When we first sit down to plan out our new business, one of the very first things we do is create a budget. It’s an important tool that helps not only determine whether our new idea is actually a viable way of making money, but also goes a long way in preparing us for what’s ahead.
Without a proper budget for our business, we’ll ultimately be going in blind, with no idea as to whether or not we’ll really be able to sustain that business and still have enough money left over to cover our everyday living costs. So we sit down, we bust out the pen and paper or we fire up a spreadsheet, and we get to work. We look at how much we’re expecting to make, and then we budget for things like travel expenses, Internet running costs, paying staff and contractors, stationary, and marketing.
Somewhere under this latter column, chances are we dump a single, solitary figure labelled ‘website.’ If we’re outsourcing the building of that website to somebody else, that that single may be all we need, but if we’re running on a small budget and looking to save cash by doing the whole thing ourselves, there’s a lot more we need to budget for than you might at first think.
Web hosting
If you’re planning to run your website on a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, or to simply build the whole thing from scratch on your computer and then upload it to the web, you’re going to need to pay for some hosting.
Luckily, this shouldn’t take too big of a chunk out of your budget. Many of the best website hosting companies around offer discount rates when you first sign up, meaning you can get your website live for no more than the cost of a cup of coffee each month.
Website builder fees
Alternatively, you might decide that you’re going to build your entire website online using one of the many DIY web creators out there. These make it easy for anyone to create a beautiful looking, fully functional website without any technical know-how.
Many of them even offer free plans, meaning you won’t even need worry about putting them down on your budget, though you’ll often find that to take advantages of many services offered by these web builders, you do need to pay for a plan. If you’re taking this route then, first go and look at whether you’ll need to invest in a premium plan with your website builder of choice, and budget accordingly.
Domain name
However you decide to build your website, it won’t do you much good if nobody knows how to access it. With that in mind, you’re going to need to invest in at least one domain name. If you’re anything like most businesses, you’ll want to look at getting your hands on dot-com, or country-focussed domain name like a .co.uk.
These do cost money, though probably not as much as you might think at first. Most .coms run at around £7 per year, whilst a .co.uk or similiar URL can normally be snapped up for between £2 and £3. If the domain name you want is in demand, or has a lot of value attached to it, you could be looking at paying hundreds, if not thousands, to claim it as your own. Again, do some investigating into how much your domain name is going to cost you, and be sure to include it in your budget.
Website content and SEO
If you already have all the pictures, text and other materials ready to go, you might be able to skip this altogether. Yet many businesses find that they benefit from employing the services of professionals whose job it is to optimize your website, and its content in order to get your site ranking as highly as possible on major search engines such as Google.
You might be considering paying a copywriter to produce captivating prose, a photographer to grab attractive images of your business and products, or a Search Engine Optimization specialist to help boost those search rankings. All of these are going to need to be budgeted and accounted for.
