We all know that before building a house, care must be taken to make firm and workable plans and budgets to follow if not, it will look like a Child’s play and, the same goes for building your blogs and internet business.
The phrase…..You gets what you paid for also comes in here. When you fail to budget and make adequate plans for your website/blog creation, you’re prone to making lots of mistakes that might even hinder your success in most cases.
So, you might ask, why should I budget in the first place? There are many reasons why you must budget your blog creation if you’re really serious about blogging except unless you’re just blogging for blogging sake :).
Why You Should Budget And Plan
1. The first reason is to ensure that the market you’re about to enter is profitable hence, will be worth the efforts. This will prevent you from building a wasteland which people never visits. If you create a site and no one finds it interesting, this will result to you not being motivated to update the site again and thereby making it a wasted cyberspace.
2. When you fail to budget, the site might end up having half of your desired results and functionality, rendering it useless.
3. The last but not the least, if you fail to make an adequate budget and plan while creating your blog, it might also end up costing you more than expected.
What Are The Best Ways to Budget For A Site Creation?
There are many things you need to take into consideration when creating your site and, its very important that you pay attention to this.
The main thing is to have a clear picture of what you want your site to do and look like, in this case, you will need to take note of the following…
1. Choose a Domain Name & Hosting Services: Choosing a domain name is one of the first and the most important step in the blog setup. There are various hosting companies that provide the deals and coupons throughout the year on the domain registration. During the Black Friday – you will get the best deals across the year on Domain Registration and best hosting services with lots of other benefits like Free SSL, UNLIMITED Disk Space, UNLIMITED Bandwidth, 1-CLICK Script Installs, Free Solid State Drives, 99.9% Uptime Commitment, Linux & Windows Hosting, 24/7/365 Guru Crew Support, Anytime Money Back Guarantee. Before making any decision you can check and compare the hosting features between the two hosts and can decide which is the best hosting company for you and why?
2. Site Type: What type of site are you building? Will it be an authority, an e-commerce, a membership or a micro niche site? or any niche. This step is also important for choosing the WordPress theme, once the site style is finalized and then you move to the design part which is the next step in the lifecycle of how to setup your site.
3. Website Design: How exactly do you want your site to look?, What customizations do you want? Can your site be built on the WordPress platform? Do you require a custom design? The basis on the requirement you can choose the best WordPress theme for your site/blog and later on customize it. There are multiple WP themes available, choosing a theme is the second step of the blog creation & Nowadays it’s easy and easily available. If there is a budget constraint, you can go ahead with the free WordPress themes and once the site starts making money, go with the paid version as this has a lot of other options which is not visible in the free version of any theme.
4. Content Creation: How many pages do you intend to have on the site? Will you be able to write them yourself or, do you plan on outsourcing your contents creation? If you will outsource them, how much will be willing to spend for your content creation?. If you are good at writing then start writing yourself as content development is one of the most expensive parts of blog creation. Content plays a major role in the overall development and promotion of the site in search engine.
5.Site Development You will also need to determine the functionalities you want your site to be performing. Will you need an autoresponder service? Will you need a static or dynamic homepage; will you want to have an image slider on your homepage? Etc.
6. Site Creation: Will you be able to create the site yourself or, do you also plan on paying someone to do the work for you? Based on the specifications you’ve written above, it will now be easier for you to determine if its something you can do. There are various hosting companies like Hostgator or Bluehost that provide easy to use control panel to set up your site along with the best deals on hosting and domain registration.
If you know you will not be able to do it well then, it will be wise to pay an expert to build it for you and, it will now be very much easier for you to track his work because you already know what you want from your site.
When outsourcing any project, its wise to have all the projects specifications ready first then, you can visit a site like Odesk and put up a job detailing all the things you want to achieve this way, a lot of people will apply for the job which you will now select the person to work with.
Think of what will happen if you just reached out to a web designer and ask him to create a site for you without telling him the site specifications, this means that you will be ready to accept whatever he gives you because you don’t even know what you want in the first place.
There are still lots of other things you will need to think about when creating your site, one of the things you will also need to find out is the market potential of the site.
Depending on what type of site you’re building, you will need to also figure out how you will market it. Most people usually think that the main work lies in building the site but, that’s a lie, it is in marketing the site that the main work is in so, you must plan on how you want to drive traffic to your site after creation. Creating or set up a site is only 20% of the overall task rest is all on content development and promotion of the same in search and social platform, more focus should be only on how to discover the content on the Interner and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the processes to generate traffic on the website.
If you find out that it will be very hard to market then, you might consider looking elsewhere. This is where keyword research comes in which is very essential and, you can also outsource the process if you cannot do it yourself. Keyword research is the foundation of any SEO Campaign as keywords are the only way to target the users in the internet space.
Finally, when building a site or, when creating your next site, you really need to make a good plan and budget for it, this will facilitate the process.
Please, I will like to know your own take on this topic, let’s talk more about it on the comment section.
Thanks and, have a good week.
Note: I don’t normally publish on Tuesdays but, something prompted this one and, I was unable to publish yesterday because of some circumstances that are beyond my control which is why we need to be scheduling more.
Photo Credit: Freedigitalphotos.net
Martin says
Yep, you are doing a fabulous job in marketing to ppl notice your name. I’ve been reading your every post on the Blog and. I appreciate you adding one more blog in your list of where you always share your thoughts in comments section. 😉
Thanks for the suggestion of a post, I’ll surely consider writing on how to market someday.
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks Martin,
I really appreciate those kind words of yours :).
Pramod says
This is what most of the folks don’t do unless they gain experience and realize their mistakes which forces them to start a new blog .People who wanna start blogging should focus and think on content they’d be posting ..if they choose wrong topic , then failure for them is for sure . Thanks for sharing the information mate .
-Pramod
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks for your input Pramod,
A lot of newbies often makes this mistake and i don’t blame them at all because, i also made it when i started but, we’re always on the learning process. Thanks for coming.
Harleena Singh says
Hi Theodore,
Yes indeed, planning and budgeting we ALL need to do in everything in-fact, whether we are at home and thinking about the rations or how the house will run, or whether it’s related to our professional life and blogging. I don’t think without planning and proper budgeting you can really achieve success.
I agree with you, because what you keep aside as a budget for your blog needs to be well planned and chalked out, so that you don’t overspend in some areas. Some bloggers tend to do that and later regret when they turn into loses that they can’tcope up with, because they didn’t plan ahead of time. It could be related to your theme, the product you buy (and if it’s not utlilized fully), or then any other factor. Carefully sitting and planning out things is the key.
Thanks for sharing, and don’t worry about being a day late – being humans, we all understand that. I too am trying to change my schedule and have my posts on Monday’s and Thursday’s now instead. Have a nice week ahead 🙂
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks Harleena,
Planning an budgeting is really a must if one is doing anything in life both online and offline as you said above and, that’s one thing that many people always fail to do.
I also made the same mistake when i started but, thank God i learnt my lesson :).
Harleena dear, it seems my time lately is really no longer enough, I’m always struggling to cope with my blogging and studies since i came back from my travel and, it has not been easy at all.
I’ve not even been working on the few niche sites I’m creating and the whole thing is really driving me crazy. I really need to do something about ASAP :).
Thanks a lot for stopping and yes, Mondays and Thursdays will also be good.
Aniruddha says
Good article , keep writting 🙂 one more point to focus is to try to improve your blog trafficc with SEO…
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks Aniruddha,
I will do that :).
Efoghor Joseph Ezie says
There is this saying that “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. Every project must have planning if you really intend to succeed. You need to be sure you can bear the cost of a project before embarking on it. Failure to do a feasibility studies would eventually prove to be disastrous.
Thanks Theodore, for this nice job. Do have a pleasant week.
Theodore Nwangene says
You welcome Joseph,
Failing to plan is definitely planning to fail and seriously agree with that. Thanks a lot for sharing your own candid opinion with us.
Adesanmi Adedotun says
Hi Theodore,
For every good beginning there is always a good end. Many bloggers and internet marketers don’t put this into consideration and they discovered the later end was not fruitful and thus brings about discouragement. I love these analysis and it’s indeed worth mindful off when a new business or assignment is to be set for. Thank for these tips.
Theodore Nwangene says
Thats right Adesanmi,
I can’t agree more. Thanks for stopping by brother :).
Theodore Nwangene says
You welcome brother,
I like and value your own opinion a lot and i agree with all you said. Thanks for stopping by and, have a great weekend in advance.
Asaolu olubayode says
Well done friend, i really love the angel at which you dished the post title, it’s really fascinating. Keep it up.
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks Asaolu,
I appreciate the visit.
prince says
Thanks bro this is just another perfect article written by sir Theodore, planning is the best way to succeed and budgeting is another way to stay in the right track as a business man or blogger. As bloggers we should learn to spend money on design and lot more important things because this will help readers see us as experts in our respective niches
Thanks again bro for this Perfecto
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks for the kind words Sir Prince :),
I’m very happy you agree with what i said and now, lets all get used to budgeting and planning :). Thanks for sharing your awesome view with us and, enjoy your weekend.
Okto says
Although many bloggers tend to do everything on their own having specific budget can help a lot in professional blogging. This mean we can do another thing on blogging in general. Budget buy time for blogging better.
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks Okto,
Budgeting can really do a lot of wonders for a business man and blogging is also included so, lets get use to budgeting. Thanks for stopping by mate and, have a great weekend :).
Avinash says
Hi, Theodore
I agree with you. For starting any business many factors matter such as budget, planing etc. So we have to estimate all the factor before start the blogging.
By the way thanks for the informative post
Theodore Nwangene says
You welcome Avinash,
I’m glad you agree with my points :).
Sarmista Aun says
It is really useless to start a blog without proper planning and budgeting. You article seems to be a good lesson for those who wants to enter into the field of blogging. Thanks for revealing the best possible ways to budget for a blog.
Theodore Nwangene says
You welcome Sarmista,
Thanks a lot for the compliments