We are entering an economic period not seen by this generation. I believe that we have a stronger infrastructure based on the principles of Adam Smith but if our political leaders try to hard to manage this correction, we will only be extending the inevitable.

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As a result, I thought I would outline some of the general economics and steps associated with maximizing your exposure on the internet. Once a business understands the fundamentals, it is much easier to know what are the best decisions given a companies current financial situation.

When a company is looking to establish a presence on the internet. The first and most important question they need to answer is “What is the purpose of the website”?

• Is it meant to be an online brochure?
• Is it meant to be an income generator?
• Is it meant to be a communication tool?
• Is it meant to be a tool to help facilitate your employees interaction with existing clients?

Most companies will say “I want our website to provide all these functions”. The reality is that answering yes to each one of these questions adds additional expense to your website. That is why a company needs to really answer these questions before they begin researching companies with whom they may want to work.

Is it meant to be an online brochure?

The cheapest solution is to have an online brochure which you put in your offline ads or business cards. If this is your primary need, there are a number of solutions which range from $500-$1,000 to set-up and about $50 per month to host. What is important to note here is that although these companies will claim to be able to generate you additional business, the reality is that without additional SEM, chances are that they will not.

Is it meant to be an income generator?

If you are looking to use the internet as an online brochure and an income generator, then you should budget between $3,000-$5,000 to build a custom website. The cost difference between an online brochure and an income generation website is that the basic structure of the website is fundamentally different and requires significant manual effort on a per website basis to prepare a website and give it the optimal chance to succeed in the search engines. In addition to the above amounts, if your website requires significant database programming or interactive tool integration, you can easily increase the oveall cost by $5,000-$10,000.

Is it meant to be a communication tool?

The communication aspect of a website adds another level of integration when building a website. The popularity of blogs has allowed many small companies to communicate to there clients via the web. The other main communication tool companies use to communicate with clients is newsletters but this tool is very different than your website. They may be integrated in the mind of the average user, they are in reality very different products. A company wanting to utilize drip email marketing campaigns or a traditional email newsletter should consider this as a separate marketing expense when budgeting for their online marketing costs.

Is it meant to be a tool to help facilitate your employees interaction with existing clients

If you are looking at the web primarily to facilitate improving current client relationships, most companies will recommend that you utilize a separate URL to integrate any software to choose to use. The primary reason is that most types of software like customer relationship software is developed fundamentally differently from a marketing website and including these activities on the same url can potentially hurt your online marketing efforts. Costs associated with this type of software can run anywhere from $500 to $50,000 or more.

Once a company answers these fundamental questions, they can then properly budget to meet their online marketing goals.

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As I have said many times, it is not rocket science. Once you have the tools, it is just a matter of hard work and constant effort. So keep posted and check back and hopefully you will learn what you need to know to succeed online. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us. We are not a hard sell company. What we offer is knowledge and although we offer information, what we can tell you is a fraction of our knowledge due to the fact that we have been in the industry of helping real estate agnets market themselves online for the past 4 years and been in the internet since 1999. Thats all for now…

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