If you are interested in building a website, you might be wondering how much it will cost to build one. I will tell you later how much it will cost but first you need to decide whether you will be building the site yourself or you will hire someone to do it for you.
If you decide to build the site yourself, then here are five (5) questions you need to keep in mind:
1. Have you identified your goals for building the website? This does not cost a penny, you just have to figure out the website is for. In general, websites can be classified as personal or corporate. The most common goal of a personal site is to show to the public who you really are. On the other hand, a corporate site may have a lot of goals; it may be built to serve as marketing tool, additional revenue source, or a launch pad of an entirely different business model.
2. Have you developed a site strategy? You need to know your audience will be for the site and what information will they get from your site. With these, you need to identify what makes people flock to related websites and what makes these websites successful. You need to think how you will differentiate your website from the competition. In order for you to do this, you need to do market research and there is a cost associated with it.
3. Have you prepared for the implementation details? Coming up with a good name for a website is significant to the success of your site because it is what users will remember. Majority of the sites that make it to the top is identified by the logo; the logo creates a feel, a representation, and a trademark for your site. You can design your logo using a graphic-software like Adobe Photoshop may costs $499. In addition, site design is particularly essential because it can either help make or break your site’s stated purposes. You need to have a working knowledge of HTML and you need to spend $400 for a web designing software.
4. Have you decided how are you going to host your site? You have three options on this one; you can either procure your own server and that will cost you around $60 monthly, but if you are not willing to spend that much you can also go for a cheaper one, that is to pay for a web hosting service, a just cost of $10 to $30 will be charged to your account monthly. If you are running tight on budget, you can always register for a free web hosting, however this free webhosting sites have limitations on the capabilities and worst the site posts ads on your page.
5. Have you planned for the site maintenance? You need to decide who will be responsible for adding site contents, how often will you be adding content and how you will manage changes in the contents of the site. Salary of the maintenance personnel may vary from US$600 to $1,000 monthly.
If you think that the answers to the questions above are quite difficult to achieve, you can always opt to hire someone to build your website for you. A complete website may cost around $30 to $100 depending on the content and number of pages it contains.
