Running your business simply can’t happen without your website, but sometimes website costs can get out of hand. All of the costs associated with running your website definitely add up. These costs include hosting fees, website redesign fees, maintenance costs, graphic design costs, copywriter fees, and let’s not forget how much it costs every time you ask your developer to make a change or add a feature. Additionally, it costs money to optimize your website’s SEO, implement security features, and to generate traffic to your website. Below are 5 ways to cut down on your website expenses:
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Look into your website maintenance plan
Most website maintenance plans involve a monthly fee that your web developer sets up, and it’s usually customized to fit your needs. The monthly fee typically includes hosting, consistently updated software, analytics reports, and support staff on hand to help you with changes that need to be made, or security issues that need to be addressed. It’s possible, however, that you’re over-paying and that your “customized” maintenance package includes features and services that you never actually needed. Or, perhaps your package includes a certain number of hours allotted for changes you’d like made to your website – but you haven’t made a single change to your website in over a year. In other words, you may be able to change your package to a lower-priced option of, say, $50 per month if you aren’t requiring all of the options included in your current $150 per month plan. Write down a list of all of the things your website does not need, and you’ll realize you don’t need such a fancy maintenance package.
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Consider switching to cloud hosting
When it comes to website hosting, cloud hosting is very cost efficient compared to other website hosting solutions. If your website doesn’t get heavy traffic and you’re currently using a regular server (regular hosting) then you might find that you’ll save money by switching to cloud hosting. Cloud hosting can save you money because it bills you only for what you actually use. The cost of cloud hosting is determined based the amount of traffic your website sees as well as the demands of your website. Only paying for what you use allows cloud hosting to offer a flexible payment structure that is typically more economical. If you want to go with this solution, here you can find the best cloud hosting providers.
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Educate yourself instead of always hiring help
When it comes to making changes to your website in the back-end of WordPress, installing plugins, changing your website’s main font, switching logos and other design changes – you’d be surprised how easily you can teach yourself how to do these things. There are plenty of YouTube tutorials available that help you to educate yourself and ultimately implement some of these changes yourself. Some of these website updates and changes are less complicated than you think to implement, and by teaching yourself how to do it, you’re saving money. You can also teach yourself SEO strategy by doing online research, instead of hiring an SEO specialist. Anytime you can avoid paying your website developer to do something, you’re significantly cutting down your website expenses.
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Exchange your services instead of paying someone
You can cut down on your website expenses by exchanging services with another person instead of paying them to do something on your website. When you exchange your services instead of paying for a service that your business needs, you’re agreeing to a trade, where neither party has to spend any money. For example, you might exchange your service of website copywriting with a graphic designer who can help you create a new-and-improved logo for your website. If you’re good at writing, and they’re good at graphic design, you each have a service the other needs and can happily exchange services without spending any money.
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Use free resources whenever possible
If possible, use a free WordPress theme to build your website, and use free stock photos instead of paid ones for blog posts and imagery on your site. Your WordPress theme should be a simple theme, to keep website development and design costs low. You should also never pay for stock photos considering how many platforms are now available that offer free, high-resolution stock images. Some of the free image platforms include Unsplash and Pexels. There are plenty of upgrades and website perks that won’t cost you a thing, so be sure to utilize free resources.
Conclusion
Cutting down your website costs can either do you good or no good, long term or short term. Some settle for the lower cost but quality has tremendously gone down, while other risks of paying much but get the highest quality website you’ll ever see. Don’t get me wrong, not all who pays high get a high-quality website, it still depends on how you plan, execute it and how you negotiate. Let us know what you think.
