accounts, be prepared to find your web site down frequently. Better to budget a small monthly fee to keep your web site on its own domain, live, online, and not annoying to your visitors with pop-ups.
   
   
3. A Search Engine Listing service (sometimes called "paid inclusion") is highly recommended if you can afford it. Normal search engine can take several weeks to get your site listed. A listing service ensures that your site is listed within days, not months, and that your site is re-submitted and crawled frequently by the search spiders to keep the listing fresh. Some of the more inexpensive paid inclusion programs start with a flat fee of about $49.00 per year PLUS additional per-click fees of about 15 cents (USD) for every click from the search engines to your web site.
   
   Our own Search Engine Submission sevice provides submissions to about 45 major search engines worldwide on a carefully timed quarterly schedule for the best results. This service costs $105.00 per year. It does not include Search Engine Optimization of your pages, nor does it include paid-inclusion or per-click services. We also provide an alternative to the yearly subscription with our One-time Search Engine Submission Service for $35.00.
   
   
4. Your web site development itself. As stated above, costs for this can vary widely from as low as $500.00 all the way to $50,000.00 or more, depending upon the number of pages, special programming, and other features.
   
   
5. Take maintenance fees into account. These usually run at an hourly rate. How often will you make changes or updates to your pages? Will you be running sales or specials which require updates? Posting announcements? Updating a Calendar of Events? Having contests or sweepstakes? Plan ahead for this so you don't let your web site go stale.
   NOTE: You may save on maintenance fees in the long run by paying extra for Administrative features programming which allows you to do your own updating of certain parts of your web site.

There are things you can do if you can't afford the "web site of your dreams" just yet:

• Start with some basic web pages, a few nice graphics and photos, and perhaps a simple contact form.
  
  
• Let your web developer know if you plan to expand your web site later, and discuss how you would like to expand it. This may save you money during the later expansion because your web site can be designed with the future expansion in mind, resulting in less reconstruction later on. Examples might be:
  
  
  • Adding pages
  • Adding functions
  • Adding or expanding e-commerce capabilities
  • Any other features you may consider adding in the future
  
  We can make suggestions to make the expansion or transition easier and cheaper in the long run.

What not to skimp on:

• Domain name: Get your own. Don't go with one of those www.myphonecompany.com/~username/myfolder/ web addresses.
  
  
• Web hosting: Make sure it's reliable, includes statistics and tracking, and offers support. If PHP, MySQL, ASP, CGI, etc. are to be used in your web site, be sure your web host supports these. 
  
  
• Great META tags and quality search engine submission. These two work hand-in-hand. Not all search engines index META tags any more, but most still do. You won't get your best results without both great META tags and savvy search engine submission. (The only reason we list them separately in our Rates page is because we sometimes provide these services individually: e.g. submission service on a site that already has good META tags and keyword page design; or META tags on a web site that the client is already using a submission/listing service for.)
  
  NOTE: Run, do not walk, from search engine submission services which claim to submit your site to "50,000 search sites!!" There are simply not that many reputable or worthwhile search engines in the world. These "services" submit your web site to FFA sites, or Free For All link sites. Listing your web site with FFA's will eventually get your web site permanently banned from the reputable search engines such as Google. Although fairly effective years ago, most FFA's are now simply link grinders which list your site for a few minutes or hours as they rotate links in and quickly out, then they start sending you tons of spam claiming "You agreed to receive this email when you submitted your site to our FFA link site."