Agency Websites

[goillini52]

If you manage your own website, there are multiple costs. Hosting, for example, we use godaddy. They have excellent service and it’s very affordable, I think it’s $12.00 per month. Then you have ssl certificate to purchase. This is a low cost product. It may come as a package deal. Typically you will purchase a “theme” from a company like Elegant Themes. This is about $75.00 per year. There are a bunch of low cost items associated with this approach to building a website. Most will not go this route.

As an alternative you could go to Wix or comparable service and build one for $25.00 per month. This still would not work for most people as they often end up aggravated with an unfinished product.

Still another alternative is that you use a company that specializes in building websites for agents. These are affordable, but often don’t have the personalization or functionality that an agent needs. They often all look alike. There are a couple prices on this thread.

It depends on the objective you have for your website. If you just want a landing page, the low cost alternatives will work. If you want a customized website that will truly work for you, I’d go with the first option I listed. If you can’t do it find someone to create it for you. Prices are all over the board for this type of service.

I did a site with GoDaddy. The Go Central Business plan. $287 for 3 years plus the cost of the domain name $36, so a little over $100 a year.. If I can put one together, anybody can. When it runs out next year, I'm going with BADTROUT's recommendation insurancesplash.

I tried WIX and never could get it done right. They've got some nice features, but it was too complicated for me.

 

[Tahoe Ray]

Maybe a broader based question on what the purpose of your site is and if it's achieving that purpose?

This.

What a site costs to build/run is going to be dictated by what you want it to do...

 

[1manshow]

Exactly

We pay triple upfront but the commissions generated with good SEO multiplies that investment many times over

 

[bps]

I guess that was going to be my question. Is SEO worth the cost?

 

[bps]

thanks for the info. In the process of doing a site with Insurancesplash and was planning to try their SEO60 plan where they give you instructions on doing your own SEO. Anybody tried this?

 

[The New Guy]

I guess that was going to be my question. Is SEO worth the cost?

Starting a new website today, you should first determine who your targeted audience is going to be, local (City-State, or Neighborhood-City), Statewide, or National.

I would suggest, neighborhood-city, or depending on where you live, city-state. Keep in mind, your competition, the insurance industry, has been on the internet since the mid 1980's, doing massive SEO, Social Media, and running paid ads.

Most of the generic websites you purchase from 3rd parties will be loaded with rehashed content, often times, already on hundreds, if not thousands of websites. Perhaps only changing a few keywords here and there, to make it appear NEW to you. Making them impossible to attack the first page of the search engines.

I would concentrate on obtaining a Google My Business listing to get going. Google My Business - Drive Customer Engagement on Google, versus a full blown SEO campaign.

You can also still set up a local listing for Bing, Bing Places for Business and Yahoo, How to create your Business Listing? | Yahoo! Small Business, I believe. Been a while since I have had to do so.

I would also fire up a FaceBook page. How To Set Up A Facebook Page

Instead of using SEO, unless highly targeted local SEO, I would put my money into facebook ads with local targeting, assuming, your market is local, otherwise adjust your targeting accordingly.

It's virtually impossible to compete with the insurance industry on Google, Bing and Yahoo pay per click ads.

Facebook, is by far the easiest way to compete with them, affordably.

 

[somarco]

the insurance industry, has been on the internet since the mid 1980's

That pre-dates AOL dial up by 10 years.

You must be thinking about when the telegraph was the primary form of electronic communication.

 

[goillini52]

That pre-dates AOL dial up by 10 years.

You must be thinking about when the telegraph was the primary form of electronic communication.

Didn't Al Gore invent that too?

 

[The New Guy]

That pre-dates AOL dial up by 10 years.

You must be thinking about when the telegraph was the primary form of electronic communication.

Or, merely a simple typo.

 

[somarco]

Or, merely a simple typo.

Or simple embellishment (AKA BS)