Understanding website cost

The first thing you would want to consider is how much does a website cost. This is to help you quantify your effort so that you know which part of the equation is your most valuable skills.

How much does a website cost and how to estimate the cost so that you know how to charge people and you know how people are charging you when it comes to different tasks in building a web application?

And the cost of a website really varies and depending on who are you hiring. We can’t give an exact figure, but these are some ballpark numbers.

If you get a website builder like Wix or WordPress.com. It’s free, right? You basically just go to Wix.com and you can start drag and drop.

But the problem is, sometimes they have watermark, sometimes they have very limited functionality. So if you want to customize it, where you want to insert your own program that takes in stuff, you have to pay for it.

And the license might cost you from 0 ringgit to 300 ringgit per month or per year, different kind of packages.

The second thing is you can hire a freelancer. So there are tons of freelancers out there in the market.

You can go to any Facebook groups, that talks about tech, web development, and start to post your job posting there.

But be prepared that you receive a lot of comments like PM, PM, PM, PM. So be prepared.

The problem with freelancers is that they don’t have a market rate as well. Some freelancers charge about 50, ringgit per hour.

Some freelancers charge about 2,500 for a particular project. So, you don’t really know how to judge the quality and the value based on the price tag that they have given to you, and that’s the biggest challenge.

And also the highest risk that’s associated with a freelancer is that they might not be able to deliver your project.

They might deliver your project halfway and then they say “Oh, this is too hard. It doesn’t worth my time”. And then they will jump boat and look for their next projects to do.

They’re freelancers, so they don’t really take their branding seriously, they do have personal integrity, but it’s business. Hence, branding come last to them.

Imagine if you can’t finish your project, you just terminate it, and left your project there hanging for 70% and the next freelancers that come in may or may not be able to continue the rest of the 30%, but speaking from experience, most of them, they don’t.

Thus, everybody coding styles and programming styles is totally different.

So when we go in and look at somebody’s code we have to totally try to understand what he or she trying to do. We’ll mostly be confused.

Hence, your best bet is actually going to a web design agency. Those companies who are really into business, they have good customer service, they deliver on time.

They make sure that they understand your requirements, they do wire framings, they go through the proper process – set up prototypes, they send you mock-ups.

There are many things that they do for you and but it comes with a price. Because they’re spending a lot of time to make sure that your work is well done.

In general, a simple website will cost you somewhere from 3 thousand to 100 thousand. You don’t know how they charge or what they charge you for.

So let’s use a calculator, howmuchdoesawebsitecost.com. There are so many variations of requirements and elements that you want. For example, marketing pages, contact us page, team, contact us page.

Not to mention, e-commerce feature, payments, logins, reviews, etc. all these are different features that you might request for.

More advance features which include “does your website need to connect another app or website, e.g. share data with a mobile application” or even search bar, or a content management system.

Some might even request for more customization, and usually a custom website estimate cost will be around 26k – 31k in USD.

So give or take, it’ll cost you RM 50k easily with all the function mentioned with customization features, a complicated website like that.

The ‘survivor’s’ skills – finding affordable resources

Moving on, let’s explore the ‘life survivor’s’ skills that you need to have, which is to find free and affordable resources.

So, basically there are only two things that you need when it comes to building a website. HTMLs, CMS, JavaScript, all these are done.

But you need beautiful pictures so that your website can look professional. So head to these websites, pikwizard, pexels.com & unsplashed.com, it’s a free stock photo licensing, royalty-free.

Besides, there is plenty of similar website such as freepik.com, where you can find vectors, graphics, illustrations, etc.

You can edit them yourself with Adobe Illustrator if you do know how to do it. Most of the time we use a paid version of Envato Elements. And if you like icons, you can check out flaticon.com.

Free bootstrap templates

Moving on into Bootstrap templates. You can just search for different templates in bootstrap. So you can have admin templates, you have creative templates, you have a portfolio page, you have a blog page.

Yeah, different types of templates that you can find, and you just download and apply it and use it yourself. All you have to do is just to customize the CS, HTML, CSS code.

Build your side project

Last but not least, but a side project, in the video, it was mentioned that “If you want to get a job, do not just read your skills, but show what you can do and how you overcome the challenges.”

You can build a very simple thing like a to-do list. Basically text, boxes, check-boxes. So that allows you to edit and delete items from a page and then you can store the data on MongoDB or Firebase.

If you would like to get your hands ‘dirty’ with something that’s more challenging, more visually appealing, more hardcore, you can try to build a booking platform or website.

This is what we teach in our Full Stack 360 professional course.

Enjoyed watching the above? do share with us your thoughts in the comment section below.

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If you are looking to explore web development and programming as part of your career growth and build market-ready applications like Grab or Lazada, do check out our Full Stack 360 certification course to help you achieve this goal.

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