How Much Does it Cost to Make a Website?
Nowadays, you HAVE to create a website, if you want to advertise, sell, meet people, or get known. And especially today, more than ever, in this internet era, where one of the most powerful tools people have is their internet presence.
Because of the big demand for websites, there are a lot of people and even well-established businesses that advertise their website-building services.
So this leads us to the most important question: How much does it cost to make a website? As for a lot of other things, it depends. But generally speaking, you will spend between $100 and $500 to build a simple website for a small business. This price can even be slashed to $0 if you’re willing to put in some work and a few hours for learning. As for websites custom-built to include a lot of features, these can easily cost over $20,000.
If you to find out more, check out the steps below, and you will get a better idea of the final cost of building your desired website.
The first step – Figuring out the cost of your domain name
As most people know, the domain name is the first thing a new visitor will see and remember about your website. Some may even call it your website’s title, which makes it one of the most important parts of your identity.
Besides the fact that the domain name needs to be related to your website directly and very easy to remember, the fewer characters it has, the better. The instant problem you will notice is the fact that most clever domain names are already taken and you won`t be able to use them because someone already thought of registering them.
If the .com extension of your desired domain is taken, there is always the option of getting the same name with a different extension. Among the most important are these:
- .com
- .net
- .org
- .info
- .biz
- gTLDs, also known as geo-Top Level Domains are extensions that represent different countries and locations, like – .us for the United States, .co.uk for the United Kingdom, .ru for Russia, .li, and so forth
Depending on its extension, the registration fee can differ when you pick your domain name. If you opt for a cheaper domain extension, you could spend $1-$2 per year, but our advice is to opt for a .com extension, which should cost you around $8-$10. If you really want a domain name but it is taken, you could try to negotiate directly with its current owner.
Be careful though – if you aren’t an experienced negotiator, try making the deal through a middleman or a broker, because some domains could be overpriced and some could simply be too pricy. Just to make it clear, some of the biggest sales registered are privatejet.com sold for over $30 million, and fb.com sold for around $9 million.
The Next step – the cost of website hosting and some other things required
The hosting will be the place where all the website files, scripts, and databases will be stored, which means it will act as the heart of your website. This is where you need to do a little thinking: you could get free hosting, that will get stuck when you reach a higher number of visitors or you could pay for your hosting anywhere from $1 monthly and up to $100 or even more, each month, to be sure that your website has enough bandwidth for the number of visitors you are expecting to reach.
Another aspect that puts paid hosting plans over free ones is the protection you will receive with a paid package, against hackers, spammers, and many other issues. If you think about creating a big website with a lot of monthly visitors, be prepared to pay over $1000 on monthly payments. When choosing a web hosting, here’s what you need to think about:
- Is there reliable tech support?
- How many websites you can host on it?
- What is the type of control panel?
- How many MySQL/Ms SQL databases are allowed?
- What is the available disk space?
- Is there a limit to the bandwidth?
If you want to build a small business website, be prepared to spend around $4-5 monthly just on hosting fees.
Third step – The cost for the design and creation of your website
The cost of designing your website is something very relative. It could cost thousands of dollars, or it can be way cheaper or even free, depending on your experience, who you hire to do it, and what settings and options you want your website to have.
If you have a little experience and a small budget, just use a known CMS (Content Management System), which is basically a free platform that will offer you some standard settings for a general website. Among the most known CMSs are:
- WordPress (WordPress websites account for over 40% of all the websites on the internet)
- Blogger
- PhpBB
- Joomla, etc.
Even if you opt for a free CMS, you can expect to spend on your website design. Why? Because you’ll notice that different templates for your website could cost anywhere from $4 to $49 if they are premium, some plugins that will add more settings to your website could also cost $7 and up to $149, and so on.
Don’t be scared, although there are a lot of premium templates and plugins that could make you go over your budget, if you don’t have enough funds, you could always opt for free alternatives.
If you don`t want to spend time building your website, you could always hire a professional web developer. Again, the price may vary greatly: some web developers charge $200-300, others could charge $20,000 – $50,000, and even more- in the end, it all depends on what you want your website to do and how much are you willing to spend for it.
Let’s add a $1,000 price for the web design, which will get you a medium-sized website with average settings, created by a decent web developer.
Fourth step – The content creation cost
Most visitors will land on your website in search of content that will answer their questions, so this last step will be the most important one if you want to have a successful website. If you still have some funds left, think about outsourcing it to a professional, because they will be able to create content around keywords that will bring in a lot of visitors. If you don`t have any funds left, just create your own content. Create content in your own language or a language you are good at, to be sure that the visitors will understand your message.
You can opt to use an SEO (search engine optimization) company, that will not only create content but will also take the necessary steps to ensure that your website will rank in search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo.
Depending on the size of your website, the niche targeted by your website, and the SEO company you opt for, you could pay anywhere from $100-$200 and up to $1,000, or even more, in monthly payments.
So, if we set an average cost for your SEO and content creation of about $300 per month, let’s see how much will website building cost you:
So how much will a new website cost?
The answer is the following:
- You can spend just $2 if you just buy a cheap domain name and use the free options for hosting, design, and content.
- You can spend around $1,000-$1,500 as an initial payment and about $300 each month for content and SEO for a decent website.
- You can spend $20,000 – $30,000 or even more for an advanced website with a lot of settings and no restrictions.
This whole article is the short answer to the question “How much does it really cost to build a website?”.
Would building a website be a good option for our average Joe? We believe it is. Not only that if you don`t have the necessary funds, you could build a smaller website for $2, but in the end, great content could even bring in some monthly income from advertising.
In time, if you start earning with your website, you could spend your online income on upgrading the website and hiring outsourcers. For some, it might sound impossible to earn online, but a lot of people started with a $2 blog and got to the point where they make thousands of dollars each month.
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