Tag Archives: professional

Should I learn to build my website or outsource it?

This is a common question with cash strapped small businesses. They understand that in this day and age, every business needs to have a website. They don’t have the skills in-house to build a website. They hear these Ads suggesting they build their own and save money. Sounds convincing. Why spend money when you can do it yourself. Money is scarce isn’t it.

Before we go further, we would like to explain that just like every business is different, every website is different and costs vary accordingly. A blog will not cost as much as a photography portfolio website. An informational website will generally not cost as much as an ecommerce website. What we are trying to achieve with this article is NOT to provide you with a price chart for your website, but rather to give you an idea of everything that goes into building a website.

There is a lot that goes into building a website. First and foremost is time – whether its your own time or the time of a developer, time is an important variable in this equation. How much time do you have or how soon do you need your website? Next is your interest in gaining coding knowledge, followed by design skills and money. How much are you willing to spend on learning web development vs how much are you prepared to pay others to build it for you. The variables differ from business to business. You may lack one, two, or even three of these resources. What then? Don’t feel stuck as there is a way around everything. One resource can compensate for another. So, if you lack design skills but have time, do not fret, just start looking for a good course on web design.

Contrary to popular belief, money is actually the most flexible resource. You have time or you do not, you can code or not, you can design or not and not be willing to learn how to do it. Money on the other hand can buy you what you don’t have. If you feel something is valuable to you, you will have no qualms about paying for it. If your website has value for you, you will find a way to pay for it.

Building your own website

Let’s say you have time and want to build the website yourself. Here are some of the steps involved:

Do it yourself - web design
Do it yourself – web desig
  1. Setup

  2. Website builder

  3. Design

  4. Content creation

  5. Maintenance

Each of these will largely depend on the variables of time, technical knowledge and design skills. You can opt for professional help for parts of it if necessary.

There are two options. You do all the website building yourself, from scratch. Or, use a Drag & Drop Website builder tool like Wix or Weebly. As a drag and drop builder, Wix & Weebly require minimal technical knowledge. The only drawback is that some of the available tools may be very limited. These builders do not let you do everything you want. What’s in their existing menu is what you can use and not much else. But that may be good enough for you.

If you are a DIY type, you can create the content and graphics yourself. Since you are saving money by building the site yourself, there is a good chance that you have some spare pennies for content. You may even splurge a little on promoting the website.

Outsourcing web development to professionals

A professional developer will likely build your website using WordPress if it is a catalog or informational type of website or may switch to a different platform if complex ecommerce is involved. WordPress powers over 26% of all websites. Think of all the websites you visit. Chances are that they are WordPress sites.

Your web developer will ask you to buy a domain name (your web address) and hosting (where your website will reside). There are different types of hosting but you can start small and ramp up as the number of visitors to your site (traffic) grows. Here are sample hosting expenses:

  • Shared hosting costs $5 to $30 / month
  • VPS hosting costs $50 to $100 / month
  • Dedicated hosting $150 and up / month

If you are very particular about design, then you may go for custom design. That could cost between $750 to $2,000 and up. If you want to be on the economical side, you may buy a ready made theme that will cost around $100 and still look decent. It may look a little cookie cutter but can save you a lot of money and your developer will then adjust it to your needs.

Once the design part is done, your web developer will code the functions that you need and also integrate the design into the backend. This could run from about $500 to several thousand dollars depending on the complexity of your needs.

Don’t forget content. Once you have the web site designed and developed, you need some content. Are you going to create it yourself or hire professionals. A good copy writer may cost $500 to $1,000 and you may spend an additional $500 to $600 on a graphic designer.

The last thing is traffic, that is, visitors to your website. A website does you no good if it has no traffic. But that is a separate subject in it’s own right and we can discuss it in a separate article.

Whether you decide to build your website yourself or outsource it to professionals, you must have a website. I hope this article helped.

Good luck!

How much should a website cost you
InterloperInc.com – A web development Company

Professional Press Release Writer in Dallas, TX, USA

If you know and understand that writing press releases are great for your business and just need someone in Dallas, Texas to write a press release it for you, then go straight to the contact form, fill it out or call and let’s get the ball rolling. If you are simply exploring the benefits of press releases, then read on.

Professional Press Release Writer in Dallas, TX, USA
Professional Press Release Writer in Dallas, TX, USA

Savvy professional marketers have always known the impact of press releases and have been using them to the advantage of their employers and clients. We have been using them in our business for over 20 years now. Before the internet was available as a commercial medium, we would focus on the general news media as well as trade publications. Once we figured it out, we started using it so effectively that we were getting more press coverage than competitors who were 20 times larger than us. That meant we were getting promotional exposure worth tens of thousands of dollars – for FREE. Press Releases have been good for our business and they can be good for your business too.

Don’t you wish you could get the coverage that big business gets? Whether you live in Dallas, TX or elsewhere in the world, you can benefit from sending out press releases.

When the internet got commercialized, we adapted our press releases accordingly. We used to have one press release format, now we have two press release formats. We were getting traffic from the print media then. Now we target both print, online media, search engines and yes we target the user directly – all through press releases. That does not mean we only use press releases – no – that means press releases are an integral part of our marketing campaigns.

After the economic meltdown of 2008, a lot of people became unemployed. Many could not find jobs so they became self employed and naturally took to the internet as a means of soliciting business. The majority of these hardworking self employed people are not professional marketers and end up gravitating towards whatever the latest buzz is. They spend a lot of money buying expensive courses and that is all fine and dandy but they end up missing on some great fundamental tools that have worked in the past and continue to work today in the world of the internet and new media.

Just setting up a website does you no good. You have to drive traffic to it. Traffic does not just show up by itself. You have to drive it to your website. How do you do it? There are a whole range of things you can do but one of the best methods is to send out a press release.

Professional Press Release Writer in Dallas, TX, USA
Professional Press Release Writer in Dallas, TX, USA

Many people think sending out press releases must be a complex job costing them $1,000s of dollars. That cannot be farther from the truth. It does not cost anything.

A conventional press release reaches the end user / reader via the editor who acts as a gatekeeper and filters which press releases are worthy of publishing and which are not. If you use the right press release format, write the way they want it, you have a very good chance of getting published as a news story. A press release getting published as a news story has far more weight than an advertisement. That is why some Ads try to mimic a news story and mention in small print ‘paid advertisement’. It’s worth it and they know it.

A reasonably internet savvy person creates his own news streams by subscribing to various feeds and getting them on his news reader. He can also set alerts that notify him when news are available in his area of interest. He decides what to read and when to read and does not want any editor to decide that for him. Your job is to present him information via feeds and reach him directly.

Search Engines have opened up a whole new world. What is the search engine trying to do? It is trying to please the user so he will keep coming back to it whenever he has something on his mind. The more often the user visits, the more Ads the search engine can serve him and the more money it makes.

Don’t you feel like you are being used no matter what the technology. Yep. That’s how it is. However; this time you are on the other side. You are inviting the search engine to use you so you can use it to reach the end user. Ironic? Maybe. The search engine is trying to crawl fresh content so it can please it’s user. You feed it fresh content via Press Release sites. Why not feed it directly? You do – by letting the search engine index our pages – but the search engine views a Press Release Distribution site as a more likely source for fresh content and crawls it several times a day. Besides, Google gives a Press Release Distribution site more weightage or a higher page rank. That means a page originating from a PR site will carry greater weight. Quite often you will see your press release via a PR site show up high on searches with your own page nowhere in site.

A link or URL originating from a PR site carries greater weight. If your press release got published in 20 PR sites, those are 20 high ranking links pointing to your website. That is invaluable as the more links from high ranking sites pointing to your site raises the page rank of your site. When your site’s page rank goes up, you start showing up higher on relevant searches.

Let’s recap. Whether you live in the Dallas, Texas area or anywhere else in the world, the benefits of Press Releases are universal. By sending out press releases, you get traffic from:

  • Press Releases that show up in Google Alerts and RSS feeds directly on the readers desktop.
  • Press Releases that get printed as news stories in conventional newspapers, journals and trade publications.
  • Press Releases that show up in searches.
  • Your own site showing up higher in searches.

Convinced?

Fill out the contact form , or call and let’s get the ball rolling.

Professional Press Release Writer in Dallas, TX, USA
Professional Press Release Writer in Dallas, TX, USA