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How much should I
spend on website programing?
The answer is very
complicated, since programing can run from a few dollars to
several million.
Websites on pageBuzz.com
come with the programming installed, so there is no expense for
shopping carts and ecommerce programs that customers need.
But websites like
healthcare.gov tool over 50 different companies, 3 years and and
estimated $600 million dollars to build. So the numbers can have
quite a range.
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, for example sell classified ad space or set up user
unique accounts. 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
applications, but if you want something unique, you will need to
start from scratch.
Many systems such as buzztrader.com took months of programing. And at around $100
and hour, its enough to break anyones bank. You can easily plan
on spending $20,000.00 on a basic application to over several
million dollars on something more extensive and complete.
A system like ebay
will cost millions, just to program. More importantly to
understand, is that that type of programing has evolved over
years.
Even if you could
hire programmers to build you that type of website, they could
never get it right the first time. You would need a staff of
programmers always tweaking and adjusting the code. That means
full time employees on hefty salaries.
We see this all too
painfully with the Obamacare website which just does not work.
Everyone involved should have know you can't build something that
complex and big from the start. You have to grow, learn and
evolve so the programming works as users expect. So you shake out
the bugs over time.
You will
never get an ebay.com, amazon.com or yahoo.com 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 believe
they can buy an ebay for $100.
You might get a
programs that looks like ebay, but will ever be able to do the
same things or ever be able to manage even a fraction of the
users that a website like ebay does.
In fact I can
guarantee that if you loaded it with a million items it will
crash. Unlike the every system that supports countless millions
of items.
Search
Programs
Take for example a
search engine. pageBuzz offers a website search included with
your hosting. Simple, easy and good up to 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 more
than any of us have to spend.
It is the difference
between building a mobile home and a Walmart Super Center. An
average Walmart could fit an entire mobile home park inside its
sales floor. Needless to say, it cost more to build.
If you
want to get a grip on how much to spend, try understand the scope
of what you want to do.
You can get a basic
website for $20 a month or you can get a grid of 64 oracle
servers needed to run large databases, generally costing upwards
of $100,000.00 just for the hardware,
You cannot compare an
average website with the big sites like walmart.com. Just as you
cannot compare a corner store to the Super Walmart.
If you plan on
building a walmart.com or ebay.com, plan on digging deep into
your pockets. If you find a programmer that offers a finished
solution for $100, you will most likely 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.
If you do decide to
build your own technology consider the average costs.
If you hire the
people you need, it will cost you hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year. If you contract out the work to a firm, then it
could cost even more per hour than just hiring them yourself.
You have to also plan
for growth. Will the business grow or will you have a set size?
If you are like every
business you expect to get bigger over time and when you create
expensive programing you have expensive considerations.
How will you
structure the programming so that it can be scaled up over time?
To do that, you have
to spend more at the start ad use more hardware as well.
Do you want to just
build what you need ad then build a new site when you get bigger?
Of should you plan now for future growth.
Programming
Limits
When it comes to
programming the servers have limits. Just as I mentioned with
google and bing, they can search millions of pages while typical
website searches only manage a few hundred pages.
They do this with
better and more expensive programming and more severs.
Imagine you buy a car
for $20,000. It will get you back and forth to work, but if you
want to race Nascar or in Formula One, then you need a better
faster car and that can cost nearly a million dollars.
There are ranges for
everything and the more you want something to do, the more you
will need to spend.
So there should be no
surprise to anyone that websites can cost between $20 and $20
million.
What to
Spend on Website Programming
But people want to
understand what they need to spend on their website.
The big problem is,
the same website built by different people could also vary
greatly, so giving anyone a set number is just not possible.
As you plan your
website, you need as many quotes as possible, as many points of
view as possible and as many prices as possible.
Like in any other
industry you have experts claiming they are worth $300 an hour
who are better sales people than programmers. So getting sold a
bill of goods and not getting a working website is actually more
common than getting a working website.
Anyone will take as
much as you have to spend and then tell you they need more, when
you don't have more, you get a bunch of unfinished code.
Some of these
projects can take years and if you are paying anyone even $15 an
hour, those years of man hours will add up fast.
Programmers are not
going to be cheap and programs, at least good programs take a
long time to write.
Most people think
they can get a classified website for $100 and if you buy
existing software you can. But do you think the programmer only
spent a few hours writing that program?
The programmer might
have spent 200 or 400 hours writing the program and then he or
she plans on selling it to 10,000 people at $100 each. They end
up with a cool million dollars for their work while you get 400
hours of work for $100.
So it
works for everyone.
But if you hired that
programmer for $100 an hour, it would cost you $40,000 for the
same exact program.
That is why system
like pageBuzz have such great value, because you don't pay for
the programming development, you only pay a small fraction as one
individual user.
Now, the fact that
someone can write a program in 6-10 weeks and make $1million
means that they want to be paid lots of money if they create a
program for you that you can ten go out and sell to 10,000 people.
So using programs
that are remotely hosted save you even more money, because the
programming is never accessible. Just like leasing a car you only
pay for what you use while you use it, you don't get to keep it,
which saves money.
There is no question
it is not hard to spend a fortune on programming but in most
cases you don't have to. Buy existing programs or use remotely
hosted programs like pageBuzz.com.
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