Domain Name Registration

To have YourOwnChosenDomainName.com (or .org or .com.au etc) involves paying a Domain registration fee.

These fees are $35 a year for global domain names (.com, .org, .info etc) depending on the registrar used and the number of years you register for.

Web Server Rental

Once you are ready to use your domain name, you'll set up a web server to promote your business. You need to find an ISP to host your web pages for you.

Web Server rental prices vary quite significantly.

Paid services go from $19 - $25 a month to $thousands a year, depending on the type and size of server you really need.

The "average" small business should expect to pay no more than $300 a year to rent a web server that is appropriate to their needs.

Web Site Design

Initially, this can be an expensive part of getting your business onto the Internet... and that's because it's the most crucial part.

In most cases, a poorly designed web site will not work well (if at all) for you!

If you do have a good understanding of design principles and copywriting, then have a go at it yourself. If you don't, leave it to a person with skills in those areas.

The average small business will invest between $500 and $1000 to get a web developer to create a site that:

• provides all the essential information users expect
• is unique to your business
• has your "look and feel"
• is easy for your users to work through
• encourages your visitors to want to deal with you
• makes it easy for them to deal with you
• works for you - attempts to achieve your objectives
• is search engine friendly

Obviously, if you need fancy programming to create interactive elements, or database interaction, or e-commerce capabilities, then you're looking at a lot more.

For example, SSL certificates (to carry out secure e-commerce transactions) can cost up to $700 a year. Remote gateways to banks to collect "real-time" credit card information can also be costly to implement. Throw in a "shopping cart" program (these seem vary considerably in price from $1000 to $50,000+) and your costs can begin to sky rocket.

Web Site Promotion

Once your site is going, you've got to get people there.

The cheapest way to do that is the one people most often forget about, and it's also the simplest! Make sure that you include your URL (address) in absolutely everything you send out from your business - your email, letterheads, "With Compliments" slips, invoices, statements, business cards, advertising materials, brochures, etc - everything!

The next step is to "register" your site with search engines. Over time, these will account for about 80 percent of your traffic. Many of these are free, although quite a few are now moving to "pay-per-click" or "pay-for-listing" business models.

With pay-per-click engines, you "bid" on certain key words, and pay that amount every time someone clicks through to your site... You can also pay a minimum $20+ USD a month even if no-one clicks through.

The bigger "pay-per-listing" engines - Looksmart and Yahoo - are now charging 100's of dollars on an annual basis to review your site for possible inclusion in their directories.

Hundreds of other sites will include a link to your site for nothing, or you can choose to pay from $5 upwards to list your site details with them.

The key here is to be selective about the sites you approach. Make sure they have the target audience you are after!

There are also paid submission services you can use to get your site listed on search engines. The costs of these vary considerably. A once only $5 can get you listed with 300 search engines. Or you can make monthly investments of $50 USD for regular submissions of your site. Again, it's up to you to consider the pros and cons of these schemes, and what can fit into your budget.

You can also do it yourself with submission software like Web Position Gold or SubmitWolf.

The key with any sort of promotion is to keep doing it, and do it regularly!

Web Site Maintenance

An often forgotten component... regular updating of your site... and probably forgotten due to other demands on your time...

But it is important to  : 

1. keep the information on your site current in the first place, and then

2. update and refresh the information to encourage repeat visits to your site. 

In the first case, it's bad when people discover information that is so-o-o-o obviously out of date... they certainly won't feel good about dealing with you!

Secondly, apart from giving people a reason to come back to your site at a later date, updating the information also encourages search engines to revisit... and reindex...

It's been suggested that this alone helps improve your placement in some search engines. Rates for maintenance are typically billed on an hourly basis at rates of $50-$100 per hour, depending on the extent of the modifications.