I hope this is in the right place. I have a question about the price of creating a website.

I've read before that it costs hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year to have your own website. Is that only if your having it made professionally by someone? If your making it yourself is the only cost the domain and hosting?

Because I've seen different hosting companies that have domain/hosting plans for like $6.95/mo. If I were to make a website by myself would that be the only cost I need to keep in mind?

That, and any costs associated with the software you use to create your site and/or promotional costs.

There really isn't a set price as such. It's like any other business...it depends on your goals and your willingness to do things yourself vs. how much you wish to delegate to someone else.

Treat your site like a business, and you'll generally be rewarded.

The only costs are that of the domain ($8/year) and hosting ($5-$7/month). For the website you can use Wordpress which is free. I make my websites with it, using pages instead of posts, and the front page I also set it up as a page. It's free and there are thousands of themes out there for it. Also much easier to maintain then using Dreamweaver if you're making a website with more then a few pages.

A trendy good-looking website culd cost you ... 5k or even 10k. But a good start-up web site that uses a template goes less than $500.

Assuming that all site/graphics development work required for your website is done internally at "zero" cost, your website costs will consist of:

• Domain name(s)
• Hosting service

Beyond that, there are various additional costs which you may encounter depending on your site:

• Marketing costs - e.g. Google Adwords, banners, magazines etc.
• Software costs - e.g. to develop/maintain your site, or software required on the server to operate your site (forum software, or literally back-end server software)
• Hardware costs - e.g. if you have a large website you may require a dedicated server, in which case you may decide to buy your own and colocate, rather than rent/lease hardware from someone else

There are many different hosting plans out there, and it's difficult to say with any certainty what is likely to be required to operate the website that you have in mind.

However, most new websites will run perfectly happily on basic shared hosting - the kind of service you can purchase for less than $10/month etc.