How much for a website???

Well Here is my 0.000000002 cents:

Since my full time day job is building complete end to end web applications/commercial applications, a site like that with lots of flash at $5K may not be unreasonable, granted there is not much web programming (which costs alot more) on that site but flash artists can be expensive depending on talent etc.

as for $100K sites, hmmm, maybe not that site, but the annual costs of dedicated servers + SLA contracts can easly add up for web application based sites, and there are companies for which $100K is a tiny tiny drop in the ocean ....

If you want it on the cheap, find a graduate flash artist, who is looking to cut into the market, depending on the guy, he may do it for free/or near damn cheap enough.

OR alternatively:

buy some books, sit down and build your own (its fun, you get to learn a whole set of new skills, and you get a site they way YOU want)

Anhar
 
Templates are definately an option, however to make an analogy:

Templates = Buying your Suite from Walmart

Bespoke = Having your Suite hand made from the best taylors

:)

There is more than one way to skin a cat, all depends on your need/budget/scope I guess.
 
Yeah when it comes to marketing and Website development I don't cheap out. I want the best. No templates, no iWeb, no thanks. My company image is too important to risk losing HUGE clients because I was too cheap to spend a few thousand bucks on a Website, which is relatively NOTHING in this business. If your business cannot make $3,000 per project in profit, maybe it's the wrong business for you, because you're obviously not looking at good clients. With the clients I want, any project I find is going to make back the money on the Website and more easily, even the tiniest job I'd accept. So it's really no big deal.
 
JonathanLB said:
lol, that's way too simple for my tastes. I'm not just trying to put a reel online, I'm trying to build a company Website with full backend support, I'm not an HTML guy, so with my site (what's already done with it) I don't have to touch HTML, it's all controlled through an admin panel, adding videos, text, images, etc.
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hahahaha, I'm a simple guy....I totally understand your position, sometimes something more complex is needed, that's normal.
 
ilauzirika said:
hahahaha, I'm a simple guy....I totally understand your position, sometimes something more complex is needed, that's normal.
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I'm with you in some respects, though. I much prefer simple, professional, and clean, over super flashy, obnoxious, loaded with visual crap to distract from the message. I hate that! It drives me insane. I want clean and classy, professional and easy to navigate, but not in-your-face, loud, overly colorful, busy, etc. That's why a lot of sites just really annoy me, the "hip" sites are often really bad.
 
JonathanLB said:
Yeah when it comes to marketing and Website development I don't cheap out. I want the best. No templates, no iWeb, no thanks. My company image is too important to risk losing HUGE clients because I was too cheap to spend a few thousand bucks on a Website, which is relatively NOTHING in this business. If your business cannot make $3,000 per project in profit, maybe it's the wrong business for you, because you're obviously not looking at good clients. With the clients I want, any project I find is going to make back the money on the Website and more easily, even the tiniest job I'd accept. So it's really no big deal.
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Then why can't you find a good designer? You mention Craigslist? THAT is cheaping out. I pay my designers on average $175 - $250/hr. (I guess that's why they will crawl over broken glass to work for me) If you want good, professional design...you have to pay for it. Then again, I wouldn't touch a project that didn't make at least 10-20K profit after ALL expenses (granted, I'm in a very specialized field of development & have years of experience).

If you really can't find a designer, feel free to PM me and I can see if I can help you out.:beer:
 
As primarily a web multimedia designer, it depends on the budget and features of the project. If they have a $500 budget, they will get a $500 quality website. If they have a $50,000 budget, they will get a $50,000 quality website. Of course you can put a $50,000 quality on a $500 budget. There's no fix price, everyone charges differently.

The web is a fair and even platform for any individual, company, or organization. Anyone can create a website with little or no budget with the quality of a studio budget or vice versa.
 
Thanks again for all the insite. Just so were are clear this site is for a "feature film" that I am producing.
 
ZazaCast said:
If you want good, professional design...you have to pay for it.
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Ditto, well said; this is true for any profession.

As filmmakers (and by extenstion digital content creators) we should know this better than anybody else! :)

If you want to get ideas about "film sites" then take a look at how others and pro's have done it, don't copy them but draw inspiration and add your own twist.

Anhar
 
well, or learn it.
Web design really is not that far from video post-production today. I took my sites as opportunities to grow some crafts. I've not found anything I can't do with web design. If I don't know how going into it, I learn how on the fly. It's just a matter of challenging yourself.
 
Anhar Miah said:
Ditto, well said; this is true for any profession.

As filmmakers (and by extenstion digital content creators) we should know this better than anybody else! :)

If you want to get ideas about "film sites" then take a look at how others and pro's have done it, don't copy them but draw inspiration and add your own twist.

Anhar
Click to expand...

I'm a web/graphic designer and I couldn't agree with you more. If you want a professional website, you have to pay for it. I've seen some really bad websites out there, and when people go onto the sites, they know right away.

It's like watching someone's footage. I know within 5 seconds if I'm going to enjoy the cinematography.

This is hypothetical: If I charge $75/hr to build a website, here's how I would charge for a website that had HOME/ABOUT/PHOTOS/VIDEO/BLOG sections.

40 hours for design
20 hours 2nd round for design changes and corrections
10 hours 3rd round of corrects (in the real graphic design professional world we know is ALWAYS happens)

60 hours to code
40 hours to test and debug coding

That's $12,750.

I didn't mention a shopping cart. Those are EVEN more! The sitemap and content management are VERY important to smoothly operating and building a site.

Websites are NOT cheap to make. It takes a GROUP of people to build a good site. We all know people with coding skills don't come cheap at all. If you can find a guy who can design well and code, then his coding is weak. If you find a guy who can code well, chances are, his design skills are weak.
 
I'm not saying you can't find someone who will make a website for $5k professionally, but you better take some aspirin, because you'll need it.
 
Then again guys, you are all talking about in a "normal" economy. When I see people doing $25k worth of video production for $3 or 4k, I would say that the rules with all media are changing. I just hired a motion graphics artist in December to do a full package of two opens, 30 L3s and 12 green screen BGs. I had a budget of $1,500.00 and received over 400 inquiries, of which about 15 of them were world class designer/animators.

It is better to work for very little than to sit around and not work for no money is the mindset. I am truly amazed at how many REALLY talented motion graphic designers there are out there, the market is so over saturated it is ridiculous.

I was very straightforward with everyone who inquired and I really didn't expect hardly any interest for the budget from pros, I know it was poverty wages, but it was all I had to work with. I think web design is probably in a similar place. There are millions of web designers out there, granted, few are really great. I also see a lot of younger, under 30 year olds eat up all of the loud, flashy stuff. I personally find it a little annoying but I am out the demo. I would say that depending on your audience, but if you are selling to ADHD riddled young adults, who are texting on their iPhone constantly, playing their X-Box while chatting on the phone, etc. , the crazier and louder the website, the better, unless you are a "professional" like a doctor, lawyer or something conservative.

I showed a bunch of those really wild templates to my 14 year old and she LOVED them. See, I think a lot of us are just out of the demo and are looking for information, whereas many viewers would rather be "entertained". And this is the modern technologists was of making websites entertaining.

Dan
 
some1shero said:
I'm a web/graphic designer and I couldn't agree with you more. If you want a professional website, you have to pay for it. I've seen some really bad websites out there, and when people go onto the sites, they know right away.

It's like watching someone's footage. I know within 5 seconds if I'm going to enjoy the cinematography.

This is hypothetical: If I charge $75/hr to build a website, here's how I would charge for a website that had HOME/ABOUT/PHOTOS/VIDEO/BLOG sections.

40 hours for design
20 hours 2nd round for design changes and corrections
10 hours 3rd round of corrects (in the real graphic design professional world we know is ALWAYS happens)

60 hours to code
40 hours to test and debug coding

That's $12,750.

I didn't mention a shopping cart. Those are EVEN more! The sitemap and content management are VERY important to smoothly operating and building a site.

Websites are NOT cheap to make. It takes a GROUP of people to build a good site. We all know people with coding skills don't come cheap at all. If you can find a guy who can design well and code, then his coding is weak. If you find a guy who can code well, chances are, his design skills are weak.
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That's pretty steep, but I can understand that, if you can get it, more power to you.

I happened to get basically the same thing, just really freakin' slow, for way cheaper than that. But it was a friend discount, it has been unprofessionally handled (i.e. slow), and... lots of headaches. I'd have gladly paid twice what I'm paying for it to have been delivered on time.

But we're going the route of hiring a separate graphic artist, a separate CSS person, and my friend did the database coding, the PHP and whatnot. A fourth person did the logo design. Total cost should be around $2,500. Realistically the coding alone should have been more like $5,000, but basically my friend is really good at it, I know this because he redid the backend of a site I owned 5 years ago (a $3,000/month site in ad revenue, 15K uniques per day, etc.), so I trusted him. But he has no real portfolio, so for him it's a good chance to build that portfolio, and I'm probably the only one who knows what a great job he can do, because I know how easy he made my life back in the day by creating a backend that saved me a TON of time updating.

So the site I'm getting is essentially a highly professional, complicated, custom site, but there's no way I would have had $12,000 to spend. I maybe could have justified $5,000, I mean, I would have had to be angry about it for a few days and feel guilty for a few weeks, but probably would have bit the bullet. Or I'd have gone with a cheesy all-flash site for a year, then hoped I found the clients to justify putting more money into a real site.

I'd say of the film sites I've seen from indie production companies and individuals, 97% of them are terrible to ok, but nothing good basically. It's usually the same crap, people too cheap to put ANY money into their image, so they build it with iWeb. Or they design it themselves and it looks terrible. All this in the name of "saving" money, which is lost because you can't find clients or win jobs if your site looks as bad as everyone else's.

It's funny because if I get 50 responses on craigslist to a posting for a DP let's say, only 15 of the people even have a professional enough presentation to take seriously. Most are like, "Yo I feel I could totally do this job man and so if you're still looking hit me up!" Then there is either a resume attached, or not, and perhaps a few YouTube links with, "Written/directed/shot/edited by Idiot With A Camera" or whatever. The more you did on a project, the less impressed I am. Writer-director is cool, I like that, if I was hiring that kinda person, but director-DP? No. No thanks. I want to see you DP other work. Or my favorite is the people who think if they somehow apply to my gaffer posting with "Director / Producer / Cinematographer / Gaffer / 1st A.C. / Editor" that I'm going to be impressed. No, I immediately assume someone who isn't really good at ANYTHING, but wants to find work however they can. Pick something you're great at, stick to it, and be the very best. These people blame bad economic times on having trouble finding work -- HA! Blame your lousy portfolios, bad writing, and no marketing skills. The best people will still find work because they understand "common sense," which is evidently not so common.

The do-it-yourself, anyone-can-make-a-Website thing is ludicrous. It also lacks respect for the people who have spent years learning how to make a truly effective, excellent Website. It's like someone coming into our industry, "Why should I hire someone to make a commercial?! I mean I can just rent a camera and shoot something myself!" Uhh, no. You can't. You need years of experience to learn how to do something right. I'd rather pay a professional to make something as important as my Website.
 
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