Thread: website fees- just curious

maybe it's unethical to ask 'how much did your website cost? but I seem to hear so many different answers from lots a $$$$$ to afordable $$.
so I'm intersted mainly to hear answers from people who host there own webpage.
I'm sure professional web developers fees would vary greatly no doubt and charge a fortune but if you used the pros was it worth it?
if you designed your own website are you happy with it?
and lastly what sort of monthly fees do you pay? from what I understand it costs for every click and keyword. Google, the new yellow pages.

How long is a piece of string?

Originally Posted by starglow

maybe it's unethical to ask 'how much did your website cost? but I seem to hear so many different answers from lots a $$$$$ to afordable $$.
so I'm intersted mainly to hear answers from people who host there own webpage.
I'm sure professional web developers fees would vary greatly no doubt and charge a fortune but if you used the pros was it worth it?
if you designed your own website are you happy with it?
and lastly what sort of monthly fees do you pay? from what I understand it costs for every click and keyword. Google, the new yellow pages.

Just like a new house project, you have to be clear about what you want first. Then when you get sticker shock you reduce your expectations.

A website that only has 5 pages using the same template on a turnkey system might on cost you $500 to set up.

Any kind of custom website with some advanced functionality can start from $20,000 and go up from there.

If that were true, nobody would have a website. I am thinking that is a pretty high estimate.

There are so many variables! Can you design it yourself are do you need someone to do it for you? Even if someone else creates the original template, will you update it yourself or do you need them to do it? Are you willing to have ads on your site? Do you need a website builder, or do you have 3rd party software that you can use? How much bandwith and/or pages do you need? How long do you want to have a contract for hosting and domain registration?

Personally, I just renewed my site through GoDaddy. I use their website builder, have unlimited pages, no ads, and with 2 years of hosting and 3 years of domain registration paid under $200.00 for the whole shebang.

I host my own website through hostinginsiders.com. It costs me about $3 a month, plus I paid about $60 for a website making program so I could design the site myself (I know NOTHING about programming). I am very happy with the results, I have more bandwidth than I can use, and I've never had a problem with my site.

Trust me, if I can do it anyone can. I may not have the world's greatest site, but I like it and it gets me plenty of gigs. :)

Originally Posted by Asra*

I may not have the world's greatest site, but I like it and it gets me plenty of gigs. :)

Yeah, what she said!

Originally Posted by laura 2

Yeah, what she said!

..l;,

Originally Posted by starglow

maybe it's unethical to ask 'how much did your website cost? but I seem to hear so many different answers from lots a $$$$$ to afordable $$.
so I'm intersted mainly to hear answers from people who host there own webpage.
I'm sure professional web developers fees would vary greatly no doubt and charge a fortune but if you used the pros was it worth it?
if you designed your own website are you happy with it?
and lastly what sort of monthly fees do you pay? from what I understand it costs for every click and keyword. Google, the new yellow pages.

Shira.net costs me about $800 to $1,000 per year to run. About $500 per year is due to web hosting fees. The rest is due to keeping current on software that I use to do the work, such as Photoshop upgrades, etc. I keep threatening to move from Adobe Pagemill to Dreamweaver in the near future, but my brain isn't ready yet to tackle learning complex new technology.

I have never paid anybody to do any design or development work on my site.

I have never paid Google or anybody else for click-throughs and keywords.

My search engine placement is primarily due to 2 things: 1) How many other web sites link to mine, and 2) How many text words appear on my site that match the ones people are searching for.

So, why is my site so expense to host? It's because of the high volume of traffic I get. My web hosting company's fee is a function of two factors: 1) how much disk space I chew up (and with 1,000 html pages plus lots of images and some music it's a hefty amount), and 2) How much traffic I get (this is called "bandwidth").

Depending on which company provides your access into the Internet, you may be able to get enough free web hosting to meet your needs. A number of the big companies like Earthlink, America Online, and Microsoft Network do allow limited free web sites as part of what you get for your money, as do some of the cable modem companies and DSL phone companies. Heck, so do some of the smaller ones, too. I don't know details because it has been a long time since I've looked into it, but I'd recommend evaluating what, if anything, your current provider offers.

My websites cost me about $30/month total (I have three at the moment). I don't pay for search engine hits. I do run an ad campaign through Google, I set up my budget as $30/month with them & I get some business from that, but most of my hits come from links or search engines (not ads).

I taught myself html and built my sites myself. I use a free HTML editor to speed up the process, but I code the pages by hand mostly. I'm very happy with my sites, they do everything I want them to do.

Unless you're in a very competitive market, I think most bellydancers can build a perfectly usable site themselves using free templates.

My host is bizland.com they offer free templates and submit your site to all the major search engines every month for free. Their prices start at under $10/month.

If you're a Big Star--you need the top of the line (say Ansuya, Tamra-Henna in LA has a gorgeous site), but the rest of us, don't need to pay thousands.

I designed my own site and LA Raqs - Los Angeles Belly Dance using a free "wysiwyg" editor from Yahoo! and pay $12.99 a month for the hosting. The domain fees were separate; $8 a year per URL maybe?

Michelle Joyce does designs for dancers in the $300 range...and that's probably near the upper end of what a bellydancer needs (though there are indeed plenty of sites that cost $20,000 or more once you get into and super flashy plug-ins and real time databasing).

If you decide to get someone to design and build a site for you, remember that it's a job for some people.

I recall a thread sometime earlier where someone was offering to build websites for dead cheap to pay for something they needed. No offense, but building a website for someone for $40 is undercutting those for whom it is work (sound familiar??).

Consider how many hours do you think goes into building it and how much per hour is the person getting for all the work (including the stuff you don't think about like registering domain names, meta tag stuff, adjusting copy for web brevity, compressing video, photoshopping pics, making your last-minute changes, etc.

Although people do create their own sites for "free", an experienced web designer does have skills and experience and compensation shouldn't be compared to your cousin who will "do it for a case of beer" (you might do a freebie show for his wedding too).

I'm not trying to be snarky but do unto others... :-)

Wow thank you for the responses. its not for me, more a hypothetical question.
Asra your site looks great and for a great price, peanuts really.

Shira I don't think that sounds expensive not compared to what i found after a quick google, in australia a cheap web designer starts at $500-$1500.

You know if I had to I would probably do it myself, it may take longer but I reckon I could get around it. i'm even getting used to photoshop.
gotcha ouroboros, I know how long it takes me just to resize a photo and then post on here.

Originally Posted by Asra*

I host my own website through hostinginsiders.com. It costs me about $3 a month, plus I paid about $60 for a website making program so I could design the site myself (I know NOTHING about programming). I am very happy with the results, I have more bandwidth than I can use, and I've never had a problem with my site.

Trust me, if I can do it anyone can. I may not have the world's greatest site, but I like it and it gets me plenty of gigs. :)

Belisha did our own, (our current webmistress is genius) the costs in NZ$ were moderate & worth doing for us. See Belisha Dance Club - Home ..g.:

I created my own website (I won't dignify it with the term "designed"!) so I had no design/creation/build fees.

I used a UK based web-hosting company to register the domain name, which costs me £9 (US$18) for two years.

I also use that company to host the domain. It costs £35 (US$70) per year, which I pay in one annual lump sum rather than monthly.

Registration and hosting cost me £37 in my first year. Registration was for two years, and hosting cost me £30 for the second year. A book about html cost around £15, and when I had to buy Photoshop elements again that was £63. I'm not going to think about the hours I've spent swearing at the computer trying to get to grips with all this, but the end result is a simple website which is easy for me to edit. If I ever get rich and famous (ha!) I'll get a pro to design me a site.

I just pay for the web host: about $96 a year. I designed my own website. I *love* my website. I dont do google ads or anything. I also made one for a friend, and we exchanged services for it, so thats a possibility too.

Michelle Joyce creates professional websites for VERY reasonable rates, I highly recommend her as well.

Mine is super cheap - maybe $10 a month? I use the free web hosting site Tripod.com. I pay $5 a month to have my site display without outsider advertising, my advertising on yahoo and google are another $5-10 a month. I used Tripod's online site builder. I didn't bother buying my own domain - http://bellydancedeelite.tripod.com was fine with me. The main thing I invested was a lot of time - you're going to have to spend a lot of it if you haven't done this before. But I really enjoyed doing it and I like being able to update my site myself.

When hiring a professional web designer, it may help to take a similar approach as one has looking at the prices of belly dancers: There's more going into development than just coding a few pages, and that e.g. all time spent talking to the client is not "free" (i.e., the professional developer will have to take that into account when calculating a fair price).

Looking at it that way, $1500 can be fairly reasonable. (And, yeah, I know that it's a big stack of money.)

I was paying about $23/year until I added some videos - so I upgraded to $33/year. Web Hosting, Domain, WebSite Services from Host Color

For a simple website, paying around $10 a month is way too much, in my opinion. I pay $40 a year for webhosting through Surpass Hosting, and host my domain through Surpass Domains for $15 a year (which I think is high, it can be as low as $5).

I designed my own website after taking an html class in grad school and purchasing a few reference books. There's lots of info on the web too, like at Web Monkey.

Lastly, I used a free template for my Fatima site - try using an open source template, like one from OSWD. Basic html knowledge, change a few graphics, and presto!

For google, you can determine your budget for ads (the sponsored links on the right hand side of Google) - You can place a limit of $5, $30, $100, whatever per month. Google does not charge you if your website simply turns up in the results on the left hand side of the page.

My webhosting costs me $12 / month from Yahoo and I am very very happy with their service. I have only used about 5% of everything (space, bandwith, etc) and I have about 20 pages or so. (with the English and Arabic version). I used their software that came free with the hosting, so I was able to design, create and continuously maintain/update my site, for free. ( I have no idea how to do html, except for a few scripts, tags, etc). And I am happy with my site.

I used Adwords with Google, it wasn't worth it for me. I used Yahoo search sponsor, and I think I ot some hits that paid for themselves, but normally I come up my higher on Yahoo searches thang Google, so I figured there's no point to pay for it,too.

Originally Posted by mish_mish

If that were true, nobody would have a website. I am thinking that is a pretty high estimate.

He is right about the pricing. I have been researching different companies since I'm redoing mine. A lot start around $800 and go up up up. Michelle Joyce was very reasonable and I like her work, so I'll be commissioning her when I'm ready. Not to mention I will always support another dancer when I can

My retail site is about $250 a year with Citymax. I use them because they have a rather straightforward cart option - a no brainer.

My dancer site - that I am building now will cost about $80/yr for hosting. I do my own graphics and programming so I am saving cash there. They have templates and stuff. If all goes well, I will move my retail site to this company.

Host Papa - America's Leading Web Host

Host Papa is also a "green" company!! Host Papa - America's Leading Web Host

There are plenty of other options out there - cheaper too - but I decided to take the green approach. hey - we all need to do our part!

:-)

I coded my own pages
(self taught using combo of books and free online tutorials)
and the web host I use (OneWebHost.com) costs only $16.95 a month (w/ cart 32 included so I can add shopping to my site at later time).

Welcome to Beledi Bay!
(I'm still working on some of the pages - but am happy so far)

If you want to use OneWebHost - let me know, as their advertized rate is higer than the $16.95, but I may be able to get you the same rate as myself. The advertized rate was higher when I signed up too - but my friend that is also w/ them referred me and I got the lower rate - PLUS he got a discount on his next month's rate for referring me. Worked for both of us...


The books are
"Teach Yourself HTML Visually"
"HTML Simplified - Tips & Tricks", and
"Master Visually - HTML 4 and XHTML

The free online Tutorials
"HTML Goodies"

Originally Posted by steffib

When hiring a professional web designer, it may help to take a similar approach as one has looking at the prices of belly dancers: There's more going into development than just coding a few pages, and that e.g. all time spent talking to the client is not "free" (i.e., the professional developer will have to take that into account when calculating a fair price).

Looking at it that way, $1500 can be fairly reasonable. (And, yeah, I know that it's a big stack of money.)

I make the bulk of my income from my small web design business. My sites average around $1500 and include a custom design and a search engine friendly content management system (this means you can do all the updates yourself).

Anyway, the bulk of my clients are small businesses. What we offer is definitely a cut above go-Daddy, etc... but it's a lot more affordable to those who need a professional site that doesn't cost $20,000.

(Yes, I did the website for my event...The Las Vegas Bellydance Intensive)