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When you are planning for a site, there are several strong factors
that contribute to the outcome of your site, or income for you in that
matter. Consider this thought for a second, many people in the business
world consider time as money, when you are creating a website, you can
not think about it in that sense at all. Websites will take time to be
developed, especially if you are new to designing. Take a look in your
wallet, and look at your budget, if you don’t have confidence in yourself
or time to create a website yourself, set aside some money to purchase a
design or a designer.
Any company, no matter how small or large, needs an identity. If you
don’t have a logo already, you might want to have one created for you.
A logo is needed, clients that can’t make a decisive decision on what
company they want to go to, might prefer to select the company who
demonstrates an act of responsibility and reliability.
When it comes to the design, the first thing you should sketch out
what you want your site to look like, and how you want your links to
be arranged. If you go to a website designer, show them the sketch,
so they have an idea of what you want the site to look like. Website
designers can not imagine how you want the site to flow, they can only
take a wild guess, which is like picking a number between one and one
million in the sense that there is an unlimited number of combinations
between styles, color schemes, and layouts. Now, if you choose to go
to a design team, first see if you can have a free consultation, many
companies that don’t offer free consultations are considered to be
“money hungry”, and that is a good sign that their fees will often
be higher that their competitors. During the consultation, don’t give
in, if they suggest something, don’t be like “Umm, okay.” You must be
strong to hold your position. In the end, they will not be managing
the website, nor will they have to pay the fees to keep the site
maintained, which we will talk about next.
On your website, you should never include flashy elements, large
files, or slang on any website that you want to leave a professional
impression. You have to expect the lowest standards when creating
your website, and please try to make your website handicap accessible,
any misfortune shouldn’t deprive them of accessing your site.
Once the design is done, you should consider looking into domain
names and hosting costs. A domain name runs on average $8 a year, it
can be more or less depending on the extension. Hosting can run anywhere
from $4 a month to $25 a month, even more depending on what your website
will need. If you are planning to have a large amount of traffic, you
will need a larger bandwidth. If you are planning to have a lot of files
online, you will need a lot of space. Website files don’t take up a lot
of space, so don’t figure that because you have 120 web pages, it doesn’t
mean you will need any more than 5 megabytes (MB) of space. You should
plan to buy at least 1/3 more space than you ever think you will you and
1/2 more bandwidth.
Once the website is all created, all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are
crossed, you can then look into advertising, and placing advertisements
on your site as a source of revenue. If you are a business, I would
advise you to keep advertisements off of your website as it establishes
an amateur environment. If you are required to have an income on a
personal of informatory website, then place ads in locations that don’t
distract the user, but where they can be easily located. Advertisements
should be relevant to your websites topic and theme. If you decide to
pay for advertising, research your source of advertisement, and you
should never ever have to equivalent costs for startup advertising as
you do on a regular basis.
Well, I hope you gained some knowledge about how you should plan for
your next website, and I wish all of you the best of luck. Remember, it
is always content first and your intent on money making second.
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