if i do most of HTML, what is startup cost for an interactive website?

Question

i want to write most of the code for a webpage or site. i cannot do all of it, but i know enough to do it in scratch, then hire professional to make it a reality.

it will be a survey, very similar to those that a company sends you after it does work for you and then you rate the service you received.

if i propose using banner ads to advertise my page on other websites, what costs do i look forward to paying? i need to know so i can start this business.

it will be a website that folks pay a nominal fee to use for, probably, about 3 months maximum with right to renew it.

please give me costs one by one (including monthly maintenance fees, purchasing a domain ??? instead of just marketing a site/page), like this:

1. xyz;

2. abc;

3. efg...

and then, the highest cost you can envision, as well as the average cost.

THANKS!

golly, these 3 answers are all so good, for different reasons! i really, really thank you! however, i don't think i personally will choose the best answer since all are equally as good. i'd really like to know even more. it looks like this will be a far larger project than i imagined! again, thank you so much!

Answer 1

There are a number of companies that will handle surveys, and a bunch of pre-canned code out there to do surveys, as well. If yu have little experience with server-side scripting, I would go the Web service route.

A client of mine uses Survey Monkey. It is very powerful, but can be a bit overwhelming; it's a great option if you expect piles of respondents.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/

You can search "Web survey" and "Web poll" for more.

How much you pay for banner advertising depends on the other Web site. Some sites charge per impression (every time your banner shows up), per click (every time someone clicks your banner) or a flat rate based on time (e.g., $20 a month).

You can get dirt-cheap Web hosting on a three-month commitment with http://www.godaddy.com; your domain name is even discounted for a simple 3-month commitment.

Answer 2

Well first things first. I would highly recommend hosting this site yourself instead on a shared web server because of the fact you do not want your intellectual property on a shared server so that someone with a jump drive can just walk in and copy your site. I have had this happen. However hosting on a shared resource like yahoo can be pretty cheap. If you do it yourself I would recommend using a Linux based web server with apache running on it. Heck even Microsoft runs Linux. If you already have a windows xp pro machine and high speed internet, you can host it on that. Those alternatives should be close to free to get a web server up and running. The reason that people host on something like Yahoo is because for 20 bucks a month or so you do not have to worry about maintaining a server, internet service, security, etc. For starters I might would go with yahoo, but be warned of my comment earlier.

1. Web hosting will be about $20/month with yahoo and I think they will throw in a domain name for you. If not add an extra $0.50/month. (I should get paid for that plug).

2. Getting a programmer(s). I am a programmer so I would say you are looking down the barrel of about 2-5 grand per page depending on what it is doing. If you already have the page then you are in the clear. But remember just because you did all of the html work does not mean that the code written will be trivial. Actually your html page could make it WORSE. But that is rarely the case.

3. If you are taking payments online you will need to get a payment gateway. There are many out there but I would talk with your bank about setting up online merchant account(s) and payment gateways. A payment gateway should start you up at 300 or so dollars.

4. HTTPS certificate. There are many out there you should not pay much more than 50 dollars a year for a basic certificate. You will need this so that the sensitive information that people are entering into your web pages (i.e. CREDIT CARD INFO) will be encrypted and can not be easily decrypted (actually it is next to impossible).

5. Advertising, I would suggest using the big boys (yahoo, Google, etc.) You have to get in contact with the individual web sites to get a price on advertising on their pages.

Hope that gets you started.

RJ

Answer 3

Most of the work in an interactive website is not in HTML; it's in server-side logic. That would be in a language like PHP, and you need to understand security, HTTP issues, databases and more.

If you don't know that, you will probably not succeed in constructing a site.

If you do understand these issues, you will achieve your goal much more quickly, easily and reliably by using an open source content management system like Drupal as your starting point. If I were to work on building a reliable base for a content management system -- even after having experience with six of them, and with eight years of PHP development experience -- I would not expect to have a functional system in less than one man-year of development time. Since I can have a Drupal installation working flawlessly in an hour or so, you can tell what my preference would be.

Answer 4

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