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Cost To Build Website - Web Design Pricing Estimate And Resources You Will Need To Create A Successful Website
Cost to build a website?
Cost of websites can run into thousands of dollars depending on what you want. But you can also avoid the cost by designing your own website.
In this article I discuss how much it would cost to build the two forms of website - Traditional website (static website) and a Wordpress blog.
How you can build your own website and the tools essential to your website business success and how much they will cost you too.
This helps you decide which to use and the cost to look forward to, helping you make an informed decision.
That is assuming you have read the article Building a website for dummies and you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve with your website.
Website Building Options Available to You and Their Estimated Cost
There is really no fixed cost for building a website.
To build a website you either need to have the knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript so that you can build the site yourself or get a freelance web designer or a company involved in building websites to build the site for you.
If you use a freelance designer, the amount it would cost you will depend on what you want on the site and how much the freelancer thinks is right for such site design.
But you can use SBI Website services , you will be attached to a webmaster who will build your site for you and continue to assist you to ensure your business succeeds.
SBI services has 3 website building packages and it ranges from a little over $2000 to about $5,000.
But the good thing is you can be sure your website will achieve the kind of success you want.
And all the tools you need are in one place, you won't have to spend any extra cost. See SBI services case studies.
If you use a freelancer, the maintenance of the website every month can cost you from $300 - $500, again depending on what the freelancer thinks is right for the job. This is a lot of money.
Freelance Website designers are actually exploiting people who don't know about website design in this regard, because editing a site can be easy for a designer but they charge high for it because you need them.
You can avoid the maintenance cost by asking your designer to include a CMS (Content Management System) functionality to the website, that allows you to edit the site yourself anytime you want.
But adding this can cost you lots of money, often thouands of dollars or even more. But using SBI services, there won't be any need for this as you can edit your site yourself if you want to.
Can you avoid the cost to put up a website and build the site yourself even though you don't know HTML, CSS and Javascript?
Of course, but you have to be patient to learn the skills, or better yet get the best website builder software where you have the option to build a professionally looking site yourself block by block without having to know any HTML.
If you choose to learn HTML and build a traditional website yourself, you will find a lot of tutorials on the Internet on how to create a website that can guide you in creating your first website.
Mind you, these tutorials won't teach you how to make a success of the site.
Chris of chrisfarrellonlinebusiness.com makes it easier for you to create your own website through his free ebook "Create your first website by 3:45 this afternoon".
The book is a step by step guide on how a complete HTML dummy can build a website. A name and email opt-in is required to get a free download.
So you can actually avoid the website building cost using a designer by buying an all in one site building tool that cost a ridiculous price of $299 a year.
And you get all the tools your business requires for no extra cost. Or you take the hard road, buy your domain and your hosting , and follow Chris's book and have your site built in few minutes according to him.
This book however says nothing about how to create a website that can succeed with the search engines, bring visitors to your site for free, and how to make money from your visitors.
And these are information you need to know even before setting up a site.
Cost to Set Up Wordpress Blog
Starting a Wordpress blog website is very easy. Wordpress is free to use and can easily be edited and updated.
See Wordpress tutorial for all about how to set up a Wordpress website. But not before confirming that Wordpress will meet your online need.
To do this, compare Wordpress to Site Build It! tool
Cost of Websites when you build it yourself
If you're not using professionals to design a website for you, or getting a Site building tool, the cost to you to build a website would be the cost to get a domain name and hosting for your website.
This is irrespective of whether you use a static or Wordpress website. You need a domain name and hosting no matter the form of website you use.
Getting a Domain name
There are a lot of domain name registrars and varying prices for domain names. I use a trusted domain name registrar, Godaddy .
A .Com domain name from Godaddy costs $11.99 (As at writing there is a discount, so you can get it for a lesser price) and other domain name extensions can cost more or less.
Getting Hosting for your website
Just like there are lots of domain name registrars, there are lots of host providers. A good host ranges between $10/15 a month.
My first host provider when I started online was Godaddy .
Godaddy is a good host. I had no problem while I used them and it also saves time to have your domain name and hosting from the same place. But with so much talk about how cool hostgator hosting is, I decided to switch.
And I must admit that the instant online support that hostgator offers can be compared to none, and really great for beginners.
If there is something you want help with, you just log in to their chat and immediately you will have a technician helping you out. Their amazing support puts them ahead of any other host.
Essential tools you need for the success of your website
Really Simple Syndication (RSS): If you choose to save website building cost and build a static website yourself, you will have to create an RSS feed for your website and submit to aggregators.
This is so that your webpages will be quickly picked and indexed by the search engines, allowing your pages to be ranked in search engines.
You can create an RSS feed yourself if you can write XML (I am sure you can find tutorials online on how to do this). If you can't, you may have to buy a software to help you which costs about a $100.
But if you use a blog, RSS is automatically created for you and you can automate submission to aggregators.
Keyword research tool: If you have a website online, it doesn't mean it can be found by people. Except you want to buy traffic to your site or work hard for it through some link building and traffic generation means.
Keyword research tool is very important to help you find profitable keywords that people are using to search for information in your niche.
You find these keywords and use them to create pages on your site so that when people are searching for information in the niche you cover on your site, your site can be found, thereby getting free traffic from the search engines to your site.
Keyword research is especially important if you are starting an informational site. A good keyword research tool ranges from over $140 (one time fee) to about $70 a month.
Email marketing service: Once you set up a website, one of the first things you should put up is an opt-in form to collect the contacts of your visitors so that you can follow up with them and get them to take the action that you want.
An email marketing service will help you collect and organize your subscribers list for you and through their program also you can send mails to your subscribers.
Building an email list is one of the secrets to a successful online business. There are many email marketing services, but the 3 that stand out are, Aweber, Mailchimp and Getresponse .
Aweber has a $1 trial sign up for the first month and afterwards the service cost $19 for 0-500 subscribers and you pay more as your list grows
Mailchimp has a forever free plan that allows you to sign up to the service and use it for free till your subscribers gets to 2000. After which your first upgrade between 0-500 is $10 and you pay more as your list grows.
Getresponse costs between $8.16-9.95 for 0-250 subscribers. And likewise goes up in price as your list grows.
Contact form: It is important that your website visitors be able to contact you. Of course you can just have an email on your site but the professional way is to use a contact form.
To create this yourself you need some knowledge of PHP but that may not be necessary because there are lot of free contact form providers to choice from.
As you must realize by now that how much it cost to build a website or build websites, will depend on what type of website you want, whether you want a professional's help, or a building tool or not, and other tools you choose to use.
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