You only need 3 things to build a website..
- Domain
- Hosting
- Experience
Domains
Domains can cost anywhere from $0.99 to millions.
The cost depends on what the domain ends with ( .COM, .ORG, etc.. ) and who you’re buying it from.
Most of the time you can get a new domain for less than $20/yr.
I currently buy mine from Namecheap and then transfer to Cloudflare.
Why Namecheap?
Because the prices are good, they have free domain privacy and they offer free email forwarders so I can have a custom email address with my domain name at the end.
Why Cloudflare?
Because they will renew my domain name without marking up the price.
Hosting
Hosting is the space you rent on a server for your website files.
This will normally cost you less than $200/yr.
The one I use is Cloudways.
They offer managed cloud hosting where you can get space on a really fast server that’s easy to upgrade when you need more room or more speed.
This is better than shared hosting where your website gets put on a server with hundreds of other sites and has limits put on it to keep your traffic low.
Experience
The final piece of the website puzzle is experience.
You can either pay for your own experience with time and energy or you can speed things up and pay for someone else’s experience.
A basic website can cost you less than $2000 to get set up with help, but that’s just the first step.
When you finally launch your site that’s when you can start getting real data on how many people are finding your site and if it’s turning into money in the bank and emails on your list.
If it’s not, then you’ll need to get some more experience.
That’s where the cost starts adding up.