I haven’t done an Ask a Question post in a while…so here’s a question a reader wrote in about web hosting.

I’m looking to set up my own website, but I don’t know how much it should cost per month or who I should set me website up with. Any ideas?

M. Ferrer

I answered a question similar to thisin the Etsy forums yesterday, so here’s what I had to say.

Hi there,

The price of web hosting varies from company to company and it also depends on how big your website is and what extra services comes with your host. On average, if you’re planning on putting up a plain old website or Wordpress blog, or maybe a web store using Zen Cart or OScommerce, you should pay no more than $15 per month for hosting. Any good web host should offer a package for this price that gives you more than what you would need. I use two hosting companies for all of my websites: Hostgator and Bluehost. I’ve been using them for a couple of years now and I haven’t had any issues with them. They both run about $10 per month.

If you’re looking for a web host that will also include ecommerce capabilities, say they also give you an easy way to build your website without knowing HTML or provide shopping cart services, you can expect the monthly price to be higher. A service like Big Cartel will run you anywhere between $10 to $20 per month depending on how many items you’re selling. If you’re going to use a service like that, be sure to shop around for the best features and price.

You should also avoid web hosts that are too cheap, like in the $2 to $5 range. These hosting services tend to be rather unreliable and you run the risk of your website running very slow or not at all. So beware!

Hope this helps!
Nicolette

Do you have a burning question about websites or promoting yourself online? Click on the “Ask a Question” tab at the top of the page and send me your question. I’ll send you an answer to your question personally.

Lately, I’ve been doing a regular radio show on Blog Talk Radio called 15 Minute Craft Website Tips on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Basically, I do a 15 minute show about some quick tips on a topic that pertains to artists who are promoting themselves online. The last two episodes was a two part series on what you need to know about starting your own ecommerce website and how to choose the right shopping cart.

If you’re thinking about creating your own ecommerce website to sell your crafts or artwork online, listen to both episodes to get some information on how to start the process. They’re both about 15 minutes each, so you don’t need a whole lot of time to listen:

• Building an Online Store on Your Art Website
• Building an Online Store on Your Art Website- pt 2

In addition to the shows, there’s also a free ebook available that offers a great checklist of what you need to look for when you’re looking around for a shopping cart. You can download it for free here.

In a previous blog post, I talked about the benefits of hiring someone to help you with some of your technical tasks, whether it’s a web designer to help build your website or a graphic designer to create an ad or a banner for your blog. If you can get the right someone to help you do tasks that you don’t have time for or have the adequate skill for, they’ll more than pay for themselves in time and frustration. But how do you find such a person? There’s several ways you can do so:

1. Know exactly what you want to get accomplished- One of the things that can cost you time and money when you’re hiring a graphic designer is that you contact them before you have a clear idea of what you want to get accomplished. A lot of artists think that if they just hire an expert, they’ll be able to tell them what to do. While an expert designer can build and wonderful looking website, but they can’t necessarily tell you what the business goals of your website should be. They can tell you that a dark blue background will look more soothing and professional than a bright patterned background, but they can’t tell you what art pieces you should sell on your site…or whether you should sell on your website.

Decisions like what the purpose of your website should be, what the goals of your ad promotion should be, or what kind of feeling you want your blog banner to convey has to come from you. You’re the business owner and you know better than anyone else in the world what you’re trying to accomplish with your business overall. You can’t outsource the vision for your business to a designer or any other person.

2. Get recommendations- The best way to find a graphic artist or web designer is to get recommendations from someone that you really trust that has hired them before. Friends, colleagues, family members, or mentors that have websites or has had the occasion to use the services of a graphic designer will be more than happy to recommend a good one if they were pleased with their work.

3. Do your homework- Even if you find a designer that was previously vetted by a friend, family member, or mentor, you still need to do your homework. That means that you want to check out the designers’ previous work. You want to ask them questions about projects that they’ve worked on before. You also want to get an idea of how much they charge and how busy they are.

4. Start small- If you’re working with someone new, try starting off with a small project…like designing a blog header or an online ad. This will give you a chance to see how this person works and if you can trust them to do bigger jobs like redesigning a brochure or building your website. You also want to make sure that whatever project you start them off on is not a mission critical rush job. Rush jobs put an extra level of pressure that you don’t need to deal with when you evaluating a new designer…plus you’ll likely get charged more on rush jobs.

5. Look towards the long term- One mistake that a lot of people make is trying to find someone for just right now. They look for the cheapest person they can find that can get the job done as quickly as they can and the relationship pretty much ends after the project is done, for better or for worse. I’ve been on both sides of the client/designer relationship and I can tell you that you’ll get a better quality and value for your work if you approach the hiring of your designer as the beginning of a long term relationship rather than as a one-shot deal. Remember that designers are small business people too and a repeat client is always a higher value to them than a one-time client. If the designer gets the sense that they can expect more jobs from you in the future, then they’ll be more likely to do great work. And the benefit for you is that you’ll have someone that you can turn to in future to help you out when you happen to blow up something on your website or when you have that rush job that you don’t have time to accomplish.

Also, look for someone who’s fairly flexible that has a wide range of skills that you may be useful to you in the future. A graphic designer that’s also well versed in designing for the web and building websites is a lot more useful that someone who strictly designs for print or vice versa.

So what do you think? What are your tips for finding a great graphic or web designer. Leave your tips and stories in the comments section!

P.S. Some time back, I did a telephone interview on how to find a web designer with marketing expert, Connie Green. You can listen to an excerpt of the interview here.

I just read a blog post by my friend and jewelry designer, Luann Udell about a brand new web banner that she hired someone to do for about $30. She talked a little bit about wanting to figure it out for herself, but in the interest of saving time and frustration, she decided to spend the $30 and have someone with more graphic design experience than her do it. She’s well pleased with the results.

Now why am I bringing up this story? I write a lot about on this blog how there are a lot of things that you can do yourself. I get questions from readers on how to do this on Photoshop or how to tweak that page in Dreamweaver and I answer them as best I can. But at a certain point, you have to think to yourself, “Is it really worth doing everything myself?”. You can learn to build a website, but is that the best use of your time? You can cobble together a web banner for that blog ad you bought or for your Etsy store, but is it going to be the most effective banner possible?

Now I’m also web designer as well as a jewelry designer, so I might be a bit biased, but I’ve seen plenty of cases where my client would have been better off hiring someone to install that piece of software or to build that website or to design that ebook cover in the first place because the results were disastrous. I’m not saying that it’s not worth you learning how to do some things yourself. I’m saying that you need to know when it’s not worth it. Such as:

1. You’re in a hurry and you need it done well and quickly
2. You have no knowledge how to do something and really no interest in learning
3. You need to get something done and you’re already only sleep 5 hours a night because you’ve got so many other things to do.
4. You have just enough knowledge to be really dangerous and it’s a really big deal if you try to do it and mess it up

Now of course hiring someone to do something whether it’s building a website or designing a graphic banner, means spending money…which we really don’t like to do…especially when the market is tight. But getting help doesn’t have to be expensive and it doesn’t have to be an ordeal to find a good person. And in the end it can be worth the money. For about $30 Luann got a brand new banner. She also saved hours of time and frustration. And I imagine that that was worth more than the $30.

Tomorrow, I’ll give you some tips on how to find help without breaking the bank or going crazy.

In my first ever Ask the Crafted Webmaster Video Reply. I tackle the question of what shopping cart to use to manage your online sales and explain why I’ve chosen KickStart Cart to for my own websites.