Why I recommend photographers to build a website: First of all, it is a powerful business card that can effectively display your resume, work and testimonials. You can write information freely, which will increase the chances of potential customers getting to know you. At the sam

Why I recommend photographers to build a website:

First of all, it is a powerful business card that can effectively display your resume, works and reviews. You can write information freely, which will increase the chances of potential customers getting to know you.

At the same time, you can show your works to the world through the website and share your experiences and skills. Search engines will enter your website information so that customers can contact you and obtain online orders.

These are incomparable to major self-media platforms and social apps.

There are currently three mainstream methods for building a website: using a finished website, applying a template using CMS or WordPress, or hiring a professional website designer. Technology companies are not listed here because today's companies tend to be in the closed-loop ecosystem of major Internet giants, and it is more profitable to develop small programs, APPs and IoT-related businesses.

If you choose to use a finished website, you will only need to spend a minimum of about 700 yuan per year, while using a CMS will increase to 5,000 yuan. Hiring a website designer or studio is the most expensive option, and the initial price can reach 10,000 yuan.

Next, we’ll dive into a full breakdown of the costs involved with each of these three methods so you can choose the best option for your budget.

First, let’s take a look at the example image below. Which website do you think has the highest cost?

example 1

example 2

example 3

Did you guess it?

example 2 The website in the picture is a customized website, so the cost is the highest. Example 3 is a finished website, it looks very beautiful, and the price is the lowest among them.

How much does it usually cost to build a website?

On average, a budget of about 700-4,000 yuan can meet most needs.

. Select the finished website to create the

domain name : Take the COM suffix as an example, the first year of A*Cloud 63.

virtual host : Since the photography website has many pictures, the access traffic is very important. The monthly traffic of the host priced at about 1,000 yuan is considerable.

template : The template requires a separate one-time payment, and the price from domestic suppliers is between 360-2,000 yuan.

If you only place a photographer's resume and a small number of works, you can choose a low-traffic host with a price of about 400 yuan, so that the overall budget can be controlled at 700 yuan.

Use the finished website with the lowest budget cost:

• No technical support required
• Can be indexed by search engines
• Suitable for photographers' portfolios

Disadvantages and limitations:

• Can't flexibly customize your photography posters
• Can't set up subdomain names
• Limited storage space
• No The function of leaving messages and feedback

The finished website plan is only suitable for freelance photographers to display portfolios of landscapes, photos, etc. If you take orders online, it is a bit limited because it does not have very good interactive functions.

. How much does it cost to build a travel and wedding photography website using CMS, WordPress?

The initial cost is about 5,000 yuan, and then the annual hosting domain name fee.

cost details:

domain name : taking the COM suffix as an example, A*Cloud 63 first year.

cloud host : 2-core 2GvCPU, 2G memory, 20G data disk and fixed 1M bandwidth. The prices quoted by major service providers are around 800 yuan. (PS: The reason why it is cheaper than the finished website virtual host is because the finished website and the template are bound, and no additional authorization is required.)

CMS commercial authorization : generally around 4,200 yuan.

WordPress business theme : about 60 US dollars, but some themes require additional payment for plug-ins.

HTML template : The domestic sharing atmosphere is good, so most of them are free.

The powerful backend system coupled with exquisite template themes allows you to control your photography website more flexibly:

• You need to know a little technology
• You can fully control and modify the content of the website
• Suitable for studios, photo studios and other commercial photography institutions

Use CMS The cost of building a website with WordPress is difficult to pinpoint, it depends on different factors and there are many different aspects to consider.

For one thing, WordPress is free, most popular CMSs are open source, and even themes and templates have tons of free resources to use. In theory, it's easy to build a website at low cost. However, there are always various problems faced during the establishment. Whether it is domain name, host or website style sheet, the cost may rise rapidly. The main cost of

is the host. If you are a novice, I still recommend using a virtual host, which is more convenient to operate, does not require too many settings, and does not have to worry about security.

. How much does it cost to hire a professional web designer and design team?

rises to the level of professionals. You can leave your creativity and ideas to web designers for planning. Cooperation is very important. Communication on various details is conducive to achieving perfect results. Never say too general language such as " is superior to ". You can start with the color of the photography style.

A web designer is needed to build a website:

• The overall style of the website can express your concept
• No technical skills are required
• There is sufficient budget for customization

Why is it difficult for professionals to estimate the cost?

Different web designers will charge different fees according to the project. Building a website is only the first step of all work. Subsequently, there are solutions such as optimization, maintenance, promotion, platform distribution of content, and search engine automatic submission. There is a lot of work behind the scenes. But it will also bring benefits to commercial photography agencies.

How to reduce the cost of hiring a web designer?

If your cost budget is not that high, you can try to design a web page template separately and then integrate it into CMS or WordPress. No other additional services are required in the early stage, which can greatly reduce costs.

Before everything starts

Building a website of your own is exciting. You will have great expectations for the website, but we should also start from reality. Three main factors determine the height of the website:

• Development and design Budget the time and effort spent on
• technical support and maintenance

Be wise with your money and time so you can get the best results.

Questions to ask yourself

. What is my true budget?

It will directly affect the performance of your website. But there is no need to worry about this. Just like the three example pictures at the beginning, the difference is not very obvious, so there is no need to worry about the aesthetics. Therefore, even with the lowest budget, you can get good expectations.

. How can I manage and maintain my website in the future? The current backend programs of

are very friendly. You can choose to manage the website backend yourself, or you can outsource operation and maintenance and (the price is very low in the industry).

should note that before uploading our photos to the website, we need to use software to compress them. The maximum width is set to 1920, automatic proportion, and the resolution is 72. Because there is no need for printing, neither mobile phone nor computer displays require such high resolution.

Conclusion

The cost of a website is not only money, but also closely related to your resources, such as time, technology and content. If you can leave enough time to learn new skills, I suggest you choose CMS to build a website, which does not require programming basics or front-end technology. There are a lot of video tutorials on major websites. You can build your own photography website by following the steps.

I will also continue to update articles about how to build a website from scratch.