Costs of an Internet Presence
Costs of an Internet Presence
The Real Costs of Having a Web Site
The Real Costs of Having a Web Site
Do It Yourself
Do It Yourself
Storage
Storage
(Web
(Web
Hosting)
Hosting)
$ 20/mo.
$ 20/mo.
Storage Space
Storage Space
10
10
MB
MB
Web Design (Set Up Fees)
Web Design (Set Up Fees)
$ 2,000+
$ 2,000+
Standard Maintenance (1 hr./mo.)
Standard Maintenance (1 hr./mo.)
$
$
100/mo.
100/mo.
Tax Changes (4 hours/year)
Tax Changes (4 hours/year)
$33/mo.
$33/mo.
Promote/Market Your Site
Promote/Market Your Site
None
None
Educational Estate Planning Content
Educational Estate Planning Content
None
None
Edit It Yourself Interface
Edit It Yourself Interface
None
None
$2,000+ Set Up
$2,000+ Set Up
+
+
$153 / Month
$153 / Month
Now that you are aware of the basic setup of the web, and what it takes to make a useful site, let's discuss the costs if you
did it yourself or hired a web designer.
In order to have a web site, the first thing you need is somewhere to store it. This is physical hard drive space and
hosting software provided by whomever is hosting your web site. Think of it like the office space you lease for your
company. Some ISPs (like AOL or Earthlink) offer you web site space with your email account, though its usually only a
token amount of space.
Hosting varies, but is commonly between $20 and $50 per month for 10 to 50 MB of space. Let's use $20/mo for 10
MB. Keep in mind that this is JUST space, you don't have any pages yet.
Thus, the next thing you need is to design the site itself. Web designers vary in price, but usually charge $60 to $150 per
hour. It can take several hours to come up with your site's look and feel and then you have to get your basic content up.
Basic content includes information about you, your practice, your office location and anything else you want online. Even
for a very small site of around 15 pages, you can be looking at $2,000 in set up fees.
Next, the hidden cost that most people don't think about updates and maintenance. Without fresh content, your
visitors have absolutely no incentive to come back. Now you have to go back to your web designer every time you want
something changed or added, at the mercy of the designer's busy schedule. Even minor changes can take an hour or two.
Moderate to major changes can take several hours. Let's just assume just 1 hr. of minor ongoing updates per month at
$100/hr. ($100/month), and about 4 hours of updates due to Tax Law Changes per year ($33/month).
Now you have a site and space for it, but no one knows about it. Marketing your site can cost a fortune. For example,
there are companies that you can pay to get you high search engine placement results, get you high visibility on other web
sites or get you involved in banner ad exchanges. We know many people spending thousands of dollars on this aspect of
their site. As we have mentioned, there are no guarantees that this will be effective.
And with that small of a site, there wouldn't be any sizeable amount of educational estate planning content for your
visitors. That means you have to write the materials, taking up tons of your time, and then pay your web designer to add it
again. After that, you have to keep it updated, which costs you again. And if you run out of storage space on your hosts
server, you have to pay more there as well.
So what's the end result? You've spent at least $2,000 to design and build a small site, which costs you $153 more per
month to keep updated and useful that's without marketing costs or content, which could be thousands more. I sure
many of you out there already have web sites that aren't doing a thing for you.
There is an inexpensive solution.
1993 2004 by Schumacher Publishing, Inc.
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