Cost for building a website

Q:  What would be a reasonable kind of "average" price to pay for a website to be set up? Up to 5 pages, include ability to add blogs / articles, and a link to a free demo for an eLearning program. Preferably be able to include e.g. some audio or YouTube content (as per your suggestion!) but nothing "extraordinary" or complex?

Mike Reed
www.MirandaManagement.com

A:  Hi Mike–

I've seen quotes on 5-page websites range from $100 all the way up to $2000.  Most of the price differential depends on the amount of customization that you want on the site.

You can use the ready-made templates as found at GoDaddy.com's Web Site Tonight service for as little as $50/year, but they are tough to customize to your look and feel and if you ever change from GoDaddy's hosting services, you can't take those with you, as they own the template.  The same goes for any other template-builder sites, like Yahoo Small Business.

You can purchase a template (which does become yours to use for the duration of the life of your site on whatever hosting plan you desire) from a template site like www.TemplateMonster.com or www.templatefactory.com.  These usually run $50-$100, and for another $200 or so, you can customize the color of the site and/or have the designer add in your logo.  The downside to this is that you might see other sites using this template.  Most of my sites are built with templates, and I haven't run across that many other sites which are using the same template.

If you're starting from scratch, you might think about a blogsite, which is a website that operates on a blogging platform, like WordPress.  The benefit of this strategy is that your blog and your website are integrated together, and Google LOVES blogs.   Here's an article I've written about blogsites that might help you out: https://www.getmoreclientsonlineblog.com/2008/06/7-reasons-blogsites-attract-more-visitors-and-help-you-get-more-clients-online.html  You can have a blogsite designed for around $350.  One perk about using this strategy is that you don't need a web designer to update the site for you — you can do that using your blog post interface.

If you want to hire a web designer, I think a good median price would be about $800 for a 5-page site.  Here's an article I've written on questions to ask before you hire a web designer: https://www.getmoreclientsonlineblog.com/2008/06/7-reasons-blogsites-attract-more-visitors-and-help-you-get-more-clients-online.html

In terms of adding audio or video capability to your site, www.GetMoreClientsAudio.com makes it quite easy for you to upload your audio and video to your site and embed a player on your page.  This service runs $19.95/month.

Good luck on building your site!

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