How much should I spend on programing?

The answer is very complicated, since programing can run from a few dollars to several million.

If you plan to run a complicated website with unique features, plan on big numbers. If you just want a simple site to sell products with nothing special, the cost should be very low.

If you plan to do what everyone else is doing, then there are loads of cheap programs available that can run your website. If you use a system like yahoo or pageBuzz, they both have programing included with hosting, bringing the cost down to nothing.

However, if you want to do more, sell classifieds and set up user accounts for example. There are many solutions between $300 and $2000 that can be installed in your website. Unfortunately, you are usually stuck with what they offer. You can configure the aplications, but if you want something unique, you will need to start from scratch.

Many systems such as buzztrader.com take months of programing. And at around $100 and hour, its enough to break anyones bank. You can plan on spending $20,000.00 on a basic application to over a million dollars on something extensive and complete.

A system like ebay could cost millions, just to program. More importantly to understand, is that that type of programing has evolved over years. Even if you could hire programers to build you that type of website, they could never get it right the first time. You would need a staff of programers always tweaking and adjusting the code. That means full time employees on heafty saleries.

You cannot get an ebay or yahoo for $100.00.

Many freelance websites offer people a chance to bid on projects. For the most part, its just scammers taking money from people that beleive they can buy an ebay for $100.

Take for example a search engine. pageBuzz offers a website search included with your hosting. Simple, easy and good upto a few thousand pages. But google searches billions of pages.

Microsoft has spent over $100million, yes that is million, trying to program a search engine to compete with google. They still do not have a working model.

So what is the difference? They both search, one is free and the other is through the roof.

It is the difference between building a mobile home and a walmart. An average walmat could fit an entire moble home park insde its sales floor. Needless to say, it cost more to build.

If you want to get a grip on how much to spend, understand what you want to do. You can get a website for $2 a month or you can get a grid of 64 oracle servers needed to run large databases, generally costing upwards of $100,000.00.

You cannot compare an average website with the big sites like walmart.com. Just as you cannot compare a corner store to super walmart.

If you plan on building a walmart.com or ebay.com, plan on diging deep into your pockets. If you find a programer that offers a finished solution for $100, you will be wasting your money.

If you want to get started, think small, simple and cheap. Do not try to be an amazon.com. Just try to be your business.com and give yourself time to grow.