Maintenance costs: this is a few years old, I do my site myself with nudging from empty nest.
$25 to add a photo, change a photo, + cost of time to edit photos to fit.
$25 per edit - add info, make changes to text
$100/month to make sure website was working, links were active and, back in the day, to resubmit website to search engines every month.
There was another charge to create new pages. At one point my site had almost 100 pages. It still has close to 50 now.
Luckily, I cut my teeth on website building back when doing it yourself was ok. There is some stuff I do not understand at all. It would be nice to call someone and say "fix that" instead of having to learn a bunch of stuff I'm not interested in any longer!
As JB said, if you have a website already, or you hire someone down the road, we'll be happy to go over it for you and point out what doesn't work from the guest standpoint.
Make sure whoever you hire doesn't copy from other places in your location. That is a huge no no. Some folks have had that happen. Brand new site goes up in their location with all of their info stolen from other sites. Or the designer models the new site on a high producing site with similar layout, photos, text. To the point the guest thinks it's all the same property..
So, I've talked to a guy, and he talks a good game... but is he any good? Major inducement - he is willing to barter
... they say you get what you "pay" for and in this case it is about $5,000 with photo's but how do I know if he can produce..?
His own website does not show up on the first two search pages (SEO is something he is supposed to be really good at.) Some of the websites in his portfolio are good, some are kinda lame... matter or taste I suppose. The one other b&b he did - well, they aren't using his stuff on their actual site. Last week caught some code exposed on his website -- gone now.
Bottom line this is a big decision... and I don't have the budget for it without the barter. I don't know if I could do it myself or not... I think I'll be taking your advice and sending you to check it all out, whatever I end up doing....
Thanks for all the input!
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