How much does it cost to build a website?
Well, it could be $0 or $3,ooo or up – it all depends on what route you want to take. You can go high budget, low budget or inbetween. The choice you make would depend on your skill level, your budget, how much control you want, and a couple of other factors. I’ll discuss your options here. They look a bit like this:
Option One: High Budget/Low Skill Level/Low Control
Option Two: Medium Budget/Low Skill Level/High Control
Option Three: Low Budget/Medium-High Skill Level/High Control
Did that make sense?
Option One is hiring a web designer. It will cost you anywhere from $250 and up, depending on how how many pages you need for your site, and how fancy the graphics are. If you want something totally unique and are willing to pay top dollar, the price can go up to $3000 for a top notch web designer. You’ll also have monthly hosting fees and a yearly domain name to pay for.
The downside of this approach is that, unless you know html and can hand code your site (or have the software your designer used to create it), you will have to pay someone else an hourly wage to add content. If you have a brick and mortar busines and all you need is a “business card” site and have no interest in building a real online business, that’s fine. Pay someone to do it and you can go about the business of marketing your business.
Option Two involves using a website builder, either a web based one like Internet Based Family or a web designing software like XSitePro. I use both currently and recommend them to people all the time. Which one you choose would depend on whether you want to create one site or many.
Internet Based Family uses point and click technology to create a professional looking site for around $20 a month (less if you pay 3 or 6 months at a time) and includes hosting and your domain name.
IBF is nice because it’s so easy to add content. It also contains hundreds of templates for different business topics, hundreds of stock photos to add visual interest to your pages, a built in shopping cart and autoresponder. Seriously, it’s a whole internet business for $20 a month. Not bad! You can get a free 10 day trial by clicking here.
XSitePro, which I’ve used for over a year and created many sites with, is great for building multiple sites quickly, especially if you’re an affiliate marketer. There is more information on XSitePro here. It will set you back around $180, but when you consider that’s a one time investment, it might be the cheaper option.
You will need to obtain hosting for sites you create in XSitePro, which you can get for around $1.25 a month from Dayana (great for one site) or MomWebs at under $9 a month (if you need multiple domain hosting).
Option 3 would involve using free html editors or blogging software. The lowest budget option would be to use a free html editor like NVU or Open Office. Or you could build your site using Blogger or Wordpress software to start a blog, which is also very easy to do even for the technically challenged! All you’ll need is your domain name and hosting.
So the questions to ask yourself are:
How much control do I want over my site?
What is my budget?
What are my long term plans?
What will my site be used for?
Will I need one site or several?
Am I technically challenged?
Feel free to ask questions below!