I am starting a new website, well a blog. And i wanted to know what would be the best way to invest the budget i have on this site. I want to start with about 200-300 (Better that if i could stay near the hundred) $200 -Design, I am a designer so no costs for getting a custom WP theme. -Coding of the design will cost about $100 -Hosting with domain will cost about $90 -And i would have about 20-50 left over, i was considering on some sort of marketing but i doubt it would work on a such a low budget. One more question, should i buy my domain from somewhere else and then use it with another hosting company or should i buy both from the same company. If you have any better ideas on how to spend the cash just post here.
A custom design is nice, but modifying a free template is easier- and saves a lot of money. You could look at how the structure is setup, and even learn to code your own template based on how a free template is setup. Hosting and domain for almost $100? If it is a new blog, you don't need anything fancy. Guessing that you will have a lot of traffic doesn't mean that you will. You can always upgrade later, I suggest you lower your costs there. (lunarpages.com has a year's worth of great hosting for that price, if you would consider that instead) No need for marketing when you have WP, great content, and a digg button after each post . I would suggest that you save all the money you can, and instead pay someone to code a service for you that is unique. This will pay for itself many times over, both from originality and as a source of traffic that other sites similar to yours will not have. As you might see, I'm not big in marketing. I wouldn't even consider it unless you are having trouble driving traffic to your blog after a month and a half of submitting great content with no luck. Good luck with it.
Most things here i would agree with Zac on. Design would be no money problem seeing as your a design as stated. With that, that cuts a relatively big sum of money out of your budget. Coding their i would think you could possibly decrease that slightly. Hosting and domain i for certain think you have budget very high. $100 personally i think you could get for a whole lot cheaper. A .com domain is of around $9 at most registrars and you can for sure get good quality hosting for $9 or so per month. As Zac also mentioned, marketing is great in wordpress with the great plug ins which help market a great deal. With good quality, unique content Digg will most probably bring in a decent amount of traffic. Good luck with your project.
Thank you very much guys, so instead of creating a new design witch will need coding i could just modify an eggsisting template and just add my own banners and so on. One question , where can you find good designs fully working because i hate the crappy ones you get online. Edit and my blog will be about design so wouldn't this put off people or should i start with another brand. Somethign i am good at is at fitness and the whole dieting and athletes training scheme.
If its about design and your designs. I would for sure create a design of your own. But if it is design in general, i'm sure editing an existing one would work just fine.
You can take bookmarking services available in DP for marketing,I am sure its affordable and would bring good traffic for u
I would spend the dollars in proper hosting & domain (getting $20 host rather than $10 host might make a difference in speed & quality). Then perhaps get some template from www.templatemonster.com, although I bet you should be fine using free templates there are (like... if you use wordpress.org for example). free tip: never take yearly option... pay monthly so that you don't get stuck with a bad host - and remember to check out www.webhostingtalk.com for reviews And with marketing... I'd save those dollars and instead give some free stuff, and perhaps arrange a contest (like.. if you have some DVD movies or video games or cellphones or whatever junk lying in your house ). Alternatively, you could simply use other people to sponsor your contest (and give them free links in exchange, for example) I'd spend few bucks to some quality learning material... I think it can help you more than the marketing budget.
Just PM me if u need cheap & quality web hosting. i can provide you less then $45 a year. Thanks Shaz
Scrap the $90 host, try speedhosts.com we have many positive user reviews and our servers are very fast and stable, thanks ($5 a year!)
Speed Hosts are very reliable and is one of the many reasons our clients are happy with our server and don't worry we won't be closing anytime soon.
as said - check out www.webhostingtalk.com. I've been located on liquidweb server (dedicated) and been happy with them, but don't know how their shared plans are (how good or reliable) - I'd check them out.
I thought exactly like that some years ago... but think about it. If you go with $5 or $10 host, you are often getting to the point where your host is simply slow - or unreliable (been there). Then you need to find another. If you find another cheap host, you end up in the same circle. Investing couple of more bucks (like +$10 per month) is only $120 in a year - something you can earn by serving few days in a hamburger store. I strongly recommend avoiding cheap hosts... because that's what you get: you get what you pay for. There might be exceptions, but from my experience, cheap hosting comes with no-quality service - and it can easily cost more (compared to hours) during a year to find a decent cheap host. $15 might sound a lot... but it's only $5 more than $10/monthly host. And $5 is like couple of beers. (bear in mind that I really DON'T recommend liquidweb's shared since I have no personal experience on their system - I remember Hostgator having decent hosting, but that was year ago or something like that. Check out www.webhostingtalk.com - and get a host in $10-20 budget.) Save on something else - I wouldn't save on hosting.