Who Is Involved In Getting A Site Online?

This article could also be titled 'How much is this goingneed to contact a given designer for an actual
to cost me?' There are actually several parties youestimate.
have to pay when having a website designed. I tendWeb Hosting
to use the analogy of a house, so I'll run with thatThis can also be called 'Web Space,' among other
analogy here.things. This is a combination of the land and
First off, you may or may not realize that there arefoundation your house is on. A good designer will help
both one-time and recurring fees involved in getting ayou pick a hosting company and package that will fit
site online. I will differentiate between the two as Iyour wants and needs for your website.
go through the three major parties.Some web hosts do charge an initial setup fee of
Web Designeranywhere from $20 to $75 or so dollars. The bigger
The designer is a combination of an architect, builderthe package you get, the more the initial setup fee is
and interior designer. And really a number of otherlikely to be.
things. The designer ends up handling (or helping youNot all web hosts charge a setup fee. You will,
handle) everything from the purpose of the websitehowever, be required to pay an ongoing fee. If you
to its organization, layout, design, good coding andkeep in mind that what you're actually doing is renting
plenty of other things that you may or may not seespace on someone's computer, this makes a little
just by looking at the website.more sense. The ongoing fees for this range from
Like a good house, a lot of things, when done well,around $5 a month to $600+ a month. Most of m
will not be noticeable. And in a lot of cases, that's theclients end up paying in the $10-$30 per month range.
point. When a menu on a site is well designed, youDomain Registrar
really just use it without paying too much attentionImagine that you had to pay the post office yearly
to its exact location, font, design, etc.for your address. Sure, someone could find you if
With a web designer, there is definitely an up-frontyou gave them your longitude and latitude, but
cost. This is the design of the initial site. This fee canhaving a street address makes it much, much easier.
run anywhere from $300 or so to thousands andThat is how it works with a domain name. You pay a
thousands of dollars. It all depends on the size anddomain registrar, and they generally charge you
complexity of the site. If you want a lot of custombased on the extension. An extension is .com, .org,
programming or Flash work, that type of thing will.net, .edu and the list goes on.
obviously cost you more. In the long run, however,One domain registrar we've had good experiences
many of these elements like the customwith is Go Daddy. Their domains generally run from
programming can save you money.$7 to $10 a year. As I write this, .tv is really popular,
There is also the ongoing cost of maintaining the site.so it's quite a bit more expensive. Still, at $31 a year,
At T&S, you sign a contract for severalit's way cheaper than domain names used to run. In
(generally 6 or 12) months at a time, and pay upthe late 90's, you had to pay $70 or so a year for a
front. You know the cost ahead of time. Many webdomain.
designers charge hourly for this type of work. TheThe charge for a domain registrar is yearly, though
downside is that you don't know how much you willyou can generally buy up to 10 years at a time.
be charged in a month. The upside is that if you don'tWe've only had one client buy that many, but we've
have any work done at all in a month, you don't gethad another client buy 11 domain names in addition to
charged for that month.the other one they already owned.
Because of anti-price-fixing laws, many web designersAnd there you go.
do not put prices on their website. So you would