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Thinking about a presence on the web? Better watch out for these common rip-offs.
People tell us about their web page, and when we visit its just two lines of text with their address. And they pay $25 a month for it! A good web page on someone's domain should cost about $200.00 to design and $100.00 a year to display. The page contains 2 photos and a logo and 2000 or so words of text.
Now this one is not as easy to explain. Some developers create a set of pages they call a site, and that's ok, because "site" has a different meaning to different people. However, if you have a site, but not your own domain(yourname.com) you want to rethink your web strategy and your solutions provider because you are at their mercy. A simple rule of thumb-only a very small business should go without a domain name if you are on the web.
Remember, you're buying a website, not a car. A realistic price for a eight page website with 2 images or graphics per page and a domain name you own is about $1200 down and $100 a month. Most reputable solutions providers will include standard programs, such as a guestbook, for no additional charge. This is only an estimate. Some charge a little less, some a little more, and some just flat out steal.
If a web developer says I do it all myself, get out fast. Yes one person can do it all, but not very well. For example, to see the page you are looking at requires someone to be on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year. You need experts in telecommunications, computers and peripheral equipment. To design the page requires a writer, photographer and graphic artist. Someone to program forms and write html code...we couldn't run this web site with just one person, so how can one person run several sites?
Our jaws dropped when we heard this scam! Come on. If the site were a high traffic site like the Weather Channel it might be worth it, but this was a new Chamber of Commerce site with a total of 0 hits. We have seen packages that include a link, map, address, hours, and a number of other goodies on moderate traffic sites for $25.00 a year, and that's fair, but something like this? No way.
Oh boy. Email addresses cost nothing for a solutions provider as long as they are in a single dial-up account. If they are only going to let you have 5 without charging you, get ready for a rude shock when you want something that does cost money.
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