I’ve been designing websites as a hobby since1996, beginning with hand coded HTML and CSS! About 7 years ago, I finally decided to use a “Content Management System” and after some research settled on Joomla! Just this month I decided to abandon Joomla in favor of WordPress! Why? Because WordPress has features to help you get better website traffic. And no matter what tools you add to Joomla, you can’t get the website traffic that you reallly want!
WordPress now has approximately 63% of “market share” compared with all the other CMS’s out there. About a year and a half ago, that market share was about 65%, so it has declined very slightly of late, but it is holding fairly steady for the long haul! Not one other CMS has even 10% market share! And by the way, why do you think WordPress has such great market share? Do you think it’s because they provide the best tools to get the desired results (great looking website, with great traffic and sales)?
Which brings me to the actual “cost” of making a website for your own business! The “hosting fees” are going to be anywhere from $90 to $150 per year. The domain name cost is about $20 per year. And by the time you add all of the needed “plugins” for getting what you need out of WordPress, you’ll be spending about $1,000 per year on “WordPress plugin subscriptions”! This brings the grand total to almost $1,200 per year!
Keep in mind that these are just the actual costs of your website, even if you’re planning to do ALL of the design work yourself! And that design work is very significant, demanding, and detailed! How much money do you think should be paid to the designer of your website? The one who actually gets traffic to your website and is responsible for any sales you might get? Minimum wage will soon be about $20 per hour, and for the first year, your website designer will probably put in at least 2-4 hours per business day! That’s anywhere from $9,600 to $19,200 per year!
Now for the big surprise! What would you say if I told you that I’m willing to put in all that design work for less than $1,000 for the first year? Specifically, $799! That means the total cost for your first year is still less than $2,000 (approximately $1,999)! There’s just one catch! I only want clients who are serious about their business! So, I’m asking for the $1,999 up front!
My friend, if you want to try designing the website yourself, you are more than welcome to try that! And I will be writing articles and creating YouTube videos to help you with that process! But, if you just want someone else to do that for you, I’m here and ready to do the work!
All the best!
Arthur Baldwin