wondering how much I have to invest to setup a website?

[swirt]

John's point about longevity is an important one. Freelancers like any other business come and go. Longevity does not usally favor the inexpensive designer. You can't always judge longevity by hourly rates or project costs, but very few designers that started out charging $20 an hour still charge that. They either raised their rates because they realized it wasn't sustainable or they moved on to do something else.

 

[user 26]

This is what I think, if there is a resource for a well done website designer for innkeepers for under $1000 then it is WRONG for someone to be on this forum and not spill their beans! SPILL EM.
How can you talk about it and not share who or where these people are? That is the whole point of this thread - so many saying they cannot afford $5-10k and other saying they can get it for under $1k. Spill em. Spill them beans..

that would come under resources ... wouldn't it?
i hope no one is going to ask that any of our members who are web designers/develpers give examples of websites in the forum here .... surely you need permission of the person for whom you created the website because that would be advertising off their backs ... and in a forum where the site would be critiqued or criticized ... i'd likely not give such permission.
.

that would come under resources ... wouldn't it?
i hope no one is going to ask that any of our members who are web designers/develpers give examples of websites in the forum here .... surely you need permission of the person for whom you created the website because that would be advertising off their backs ... and in a forum where the site would be critiqued or criticized ... i'd likely not give such permission.

I certainly hope they do! This is a chance to give some examples and get some extra business, we are asking about it, they did not find us simply to promote themselves.
If it is in their portfolio like Acorn offers, then they obv have given permission. No one is going to critique or criticize websites, the discussion is about high cost. http://www.acorn-is.com/
.

i believe we are talking about two different things.
if i were a website developer, posting a link in this forum to my own website that has a portfolio that has links to customers who've given permission to be shown there is completely different than posting links to individual inn's websites in this forum who happen to be my customers.

 

[Mr.Design]

This is what I think, if there is a resource for a well done website designer for innkeepers for under $1000 then it is WRONG for someone to be on this forum and not spill their beans! SPILL EM.
How can you talk about it and not share who or where these people are? That is the whole point of this thread - so many saying they cannot afford $5-10k and other saying they can get it for under $1k. Spill em. Spill them beans..

Try this for a starting place:
http://www.guru.com/emp/index.aspx
It'll give you thousands of different names, links to their sites, min. budgets, etc.
This one came up on the first page and stuck out to me. $400 min. budget, http://www.84colors.com/3.html
Just look around and see what's what. You'll do fine with a budget of $1000. Communicate your needs with whomever you choose and everything will be fine.
.

Guru has a nice feature where you can see the results and the ballpark for the final costs
guru search for B & B sites
People can judge for themselves whether they can spot the differences between the sub-$1000 and the $1000 plus sites. And then compare them to a multi-thousand site by pros that speciailize in our industry.
...this one came up on the first page and stuck out to me. $400 min. budget, ...
Just because they have a minimum budget doesn't mean that is anything close to the actual budget. A $400 minimum budget just means, don't bother me with a small rinky-dink request.
(Added:got interupted here) The designer you identify as liking the looks of has an hourly rate of $50 per hour (same as mine). So in order for that person to turn out a site for under $1000 they would have do it in 20 hours. There is no way, no matter how talented they are that they will develop a competitive B&B site in 2 and a half days worth of work. And looking at her work (its quite attractive, I am pretty sure she would agree.) Even if she took 5 days it would still be a $2000 site....my bet is she would need more time than that to do the level of quality shown in her portfolio.
.

I have to disagree. Two days is plenty of time if communication is constant, and clear, and if the extras such as photos, are on hand already.
SeeBen, if you'd like I'd be more than happy to create a site for you for free. SEO, the blog and the like are no problem. If you can supply the photos, I'll supply the coding. If you like it, by all means use it, no credit link on your site to me is needed, nor is payment. If you don't like it, that's fine, too, you won't hurt my feelings if you don't use it.
I have no problem showing just how easy and quickily a professional site can be done.

 

[JBloggs]

The webdesigner challenge...should you choose to accept it. This is cool!

 

[JBloggs]

This is what I think, if there is a resource for a well done website designer for innkeepers for under $1000 then it is WRONG for someone to be on this forum and not spill their beans! SPILL EM.
How can you talk about it and not share who or where these people are? That is the whole point of this thread - so many saying they cannot afford $5-10k and other saying they can get it for under $1k. Spill em. Spill them beans..

that would come under resources ... wouldn't it?
i hope no one is going to ask that any of our members who are web designers/develpers give examples of websites in the forum here .... surely you need permission of the person for whom you created the website because that would be advertising off their backs ... and in a forum where the site would be critiqued or criticized ... i'd likely not give such permission.
.

that would come under resources ... wouldn't it?
i hope no one is going to ask that any of our members who are web designers/develpers give examples of websites in the forum here .... surely you need permission of the person for whom you created the website because that would be advertising off their backs ... and in a forum where the site would be critiqued or criticized ... i'd likely not give such permission.

I certainly hope they do! This is a chance to give some examples and get some extra business, we are asking about it, they did not find us simply to promote themselves.
If it is in their portfolio like Acorn offers, then they obv have given permission. No one is going to critique or criticize websites, the discussion is about high cost. http://www.acorn-is.com/
.

i believe we are talking about two different things.
if i were a website developer, posting a link in this forum to my own website that has a portfolio that has links to customers who've given permission to be shown there is completely different than posting links to individual inn's websites in this forum who happen to be my customers.
.

i believe we are talking about two different things.
if i were a website developer, posting a link in this forum to my own website that has a portfolio that has links to customers who've given permission to be shown there is completely different than posting links to individual inn's websites in this forum who happen to be my customers.

I must have skimmed this thread as I didn't see any of that.

 

[Morticia]

SeeBen, take Mr Design up on his offer. It's the only way any of us will ever get to see a thing he's done.

 

[JBanczak]

I'll chime in here since we do website design as well. First off, I think spending $5-6k from a well-know designer like Whitestone, Rare Brick, Acorn, Savvy etc. is well worth it. I think Acorn and Savvy Innkeeper might have even lower priced options. I've yet to meet anyone who hasn't seen a great return on their website from companies like these. Same goes for photos from people like Jumping Rocks. Every one of these companies has been doing B&B specific work for a LONG time. They know the industry, they understand design, they deliver great products/service and have good people.
As for getting a designer from Guru, I personally wouldn't recommend it unless you really know how to deal with designers, and then it is going to be interesting. There are a lot of good companies devoted to the B&B space with fair pricing that won't leave you hanging. Recall UXL Studios - they exhibited at PAII last year, got a bunch of people to pay them something just under $1k/site, then went belly-up without developing sites or refunding money...
At Rezo, our philosophy is a little different. We are trying to set the bar for lower priced products, whether it is websites, or videos, etc. I don't mean this to be a plug and apologize if anyone is taking it that way, but we deliver websites with a different pricing model. We charge $499 for a website (and right not it comes with a free 1-minute video btw). However - we require 2 years of hosting and promotion at either $99 or $199/month. So ultimately you pay more than $499 over two years. There is a lot included in those prices - for instance at $199/month we do your PPC terms for you, we don't charge you any hourly fee for changes/modifications to your website like most others do, etc. We also use SnippetMaster on all websites so you can change text on your pages yourself, etc. In any case, we'd like to think that we put out a different option for folks so that there is more choice in the market.

 

[SeeBen21]

This is what I think, if there is a resource for a well done website designer for innkeepers for under $1000 then it is WRONG for someone to be on this forum and not spill their beans! SPILL EM.
How can you talk about it and not share who or where these people are? That is the whole point of this thread - so many saying they cannot afford $5-10k and other saying they can get it for under $1k. Spill em. Spill them beans..

Try this for a starting place:
http://www.guru.com/emp/index.aspx
It'll give you thousands of different names, links to their sites, min. budgets, etc.
This one came up on the first page and stuck out to me. $400 min. budget, http://www.84colors.com/3.html
Just look around and see what's what. You'll do fine with a budget of $1000. Communicate your needs with whomever you choose and everything will be fine.
.

Guru has a nice feature where you can see the results and the ballpark for the final costs
guru search for B & B sites
People can judge for themselves whether they can spot the differences between the sub-$1000 and the $1000 plus sites. And then compare them to a multi-thousand site by pros that speciailize in our industry.
...this one came up on the first page and stuck out to me. $400 min. budget, ...
Just because they have a minimum budget doesn't mean that is anything close to the actual budget. A $400 minimum budget just means, don't bother me with a small rinky-dink request.
(Added:got interupted here) The designer you identify as liking the looks of has an hourly rate of $50 per hour (same as mine). So in order for that person to turn out a site for under $1000 they would have do it in 20 hours. There is no way, no matter how talented they are that they will develop a competitive B&B site in 2 and a half days worth of work. And looking at her work (its quite attractive, I am pretty sure she would agree.) Even if she took 5 days it would still be a $2000 site....my bet is she would need more time than that to do the level of quality shown in her portfolio.
.

I have to disagree. Two days is plenty of time if communication is constant, and clear, and if the extras such as photos, are on hand already.
SeeBen, if you'd like I'd be more than happy to create a site for you for free. SEO, the blog and the like are no problem. If you can supply the photos, I'll supply the coding. If you like it, by all means use it, no credit link on your site to me is needed, nor is payment. If you don't like it, that's fine, too, you won't hurt my feelings if you don't use it.
I have no problem showing just how easy and quickily a professional site can be done.
.

Mr. Design,
Thank you very much for your generous offer.
[FONT= 'Times New Roman']If your offer still standing. Please contact me off forum, so we can discuss the details.[/FONT]

 

[Mr.Design]

This is what I think, if there is a resource for a well done website designer for innkeepers for under $1000 then it is WRONG for someone to be on this forum and not spill their beans! SPILL EM.
How can you talk about it and not share who or where these people are? That is the whole point of this thread - so many saying they cannot afford $5-10k and other saying they can get it for under $1k. Spill em. Spill them beans..

Try this for a starting place:
http://www.guru.com/emp/index.aspx
It'll give you thousands of different names, links to their sites, min. budgets, etc.
This one came up on the first page and stuck out to me. $400 min. budget, http://www.84colors.com/3.html
Just look around and see what's what. You'll do fine with a budget of $1000. Communicate your needs with whomever you choose and everything will be fine.
.

Guru has a nice feature where you can see the results and the ballpark for the final costs
guru search for B & B sites
People can judge for themselves whether they can spot the differences between the sub-$1000 and the $1000 plus sites. And then compare them to a multi-thousand site by pros that speciailize in our industry.
...this one came up on the first page and stuck out to me. $400 min. budget, ...
Just because they have a minimum budget doesn't mean that is anything close to the actual budget. A $400 minimum budget just means, don't bother me with a small rinky-dink request.
(Added:got interupted here) The designer you identify as liking the looks of has an hourly rate of $50 per hour (same as mine). So in order for that person to turn out a site for under $1000 they would have do it in 20 hours. There is no way, no matter how talented they are that they will develop a competitive B&B site in 2 and a half days worth of work. And looking at her work (its quite attractive, I am pretty sure she would agree.) Even if she took 5 days it would still be a $2000 site....my bet is she would need more time than that to do the level of quality shown in her portfolio.
.

I have to disagree. Two days is plenty of time if communication is constant, and clear, and if the extras such as photos, are on hand already.
SeeBen, if you'd like I'd be more than happy to create a site for you for free. SEO, the blog and the like are no problem. If you can supply the photos, I'll supply the coding. If you like it, by all means use it, no credit link on your site to me is needed, nor is payment. If you don't like it, that's fine, too, you won't hurt my feelings if you don't use it.
I have no problem showing just how easy and quickily a professional site can be done.
.

Mr. Design,
Thank you very much for your generous offer.
[FONT= 'Times New Roman']If your offer still standing. Please contact me off forum, so we can discuss the details.[/FONT]
.

I sent you an e-mail with a lot of questions in it. Whenever you answer those and add in anything else you want I can get the ball rolling. It shouldn't take more than two days to complete, provided communication is constant

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

60 new posts to this thread! Holy cow!
Question-Does Seeben have a B&B or is he aspiring? If he does, and Mr Design goes to bat then I would also like to see the outcome. Seriousely, there is a NEED for good B&B websites for under a grand.

 

[user 26]

SeeBen21 - i'm getting away from your original question, but here goes ...
if someone did not have much money (meaning under $300) to get started, what would you folks recommend? assuming they had $299 to build a site, should they purchase a template? try word? publisher? maybe try vistaprint? frontpage would likely be out of their price range.
so just to get themselves online -- with the goal of moving up to a better site, a professional site, when they have money, what could they do just to start? scan sites like this one for help and advice and through trial and error pull something together?

 

[Mr.Design]

SeeBen21 - i'm getting away from your original question, but here goes ...
if someone did not have much money (meaning under $300) to get started, what would you folks recommend? assuming they had $299 to build a site, should they purchase a template? try word? publisher? maybe try vistaprint? frontpage would likely be out of their price range.
so just to get themselves online -- with the goal of moving up to a better site, a professional site, when they have money, what could they do just to start? scan sites like this one for help and advice and through trial and error pull something together?.

Sea, you can still get a site for $300.
I wouldn't go with Vista Print, or Word or Publisher. You can get templates for free, there's really no need to purchase them (especially if you're not familiar with the inner workings of a website)
If you have a Mac you could try iWeb. Additionally if you have a college or university near by you could see if they have a board or something that you could post in the computer science department or graphic design area. I'm sure there's some starving college kids out there looking for a couple hundred! LOL
I'm still really shocked that everyone thinks a site has to cost over $1000 to get anything of quality.
JBJ, I'm still awaiting Ben's reply but I assume he at least had an inn that he had purchased, just not got going yet. Without a physical place it could get a little tricky putting a site together. If for some reason it doesn't work out I'll put together a dummy site anyway just to show it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to put something professional together and the bottom line is many web design sites out there are ripping people off

 

[Mr.Design]

Well, regardless, you can still obtain one for $300.

 

[user 26]

i'm not asking for a b&b site for myself ...

 

[user 26]

i bought a website for another use ... and i am having a *devil* of a time working with it!

 

[swirt]

SeeBen21 - i'm getting away from your original question, but here goes ...
if someone did not have much money (meaning under $300) to get started, what would you folks recommend? assuming they had $299 to build a site, should they purchase a template? try word? publisher? maybe try vistaprint? frontpage would likely be out of their price range.
so just to get themselves online -- with the goal of moving up to a better site, a professional site, when they have money, what could they do just to start? scan sites like this one for help and advice and through trial and error pull something together?.

Sea, you can still get a site for $300.
I wouldn't go with Vista Print, or Word or Publisher. You can get templates for free, there's really no need to purchase them (especially if you're not familiar with the inner workings of a website)
If you have a Mac you could try iWeb. Additionally if you have a college or university near by you could see if they have a board or something that you could post in the computer science department or graphic design area. I'm sure there's some starving college kids out there looking for a couple hundred! LOL
I'm still really shocked that everyone thinks a site has to cost over $1000 to get anything of quality.
JBJ, I'm still awaiting Ben's reply but I assume he at least had an inn that he had purchased, just not got going yet. Without a physical place it could get a little tricky putting a site together. If for some reason it doesn't work out I'll put together a dummy site anyway just to show it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to put something professional together and the bottom line is many web design sites out there are ripping people off
.

If for some reason it doesn't work out I'll put together a dummy site anyway just to show it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to put something professional together and the bottom line is many web design sites out there are ripping people off

Hmmm working with imaginary clients... I bet would speed up the design and development part by quite a bit. Wouldn't want the reality of working with and explaining and hand-holding actual clients to get in the way.
I'm not sure I follow your logic on the ripping off accusations. Your logic seems to be that because you are willing to build a site for free, then anyone spending more than $1000 is getting ripped off? So following this same logic, you can imagine yourself running a 9 room B&B single handedly (because you are high energy) , and since you can imagine doing it for $40 then any innkeeper who charges more than $40 per night for their rooms is ripping people off?

 

[Mr.Design]

SeeBen21 - i'm getting away from your original question, but here goes ...
if someone did not have much money (meaning under $300) to get started, what would you folks recommend? assuming they had $299 to build a site, should they purchase a template? try word? publisher? maybe try vistaprint? frontpage would likely be out of their price range.
so just to get themselves online -- with the goal of moving up to a better site, a professional site, when they have money, what could they do just to start? scan sites like this one for help and advice and through trial and error pull something together?.

Sea, you can still get a site for $300.
I wouldn't go with Vista Print, or Word or Publisher. You can get templates for free, there's really no need to purchase them (especially if you're not familiar with the inner workings of a website)
If you have a Mac you could try iWeb. Additionally if you have a college or university near by you could see if they have a board or something that you could post in the computer science department or graphic design area. I'm sure there's some starving college kids out there looking for a couple hundred! LOL
I'm still really shocked that everyone thinks a site has to cost over $1000 to get anything of quality.
JBJ, I'm still awaiting Ben's reply but I assume he at least had an inn that he had purchased, just not got going yet. Without a physical place it could get a little tricky putting a site together. If for some reason it doesn't work out I'll put together a dummy site anyway just to show it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to put something professional together and the bottom line is many web design sites out there are ripping people off
.

If for some reason it doesn't work out I'll put together a dummy site anyway just to show it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to put something professional together and the bottom line is many web design sites out there are ripping people off

Hmmm working with imaginary clients... I bet would speed up the design and development part by quite a bit. Wouldn't want the reality of working with and explaining and hand-holding actual clients to get in the way.
I'm not sure I follow your logic on the ripping off accusations. Your logic seems to be that because you are willing to build a site for free, then anyone spending more than $1000 is getting ripped off? So following this same logic, you can imagine yourself running a 9 room B&B single handedly (because you are high energy) , and since you can imagine doing it for $40 then any innkeeper who charges more than $40 per night for their rooms is ripping people off?

.

If there's no actual inn yet, don't you think it would be a little hard to have all the features needed such as room pictures, descriptions, rates, etc. Like I said, I haven't heard back yet so I'm not sure what he has or does not have.
Playing the straw man argument isn't a place I'm going to go.

 

[Mr.Design]

i bought a website for another use ... and i am having a *devil* of a time working with it!.

I'll e-mail you my e-mail address, Sea. If there's something you need help with and I can help, I'd be more than happy to

 

[EmptyNest]

SeeBen21 - i'm getting away from your original question, but here goes ...
if someone did not have much money (meaning under $300) to get started, what would you folks recommend? assuming they had $299 to build a site, should they purchase a template? try word? publisher? maybe try vistaprint? frontpage would likely be out of their price range.
so just to get themselves online -- with the goal of moving up to a better site, a professional site, when they have money, what could they do just to start? scan sites like this one for help and advice and through trial and error pull something together?.

You can go to Homestead.com and build your own site...or godaddy.com Lots of folks do it.

 

[swirt]

SeeBen21 - i'm getting away from your original question, but here goes ...
if someone did not have much money (meaning under $300) to get started, what would you folks recommend? assuming they had $299 to build a site, should they purchase a template? try word? publisher? maybe try vistaprint? frontpage would likely be out of their price range.
so just to get themselves online -- with the goal of moving up to a better site, a professional site, when they have money, what could they do just to start? scan sites like this one for help and advice and through trial and error pull something together?.

As Catlady mentioned, most hosting accounts with large hosts like 1and1 include a build your own site setup. 1and1's imparticular doesn't do a bad job. The code is not perfect, but it is decent (better than what Word would generate). A few people here have created sites using this (I'll let them raise their hand if they want to).
Its done with a web based editor so their is no software to buy and you can use it from pretty much any machine with internet access. The downside is that changes can be a little on the slow side and you have to go out of your way to make sure you have a backup on your own computer.
Will it rival a pro? No, but it will get you started and not create any lasting harm.
I'm not sure what your intended use is, but you could probably get by with the 1&1 beginner plan at $4 per month, though I would probably recommend the $5 per month 1&1 Home plan to be safe. Choose the Linux version of the plan over the Microsoft version unless you have a specific need for asp.