Recently, I was working with a private mentoring client as she was beginning to establish her business. At one point in our discussion she mentioned that she had hired someone to build her site for. Naturally curious, I asked, “How is it coming along? How much did you spend? How would you describe your experience?”
Her answers were less than awesome.
It had been several weeks (the designer has a full time job and does websites on the side) without much progress.
The experience was a bit frustrating.
And worst of all, it had cost her a ton of money.
In this post, I’d like to share a range of what it might cost you to establish a website so that you can gauge whether it makes sense to pay someone to help.
First, you will need to purchase a domain. This would be your address on the internet: www.yournamephotography.com.
I recommend Godaddy and a their domains range from $10-100+ per year. Most people spend around $10-15 per year.
Secondly, you will need hosting. Again I recommend Godaddy because I’ve used them for over 14 years and their customer service has always been excellent. This will cost approximately $5 per month, or $60 per year.
At this point, you could install WordPress and select a free theme and get started. If you aren’t familiar with theme customization, there could be a bit of a learning curve, but it’s certainly possible to do this on your own.
Let’s see, thus far we are roughly $70-75 for the year (largely dependent on the domain name you selected).
If you wanted to step up your theme game, you could take a look at the Divi Theme from Elegant Themes. This is the theme we use on the Flourish Academy website. It will cost $89 per year, or $249 for lifetime access.
They are also themes like Prophoto that you can purchase for $199. They have a handful of free themes, but they also offer premium themes that range from $80 – $150 in addition to the cost of the plug-in. Use the codeHLAH3434 for $10 off.
At this point, if we went with Divi, our total cost could be $159 per year, OR
with Prophoto we would spend $70 for the year + a one time fee of $199 = $269.
If building a website isn’t in your repertoire (or maybe you just like to save time and frustration), I think hiring the right designer can be a great idea. Just be aware of the hard costs (detailed above) vs the designers fee.
Recently, Leeann started offering website services, not because she need more to do, but because she genuinely wants to help. Leeann is timely, professional and extremely competent with website design, check out her services here.
