I am thinking about having a website built. I am not very experienced in this area, and I have several questions.
How much should I expect to spend for a good website?
Any suggestions on who I should contact about building it?
Do you have any suggestions for what should be on it?
How long does it typically take to have one built?
Should I try to get help paying for it from people I refer business to? (mortgage company, inspectors, insurance companies, etc)
Is using my name as the url a bad idea?
What type of sites should be linked to it?

Thanks for your help!

Define good website - I would say that "good" graphic designers will charge between $50-$200 per hour to design your site. The $50 per hour guys are usually "ok" designers, whereas the $200 per hour are generally amazing designers.

When evaluating hourly rates take into a account speed. Those more professional designers usually can design your site more quickly than amatuer's and in the end you get a higher quality product. So if a pro can design twice as fast as an amatuer, you can effectively assume that the rate for the amature is double their posted cost and your product quality will be lower.

I am biased so I wont suggest who to contact

How long depends on the quality of designer etc - Something like www.charfenteam.com or www.joann-newhouse.com for us is a 5 hour website whereas something like www.southernarizonaproperties.com is a 60 hour website. If you want top quality and unique expect for it to take a lot longer to do.

Get help from people you refer business to? Why not! - I would be careful with the mortgage brokers though, there may be laws that conflict with that type of arrangement, I am not a professional in this so I would ask someone with more experience such as member Sdluxuryhomes or member homesurfer - both know quite a lot about how mortgage and real estate interact.

Should you use your name? If it is brandable, then yes. Type in "Destin Real Estate" into Google, you will see that the #1 site is www.edkirkland.com - a lot of people will say you need to have keywords in your domain name to rank it well, this is simply not true. When chosing a domain, think about branding and keep in mind you want your visitors to be able to remember it. Dont think about keywords.

What type of sites should be linked to it? Real Estate related sites. Or do you mean what types of sites should you link "to" "from" it. The answer to this is those websites that will be beneficial to your users and make them appreciate your site more.

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Want to save up to 50% off Real estate webmasters product websites & common upgrades? Check out my latest blog post regarding our end of the year sale.

Would a 2000.00 budget be a good place to start? Can it be upgraded as it starts to produce results? Dumb questions I know, but this stuff is like Greek to me. I'm just learning so be gentle

Would a 2000.00 budget be a good place to start?

yes

and any site design should be upgradeable from the onset.

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Are there mothly fees associated with a website? Like for IDX access? Or ist a one time fee? What type of activity should I expect out of a website?? Thanks for your help and input!!

Monthly costs typically are hosting fees from the developer side. Your board may have a montly fee for a link to the MLS or raw data.

$2000 should be more than enough for a starter site.
For instance an REW semicustom site + the whole years hosting comes to $980.00 - Every year there after the hosting costs $240 a year ($20 a month) and it would give you everything you need. In terms of functionality, a good looking site, ability to upload listings, iframe the MLS create and manage your own pages / sub pages etc.

Lots of REW members use the REW sites, like Moderator Judyo, her site is www.oak-lawn-real-estate.com

Sounds like you would be a good candidate

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Want to save up to 50% off Real estate webmasters product websites & common upgrades? Check out my latest blog post regarding our end of the year sale.

Domain name renewal (ICANN) will run you $9 to $40 per year, depending upon the registrar and the extention. Monthly hosting fees will vary, usually depending upon the sophistication of your site and it's use of resources. We charge $20/month hosting (server) fees for most high-end virtual domains on our NTT/Verio leased servers. We use Verio because they are the most reliable I've found on the planet with triple-backup redundancy, blah, blah (*Remember the New York/Toronto/Detroit blackout? Our sites were up).

Monthly IDX fees are contingent upon the provider and your MLS.

So far as what to expect, your developer should be able to reasonably project how your site will do after launch taking into account your target market, design, size, competition, online and off line promotional budget, etc.

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LanGard MicroDevelopers Oregon Real Estate Agent and Company Directory

Now were talking numbers that I can understand So, it sounds like 2000.00 should get me a pretty nice site. What about SEO? Is there an additional charge for that? I just don't want to put out a bunch of money, and then find out I need to come up with a lot more. I need to get an accurate picture of what I am looking at. I looked at Judyo's site and it is very nice. I would like a little more though. More of a capture system than she has in place, and some more local informative sites linked to it. More buyer/seller reports, etc., etc. Any additional help you can give me on the money side of what I am looking at would be great!

My Oak Lawn site is a work in progress as it's somewhat new to REW. My Cook County REW site in my signature below has more content plus forms, although every site is always a "work in progress". I haven't added any forms to the Oak Lawn site yet and I plan to do so.

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Southwest Chicago Suburbs Real Estate is an affordable area with close access to downtown Chicago. Money Magazine says that Orland Park real estate is one of the best places to live in the U.S. Next door you can find Tinley Park homes for sale and get Orland Park amenities at a more affordable price.

Now that's an awesome site!! That's the type of site I am looking for and trying to get a price on! Thank you for pointing it out to me judyo