KhalidsLife.com

Recently, a fellow blog Jon Wheatley, video blogged about a statement made on website Retire @ 21.

The statement said “A lot of people spend 95% of there money on creating there website and 5% on promoting it, in fact it should be the other way round. Please do not make there mistake!“.

Jon completely disagreed, saying most large sites didn’t need to hugely advertise as their well coded design and web concept was enough to spread the good word like wild fire.

It prompts the question - How much should you spend? Allow me to use some examples…

1. OffBeatInk.com - my tattoo designs site - I have spent hundreds of dollars on marketing but the wordpress theme I use is freely available on the net, the logo is simple and I made it myself. The site is successful and ranking well in the SERPs, yet not a lot was spent on the design.

Does that mean Micheal’s statement is true afterall? No, not exactly, but he has a point. Off Beat Ink is just a blog about tattooing with a few cool wordpress plugins. It is a success because of the content I created then pushed out with the marketing. I spent more on marketing than the design, but what if the content was crap? My money wouldn’t have been well spent.

2. Kortaz.com - proxy listing site - Before I sold this I spent a lot of money on the design, with a custom coded site and free/paid placement automation. The marketing was through a few posts on webmaster forums offering, at first, a free listing. Word of mouth spread this site because it was simple, easy to use and offered something valuable to both proxy webmasters and proxy users. Jon’s point is valid here, spend time on the design and the visitors will come.

3. Ribbu.com - my cool pictures site. Again just another simple blog with some cool pictures. I spent $13 on marketing and got close to 100,000 uniques to the site through one, established, social media portal. Virtually nothing spent on marketing, just a little time on the content. Here, neither Jon nor Micheal are correct.

Three examples, three different strategies and three different successes.

I think the answer is that it’s site specific. How can you define exactly how much of your budget you should spend on a site? You can’t, and so you need to explore other avenues to ascertain what is a valid amount.

My best advice to you would be to ensure what you have is free if possible but as unique as it can be. For example, always write unique content but don’t go spending hundreds of dollars on a unique wordpress theme immediately - Tyler Cruz and John Chow didn’t (until recently), they just tweaked free ones!

If you can’t find a free solution, rent a coder to make you one, but don’t overspend with hundreds of features - you’ll only confuse your users. Google was a unique idea and custom coded, but it has one of the simplest interfaces ever.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.