You want to have a killer website developed with all the bells and whistles but you have a small start-up budget, less than a thousand bucks lets say... So, what do you do?! Heh... It's cool, no worries. It is not so hard coming up with a nice and functional website that will get the job done. It will generate some traffic and even earn money. That's right! It can be done easily. You will need four things in order to be in it to win it: a good keyword domain, secure and reliable web hosting, decent website design / layout and an easy to use content management system or script to provide a certain service and / or product.
Domain NameIt's important to have a good keyword domain name if you are serious about doing any kind of business online. The domain doesn't really make or break your business, but it sure does help. If the .com is unavailable, go with .net/.org and if neither of those is available... Well, use your brain. Try to come up with another domain that will work but make sure that it contains the main keywords that describe what your business is all about. A good keyword domain isn't a must but if you have the money to spend... You should get one.
I personally don't care too much about having the dot com or not if I am determined on building something out... I'll develop either the .net or .org domain because Google, Yahoo and Bing treat them just about the same.
If you are having trouble coming up with a good domain you can browse around for the the perfect domain on some of the Aftermarket domain sales venues such as Sedo, Afternic, GoDaddy Auctions and some of the domain name forums listed in the links section.
Web HostingYou really don't need the best of the best web hosting if you are just starting out. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a dedicated server?! No no.. Forget that. Start with a small VPS (virtual private server) they usually cost around $50 on average and come with plenty of resources. You want to have a fully managed, secure and reliable server. VPS servers provide the perfect hosting environment for intermediate - advanced webmasters and SEO'd websites.
Shared hosting accounts suck and I don't recommend them to anybody who is serious about their internet business... Shared web hosting accounts is just asking for trouble. Go with a VPS! You don't want to risk anything. Those few extra bucks is money well spent and will help you avoid many headaches. You do not want to be cheap in this department. Trust me on this. It's also much easier to scale up from a VPS to a dedicated server when the time comes. I recommend Media Temple, ProHosters, Liquid Web, Pair and RackForce.
Web DesignIn general, the website layout and setup should be simple and nothing too fancy. Forget paying a web designer and graphics specialists thousands for a custom web design and artworks.. Why?! No need for that. You can buy a nice and professional pre-made website template for WordPress or whatever else you need for like $50 - $70. You can make small changes here and there and put your signature on it. Style it however you like! You can make as little or as many changes that you want. You have the foundation to build on and so on...
If you can't do that with Photoshop or simply don't have the time... Hire a freelance web designer to do it for you. He will come up with a logo and make whatever other modifications necessary for usually $100 - $200 tops. This is simple stuff and doesn't cost a whole lot. You definitely want to get a good design and setup for your website... So it's definitely worth investing at least a couple of hundred bucks on this, especially since it is only a one time thing.
I buy pre-made templates from various places and then customize them myself. I don't really have any graphics artists and designers on my staff because I am more than capable of doing this on my own and have been since I was like 10 years old. It's really simple and I encourage everybody to at least give it a try. Working with templates is as easy as 1-2-3... You just gotta think outside the box a bit. I do use professional designers on special occasions tho.
I recommend 99Designs as a crowdsourcing solution for all your design needs. As for WordPress themes, Woo Themes and Elegant Themes are great. For all other templates, including standard website designs, logos, identity packages, etc... TemplateMonster is one of the best if not the best out there.
ManagementHaving an easy to use web based content management system (CMS) that is 100% reliable is very important. Of course the best one for the past few years is none other than WordPress, which is free! It comes with like a million add-ons or in other words little modules / tools and it is super duper feature packed as far as organization and administration goes. It is very flexible and can do pretty everything you need it to do. It is 100% customizable and gets the job done each and every time. You just have to learn how to use it properly.
If you need a full blown system for your website to carry out specific tasks and provide a service such as classifieds, chat, directory listings or sell something via an online store or provide search results and so on... You probably need to spend thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on getting a custom system / script programmed and integrated with your website design... Right?! NO.. Wrong! You don't do that anymore in 2009. Forget that. Nobody does it!!
Believe me, there is already an out of the box solution and script or system available on the internet for usually a hundred bucks or less that will do exactly what you need it to do. There is tens of thousands of various scripts that exist which companies spent years on developing and continue to upgrade and tweak. You just have to look for them and pick the right one that fits your needs by doing some careful research as well as trials / comparisons.
If it doesn't do everything you need it to do, you should go ahead and hire a freelance programmer and pay him to "modify" it and add those features you need. It's what I have been doing for many years. I don't get scripts or systems custom developed. I find a script that already works which I like and if I need some additional tweaks, I'll get a freelance programmer who is up for the task to do it. It's a quick fix and solves the problem pretty much each and every time and saves you lots of money!
There are a lot of freelancer programmers out there... Some good places to start looking for one and to post your projects would be oDesk, ScriptLance and Elance. As for scripts and systems that are ready to go, well.. Hot Scripts is probably my favorite resource. Scripts.com is another very good directory.
Ready to conquer...So what should you do with all of that money that you are going to save if you follow the four recommendations above?! Hehe... Well, probably a good idea would be to get some targeted traffic. You can do it by investing in SEO or going the SEM route by signing up with Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter and test those out.
See which ones drive the most quality traffic to your site and which of those sources converts best... Basically, find out where you get the biggest ROI. Having a website is cool and all but you need eyeballs. You need people browsing around and consuming the provided information, making use of the services available, etc. Without them... You will get nowhere quick.
You need traffic and lots of it. The more, the better... Right?! Hopefully you will be able to pull in the right type of traffic and make it work. That is the last piece of the puzzle in order to be successful online... There you have it all! You are now ready to conquer the world. It doesn't sound so bad now, does it? Of course.. Because it's really not. Never was and never will be... But you do have to clearly understand what you are doing and hopefully have a master plan.
Development is deployed in a bunch of stages and it is a constant work in progress. Always something to do on different ends... Always room for improvement... It's fun stuff. It's important to just launch and be out there... Don't delay it. Just do it. Things will come together sooner rather than later, as long as you put in the work and continue to go at it... It will happen. For sure!
Things have a funny way of working out here on the web.. Those who try and do it day in and day out, know all about this... Those who just think about it and theorize about the various aspects of development all day long... LOL! Not good enough. Why don't you launch and then do all that? You learn as you go and tweak as you go. Makes sense?!? I hope!! Good luck to all... Cheers! :)
Articles at WannaDevelop.com
05/08/2010: Dozens of exact match product / shopping related sites at auction now @ Latonas.com 03/19/2010: All domain development = $99 per domain... Pretty good deal, don't you think? 02/18/2010: New year.. New products... New prices.. New staff... Lots going on in the development biz! 02/06/2010: Must see auctions at Bido! Five days, back-to-back all this week.. Over 100 keyword domains priced to sell! No offers will be turned down 12/01/2009: Domain Stryker pre-registration now officially open... Launch date set for later this month!
