How much does it cost to build and maintain a website? | Green Light Digital

already. So um, welcome to module number one. This is the first module in the course, it’s going to be on accounting. And I’m actually going to be breaking down each of the major plugins that I think you should consider installing on your website.

But essentially, the main, the main meat of these of this module is going to be on accounting, how much does it actually cost? Not just to build your website, but also to maintain your website. And yeah, so let’s just jump right into it, it’s probably going to be the only module in which you’re going to hear me speak and ramble for a little bit and not actually do something.

But this is probably going to be one of the most important modules for you because I’m actually going to tell you how much you can expect to be paying not just up front, but also on a month to month basis. So let’s just jump right into it. Talk about modules. All right, so um, let’s just just for the sake of clarifying this, I’m going to be talking about and referring to two different types of expenses.

The first one is a one time payments that you’re going to probably make up front before even working on your website. And then the other type of payments are going to be just reoccurring expenses that you’re going to, you’re going to have now, just as a quick heads up throughout those slides throughout the whole presentation, you’re going to be seeing two different things.

The first one is the, you know, the one time expense column, that reoccurring column, and the reoccurring expenses column is going to be on a month to month basis. Note, however, that some of these plugins that you’re going to be paying for and some of these expenses there, you’re going to actually have will force you to make an upfront payment for a whole year.

You know, when whenever that’s the case, I’m just going to break this down into, you know, divided into 12 months. And you know, you can calculate your your month to bond your month to month expense. But some of these will actually require you make the whole 12 month 12 month payment upfront. So just keep that in mind.

And Alright, so now that we’ve actually said that the only other thing that I should probably mention is that if you see a, a small little star icon, that means that depending on what kind of niche you’re in, what kind of website you’re trying to build, you may or may not want to use this plugin, and I’m going to be talking about all of these different plugins as we go. So don’t worry, I’ll make some suggestions and recommendations to try to help you out.

Alright, so let’s start the first basic expense that you’ve probably you know, if you’re watching this video, you’re probably already paying for this and you probably already have this set up as your domain and your hosting domains typically average if you buy them from GoDaddy between as low as probably like a few bucks. A year, and then you know, up to around 20 bucks a year or something like that.

Unless you buy somehow a super premium domain that, you know, I don’t know, like money calm or you know some of these fancy names, where you can actually expect to pay a much higher price for that premium name. But typically, if you’re buying your own name, or you know, a simple custom URL domain, you know that they’re pretty cheap.

So I’m gonna average that to $12 a year, which, you know, on a month to month basis, that adds up to one buck per month. And then hosting is really very, you know, hard for me to actually narrow down if you’re, you know, there’s a few different ways you can actually do this, you can actually rent out your own server, which is probably kind of very pricey.

And then, you know, if you’re planning on building an agency and you want to rent out space within your rented server, you can probably charge some money for that. That, which is what I particularly do. A few perks I’m doing this is that you’re probably going to have a lot of while you’re going to have, you’re going to be able to enjoy quite a high speed, website loading time because you’ve got a whole chunk of serving space for yourself.

And you can kind of allocate how much space you want to give to each of your other clients, but a lump if you want to get you typically GoDaddy also offers some sort of like, hosting plus domain kind of thing where you can kind of like pay for both things at the same time. And that goes for as cheapest 10 bucks a month. So it really depends. In my case, I’m just going to average it up to 25 bucks a month. The more you pay for hosting, typically the better results you’re going to get. I truly encourage you not to play it cheap when it comes to hosting.

Speak performance is actually a huge thing that you want to consider when building a website and therefore you know, you know, don’t spend $3,000 a month that you’re building he called a consulting website or a coaching site, but don’t play cheap either. All right, so let’s keep going it caching service. So caching is huge, you’re probably going to be willing to install WordPress rocket, which is the one that I typically use, it’s 60 bucks a year, that adds up to five bucks a month.

It’s crucial, it’s gonna make your website faster, there’s nothing really much in there to add other than that, it really is something that you’re probably going to want to need. I did include a star in there because you may not need it. If you’re building a very, very simple and small website or a simple funnel, you may not need to have that expense on your list.

But if you’re working with images, if you’re working, if you’re building an e commerce store or something like that, you definitely want to be caching your site so that people don’t actually have to load the entire website. Every single time they visit your your site. So that’s definitely something to consider. Again, like I said, 60 bucks a year, five bucks a month. Let’s keep going imagine phi. This one’s definitely a start mainly because imagine phi, you can probably kind of like guess what it is already.

Imagine phi is going to be the plugin that you’re going to be using if you want to optimize images for web. And this is actually a huge deal because depending on you know, it’s particularly people that are starting out don’t realize the importance of having very, very optimized images uploaded onto your website. Images are typically something big.

And for you in order for you to wrap up the the whole speak performance thing. Your website is going to load super quickly if there’s nothing really, you know, heavy to be loading, you know, the, the How would I personally How do I describe this. So, the more things that there are to load on your website, the longer it’s going to take for the actual state.

To load right, and if your images are heavy in size, it’s going to it’s going to make your website load slowly and you know, they’re not happy in size and they’re properly optimized You know, you’re going to be able to load them pretty quickly. Imagine phi is crucial if you’re working with a website that uses a lot of images, somewhat heavy images.

Typically even you know, even if you don’t actually use them as Wi Fi you really want to optimize them with Photoshop or Pixelmator. If you’re if you have a photographer make sure you tell them before actually getting a photoshoot done that you’re planning on using these images for weapon that you want them optimized for web.

But again, if you’re doing e commerce and you’ve got 1000 products with you know individual images for each product, you definitely want it modify in there. Imagine if AI is thing it’s made by the same guys that actually build WordPress rocket. It’s 5960 bucks a year, five bucks a month. Definitely something to consider thrive. This is me Just there’s no star icon there because you definitely want thrive installed it’s 30 bucks a month for a simple website.

They’ve just recently launched the thrive theme builder, which we’re going to learn how to use how to properly use it to build websites thrive is simply magic and is probably you know, I’ve been working with thrive for the past four or five years, five years now and it’s simply it is the the one tool that I really think you know, the guys from fire from thrive to actually have built because it is simply what’s going to let us build our our website, though, you know, whatever the hell the way we want to build right? It’s, it’s, it’s the key component that’s going to let us replicate any website out there.

If you want to build a New York Times, you can build the New York Times think thanks to thrive, thrive as a must. We’re going to be getting a license. If you’re planning on building an agency or if you are planning on building many websites, you’re probably going to add together A more expensive license. I think the agency one is 100 bucks a month.

It’s the one that I have. If you’re only building a simple website, then 30 bucks a month we’ll do it but you definitely need a license. slider revolution so this one’s my favorite every single time I’m building websites for clients right now I typically buy a license of slider revolution because thrive allows us to build websites however we want.

But slider revolution is the tool that is going to let us make them super slick and super Nino know just customize them in a more futuristic way we can add in some graphic design effects we can add in some cool animations across background sections and I really really like it don’t get you know a lot of people actually when I when I probably when I approach other website builders and they tell them about slider revolution they automatically go like weight slider No, no, no, I don’t do sliders and I 100% understand that sliders have been proven to be horrible in terms of conversions, they distract users, but don’t get stuck in the name.

In fact, I wouldn’t even be surprised if these guys actually rebrand into a different name. Because it really is a little confusing slider revolution is not even about sliders anymore. They make really fancy video animation effects and graphic design effects on your websites and it’s really cool. Alright, let’s keep going outside revolution is 30 bucks for one a very simple license. You can only use it on one website, but I mean, it’s only 30 bucks a month. It’s not even 30 bucks a month. It’s a one time payment.

So that’s pretty cool. A unique theme. So here’s the thing. Now that the thrive theme builder is actually out and available for everyone. You’re still going to want to make use of unique And specific situations for example, and hear me out here because it’s you know, it’s it’s not that difficult to understand this.

There’s some and some instances where you’re going to want to be using a very specific website per se. For example, if you’re building an e commerce store for a client that sells dresses, it’s going to be a pain in the ass to build a homepage that displays WooCommerce products in a specific way.

And you know, you’ve got reviews and testimonials in there and bla bla bla bla bla bla And on top of all of that, you want to make it look super nice and super fancy. And to be honest, it’s just simply easier for you if you buy a unique theme. Typically I buy them from themeforest and then I edit the theme however I want using thrive architect, this is still probably going to be my way of Doing things when it comes to building very, very, very, very particular kind of websites.

For example, I’m going to be showing you examples of this in upcoming modules. But when it comes to, for example, building a publication site so say for example that I want to build the New York Times, you know, you can build it with thrive architect, but you’re, it’s probably going to take you like 1000 hours, if not more, to build the goddamn New York Times using thrive.

It’s just simply not worth your time. It’s simply not worth anyone’s time. And it’s probably not going to be worth for your client if he’s paying you to do this, because it’s just going to be crazy expensive for him. So it’s simply better to just buy a theme that actually does what you wanted it to do. And then build the inside pages and customize the theme however you want using thrive.

And don’t worry, I’m going to teach you how to do this. But a unique theme a good one is typically 100 bucks, and you can just buy it from themeforest they’ve got a really cool one sexually managed WordPress. This is actually not a start, you got to get managed WordPress, it’s two bucks a month. If you want daily backups of your website, I really encourage you to do this.

Manage WordPress itself is free, you can just set up an account and link your WordPress websites, it will keep your plugins up to date, you can update a you know, plugins for 25 different websites if not more, all from a single dashboard. It’s you know, great if you’re building a marketing agency and you want to keep all of your different websites synced into one place, and you want to keep them maintained.

And if you want to keep all of your plugins up to date, to really, really cool. And you know, if you want to make daily backups of your website, it’s only two bucks, two bucks a month. And you’re going to definitely make use of those daily backups because one day you’re going to wake up and your website is going to be broken for no apparent reason.

And you’re going to be like okay, what the hell happened let me just restore yesterday’s version or you know, the weeks the version from a week ago or something and definitely definitely worth it. Click here. So click meter is not even actually a plugin, I’m not even sure why I installed or included clean meter. But cook meter is essentially that it’s a meter to keep track off. Link clicks and you know, just a bunch of different analytics.

It’s 30 bucks a month, if you want to try it out, I really use it to make sure that I keep track of how my links are performing, if people are actually clicking on them. Not crucial, but it’s insightful. They know if you want to try it out. converter box. So here’s the thing, when you buy your license licensed for thrive, you’re gonna get something called Thrive Leads, which essentially lets you collect leads and build an email list right or, you know, email list and get phone numbers, whatever you want.

But there’s this thing called converter box, which is simply outstanding. It is probably one of the after thrive it’s probably one of my favorite marketing tools that I’ve ever encountered. And allows you to essentially though it does what Thrive Leads does.

It’s a it’s a lead magnet tool okay it lets you collect leads, but it gives you so much information and it gives you so much so many different possibilities and the ways in which you can actually collect leads How do you want to do this though the customization effects, the statistics, the data, the information, how are they performing, super, super easy to install, super easy to use, and it’s very, very insightful. I really recommend people to get converter box even though they may have access to Thrive Leads, convert boxes a one time payment of 300 bucks right now, I’ll probably link a link below for you to check it out.

They’re going to switch to a a month to month plan so it might be worth it for you For you to buy it right now if you if you’re interested. I’m not really sure when you’re watching this video so it may not even be available by the time you’re watching this. But it’s definitely super insightful. I know I have access to free leads. And I couldn’t encourage you more to get from their box.

But don’t worry, if you’re not interested in making that investment, I’m still going to teach you how to use Thrive Leads and how to build an email list just using Thrive Leads. And I’d Soto. So I thought oh is so essentially when you’ve visited the New York Times, or the washington post or any other pretty much any other publication site today, you’ve probably come across this browser notification that prompts you to allow the website to send you browser notifications.

So that’s essentially what iPhoto does. It’s a a tool for you to build a list of browsing notification. People, people that have opted in to receive browsing notifications from me. Now, it’s 25 bucks a month for I think it’s like 2500 people, unless you’re a publication site or unless you’re somewhat of a big economy. murrs or retail store, I don’t encourage you to spend the money in this. I’m missing a star they’re here.

Unless you really have a influx of traffic coming onto your website, or unless you’re actually giving people a reason to this to your website every day, just might not may not be worth it. It’s really cool for you know, like I said, publication sites. It drent it really it’s really cool to drive traffic to your website on a day to day basis.

But if you’re only you know, I’m not sure either have you spent that money in for example, your email CRM, getting a better email CRM or getting a you know, a Facebook Messenger management system or something like that. But, you know, if you’re a publication side, you may consider this. I’ve used it before and I like it and I actually use it in some websites. So postmark and WordPress smtp. You need Pretty much all the time your or every time you’re planning on emailing people out from your website.

You know, um, let me just give you a real life scenario here. If you’re building a membership site, and you know people run through your checkout system, once they’ve actually checked out, they’re going to have to receive access to your course or your website or your something right, they get login credentials delivered to them via email.

Well, that process from them, checking out to them receiving those login credentialsis not going to happen unless you actually get postmark and WordPress smtp. It’s just a way of actually making sure your email deliverability I know that I can’t really pronounce that word, get successfully implemented into your website. If you don’t get this up and running. People are not going to get emails.

It’s not expensive, but the combination of both things is 10 bucks a month I think and you A lot of I think you get up to 10,000 emails a month with just a lot. I mean, I don’t think you’re going to be emailing out 10,000 times and in a month unless you’re planning on building a huge website, but let’s keep going. So, yes, so, a total amount we got 132 $33 a month of reoccurring income, it is an expense I mean building a website as an expense.

Now keep in mind that some of these things you’re probably not going to buy for example, imagine if I you may not need if you’re not really inserting a lot and heavy images into your website, click meter, you may not want to spend the money in you know, there’s there’s a lot of personal meats that goes into this.

You know, you’re eventually you’re gonna buy whatever you think is best for your business, but the sort of things that I’ve personally invested in in the past and I think they’re worth checking out, and, as a one time payment, you’re gonna spend a total amount of 400 Hundred and $30.

And that’s only if you end up getting convert box. If not, though, the amount, you know, reduces drastically. So yeah, I think this is a good week app, I mean a total amount I gotta change the amount here it says $98, but it’s actually

And that was set for module one that was the accounting module you can somehow expect to pay between. It’s either 100 bucks up front, or 400 bucks up front, and then a total amount of 130 bucks, tops per month.
I may have left out some plugins because I can’t really go over every single plugin out there and I can’t really go over every single business and niche that there’s out there. But this is typically what I average for every single website that I’ve personally built in the past.

So yeah, next module is going to be about Google Tag Manager. You really You really, really, really want to listen in to the to the next module because Google Tag Manager is crucial. It is important and you’re probably going to want to watch the next module more than once.

We’re going to be talking about what it is, how do we use it? How do I get it up and running on my website? And it’s a very important module. And yeah, just tune in and listen in and I’ll see you in the next module. Thank you for listening.