4 Hidden Fees You Come Across When Building A Website
Let’s set the scene, you are ready to design your website, yay! You start the process of getting your domain, next you start to research platforms and land with one, but then come all the extra platforms like an email list platform, stock photos, a scheduling tool, and legal forms so your site and brand are protected.
Do you feel like no one told you about all these things?! When I have a new client, I try to be fully transparent with them and let them know all the things they may possibly want to start purchasing and/or researching. Now I’m not saying that you need all these things for your brand to be successful, but these different platforms may help build your business on a bigger scale. Let’s talk about the 4 hidden fees you may come across when building your website.
Email Capture Platforms:
One thing that anyone will tell you, especially if you are trying to build a business is how important email lists are! I 100% agree with them but the one part that everyone tends to leave out is the fact that at some point you are going to have to pay for your email capture platform. There are SO MANY of these platforms out there, just to name a few there are:
- Flodesk
-Squarespace Email Marketing (this option is only if you have a Squarespace site, which if you don’t contact me and we can get your site set up!)
These platforms all work well, I personally use ConvertKit and Squarespace marketing. I’ve heard a bountiful of podcasts about MailChimp and Flodesk being great as well so really do your research here and see which one will serve your business needs. You have to pay for all of them but sometimes they have a trial or if you don’t have a lot of email subscribers just, yet it can be free! Email platforms are a great way to stay connected with your customers and audience so I do recommend to all my clients that they purchase one or sign up and test the trial period out. One big way that you can utilize your email list is right when they sign up, they get an automated email saying ‘Hello’ it may be a simple thing in your mind, but it keeps things personable!
Stock Image Platform:
Honestly, this isn’t a necessary fee, but I do recommend having a subscription to a platform because if you use it consistently it can totally be worth it! I have two personal favorites for this and they are Social Squares by Shay Cochrane and Social Curator by Jasmine Star. I have loved these two platforms because they have a sense of community around them and they don’t just provide images but teachings and classes on social media aspects. If you are blogging or working within the social media world taking a new photo every time you need a new image can be a daunting task and what better way to choose a photo than to go on a platform, search for what photo you need, and get some options right away. I love using stock photos when I’m building a template for a client. If you don’t want to purchase a more community-based photo platform, you should consider getting standard (non-commercial) “royalty-free” stock images from a place like Unsplash. You can’t just take any photo from Pinterest because you don’t own the right to use that image. Your website could be in serious legal trouble if you use the wrong kinds of images! Also, almost all the photos found on this site are Social Squares or Social Curator!
CRM Tool Or Schedule Tool Like Calendly:
Again this isn’t something that is necessary but it can make your business life so much easier! A CRM tool or client relationship manager can help if you want to organize your client systems. It can help you build your inquiries and send things like contracts in a faster, more simplified way. My favorite CRM tool is Honeybook which you can read more about from a past blog that I wrote here. Another tool that I would first recommend before HB is Calendly. Calendly is an online scheduler that helps show your clients what times exactly they can pick from your calendar instead of the pesky emails back and forth trying to find a time that works for the both of you. This is a cheaper option than HB but still a great one! It has a free version that you can use or a paid one for a small monthly fee.
Contracts For Your Site:
Finally, let’s get to the legal side of business! There are times, like when you are building a website when you will need some legal documents. Did you know that if you are collecting any sort of personal information, like an email from someone you need a privacy statement on your website? I could go into a deeper dive about legal documents but I won’t! Just know that this is a hidden fee I associate with building your website because not everyone knows about things like this. The site I love to use when getting any sort of legal contract is The Creative Law Shop by Paige Hulse. These contracts are lifetime so if they ever get updated you are notified and you can change the contract on your end too. They are also 100% customizable which I love!
These are just some of the hidden fees I came across when building my website. I say hidden because truly I thought that you could just pay for your site platform and domain name and be done with it, but that’s not always the case if you need some of these extra things! When I first onboard a new client I try to tell them about all the fees they will be inquiring about so they have full transparency with what they need to budget for. I also would like to give credit to my Squarespace course Paige Brunton’s Square Secrets™ 7.1 course, I learned so much about what goes into a site from her course and I highly recommend it if you want to build a website yourself.
If you want someone to build it for you contact me today and we can jump on a free 30-minute consultation! Let me know in the comments below if there are any hidden fees you think I forgot.