I want a website

I have been in web development business for over 10 years now and all these years most of the businesses I have targetted for clientele have been small businesses. By small I am talking about businesses profitting 50K to 200K per year. Before I get to even know what they want, they usually ask me a question. Guess what this very first question they ask me is? You probably guessed it right. It is "How much does a website cost?"

Now what does this mean? It means that most small businesses have very little clue about the process of getting a website. Otherwise, they would have known that the cost of getting a website varies a lot depending on how much work is involved.

For most of my customers I can almost guess how much it could be. With years of experience, I can almost 'feel' what they want in their website and therefore I can guesstimate a price range. Sometimes I am wildly wrong of course.

Now there is a ton of information for these small businesses regarding starting a website. However, most of these information seem to be a bit too much for most of the small business owners. If an article starts talking about choosing PHP versus ASP or SQL vs. MS Access, then they have already lost the layman business owners. Hence, I have decided to write a little article for this mass.

So here it is:
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To get a website you need 4 things.

1. A Domain Name
e.g., www.momocha.com
Price: $10 / Year

2. Hosting
This is like renting a space to run your office/company/store, except it's not a physical space like your company location. But you pay a monthly fee with your credit card over the internet, just like you pay your office landlord.
Price: Usually from $3 to $20 per month

3. Web designer
You will need to find one. There are many many web designers out there. Contact a few and get some ideas. Then choose one that you like the most.

4. Merchant Account
This is only necessary if you are planning to accept credit cards from your customers over your web.

That's it.

Your web designer should be able to hand hold you through all these steps. I will get into more details on each in the next articles.

vj