I’m often asked by potential clients about the cost of operating a website.  Here’s the spiel that I’ve come up with that (in my opinion) is comprehensive:

1. Domain name – approx $10/year
   You pay this to a domain registrar (like godaddy.com) to have the right to use a name like:  yourcompany.com.
2. Website Hosting – approx $20/month
   This service makes your website available to users all over the Internet.
3. Initial Website Development (custom, professional) – $1,000 to $100,000 and up
   Generally speaking this is what you pay a web developer to build the website itself.  Personally I recommend that you find a developer that will give you a hard quote for this service rather than merely an estimate.
4. Maintenance  – variable
   For a custom site, maintenance costs are usually limited to irregular changes, like an address or staff change or the addition of a new service.  Some websites can go quite a while without any changes and some have a steady stream of updates that need to be made. 
5. Promotion – variable
   Most sites should have an ongoing campaign to drive traffic.  We’ve worked with clients who have been perfectly satisfied with a $20/month budget, and alternatively we have had single clients for whome we’ve managed $1,000/day budgets.

Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to run through this list to see how it would specifically apply to you.