I am a real estate agent on Hilton Head Island, SC and I am looking to get with the times and get a website up and going. It seems ungodly expensive to hire someone to do a website for you. How hard is it? Is it not something the average, somewhat tech savvy person can do? I don't need anything fancy, just something to get some web presence.
How hard is it to build a website?
- Thread starter weems
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That really depends on what you're looking for. If you want a good website that allows people to contact you, has good form and layout etc. you can be looking at a decent bit of a learning curve. HTML, CSS, Java etc.
It's why it costs so much to have a good site built.
What I would recommend to somebody in your position is to have a company that specializes in simple business spaces to do it for you. Squarespace, GoDadday, 1and1 all will create and host your space for a relatively small fee.
If you're marketing primarily yourself and just want to give out a phone number/email address, I'd really recommend Sqaurespace. They're layouts are fairly slick and modern without being overly complicated to the droves of "not so tech savvy" people on the net today.
It's why it costs so much to have a good site built.
What I would recommend to somebody in your position is to have a company that specializes in simple business spaces to do it for you. Squarespace, GoDadday, 1and1 all will create and host your space for a relatively small fee.
If you're marketing primarily yourself and just want to give out a phone number/email address, I'd really recommend Sqaurespace. They're layouts are fairly slick and modern without being overly complicated to the droves of "not so tech savvy" people on the net today.
I suppose its all sort of relative, but downloading a custom php script for real estate sites is pretty easy and getting a WordPress theme is pretty easy too for your specific use foe someone with some experience. Taking an existing script and altering it or customizing it in ways that deal with altering the CSS or php could be challenging and figuring out hosting could be too. I'm sure others will be more than happy to help, but let me know if want me to walk you through WordPress, hosting, or any other custom php site templates.
If you have a decent understanding of computers, you can probably even figure out Wordpress.
You can also probably subscribe to a service that you pay per month for hosting and a predesigned site for real estate professionals. I use Buildium, which is for landlords, but I'm sure they have similar services for real estate pros.
If you have a decent understanding of computers, you can probably even figure out Wordpress.
You can also probably subscribe to a service that you pay per month for hosting and a predesigned site for real estate professionals. I use Buildium, which is for landlords, but I'm sure they have similar services for real estate pros.
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A good one? Very hard
Keep in mind, it may be more cost effective to have someone build you a custom site (even if they initially use some prebuilt template as a starting point) and who is on call for future site work, than paying a subscription for some sort of in the cloud solution or prebuilt template you don't entirely understand and also have to pay hosting on anyways. I've seen sites like agentfire.com with fees as $60 per month.
The good is news is, I think (but not positive) you can actually depreciate websites as assets and capital expenditures, and then deduct monthly hosting fees.
The good is news is, I think (but not positive) you can actually depreciate websites as assets and capital expenditures, and then deduct monthly hosting fees.
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as they said, depends on what you want it to do, also how important is it that you show up high up in search engine results like Google? All of that stuff plays into what its gonna cost
PM Cobrabob as I know he can also provide you some good direction.
There is no reason to learn or do coding if it's not something you want to do all the time. Just use WIX.com, Wordpress or something similar. They are easy to do, have great templates that should fulfill your needs. The only thing you might pay for is DNS/Webspace rental. These types of sites also have lots of additional add-on and plugins to really tie in social media and other services. Just don't over do it and plaster your page with a bunch of stuff. Simple and easy wins the game. Just keep it nice looking. The worst thing about a business is going onto a webpage and it looks like it was made using Windows 95 Publisher. I will walk away, regardless of how good the business is.
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If you use GoDaddy to host your site, be warned that they are going to nickle-and-dime you to death. Almost every feature is a la carte. I used them to host a site for a couple of years. The real hard part is driving traffic to your site, which is yet another expense. Having a website ain't cheap if you're trying to make/run a business out of it and making zero income from it.
I used wix to build a website for our consulting firm.
Has an about us, current projects, previous projects and a contact us page etc. Probably took me 5-6 hours taking my time.
Is it top notch? Nope. Was it something that the boss was happy about? Yea.
And then every once in a while I'll do some minor tweaks to it.
Has an about us, current projects, previous projects and a contact us page etc. Probably took me 5-6 hours taking my time.
Is it top notch? Nope. Was it something that the boss was happy about? Yea.
And then every once in a while I'll do some minor tweaks to it.
I thought the hardest part of building my website was having enough content.
And as I have learned, you need to protect your original content.
Have a plan of who you want to find your website.
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And as I have learned, you need to protect your original content.
Have a plan of who you want to find your website.
E
WIX and worpress are some commons if you're a "beginner" and want some ones for general functionality or like other people said above it gets expensive and in depth when you really start getting into a lot of features.
Actually, you're probably beat keeping it simple anyways. The trend these days is really minimalistic design. I wouldn't even necessarily upload photos or descriptions of properties on your site, but instead link directly to Realtor, Trulia, Homes, or Zillow site pages with your listings.
I know I get basically zero inquiries for rentals through my website, and its really because when most people search rentals, they use one of the major aggregate resources instead of visiting individual websites that landlords may have.
Basically, what I'm getting at is, even with good search optimization, you'll still find the vast majority online of users contacting you through one of the major real estate sites.
I know I get basically zero inquiries for rentals through my website, and its really because when most people search rentals, they use one of the major aggregate resources instead of visiting individual websites that landlords may have.
Basically, what I'm getting at is, even with good search optimization, you'll still find the vast majority online of users contacting you through one of the major real estate sites.
I tried a few. Squarespace seems to be the best and their tech assistance is incredible.
I can do that if he wants to use a website template similar to what I use for my website. I've actually had 4 different web template designs in 11 years. They're inexpensive. Prices start at $58. Mine included that awesome shopping cart option pushed the cost to $177.00. Exceptional support, too. You would need to know how to use Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web 4 (free from Microsoft). Or you can choose a Word Press design. It took me about two weeks of on and off time to do my present website. Wasn't hard at all but I do have above average experience with Expression Web and HTML. Go to http://www.i3dthemes.com/ and check out their designs. They have templates geared to real estate applications, too.
Their price for a real-estate themed web template which includes a blog and listing service is $207. There are other options available that you probably don't need. Here is mine done in a real-estate theme that you can look at. http://www.i3dthemes.com/demos/2199_blue-black_real-estate/?pvt=web-templates
There are quite a few real-estate themed templates available. If you have any template related questions, please email me or call me. My phone number (cell phone) is 203-530-7599.
Oh, by the way, the templates I'm referring to have built in layout options, so you can choose to keep it rather simple (like what I did on my website) or add things like rotating photo sliders. I like a nice looking site that stays on the simple side. 
This. OP ask yourself what is the cost of having a self-developed website that doesn't work right. Clients will take one look and run and you will never get them back.
Hire someone that specializes in real estate websites and let them build you a selling tool rather than a liability. This should allow you to work on finding new clients, listing properties, showing property and closing more deals rather than wasting your time managing your site.
Make sure that the person that you hire also either does or has relationships with folks that do search engine optimization (SEO). Having a great site is wonderful, but if it isn't on the first page of the web search results, it is useless.
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