All Forum Posts by: Hunter Nelson

I know this post is over two years old but this might help someone else out in the future:

I would advise you to get a website earlier than later.  The rules of the game have changed in the land of SEO.  You used to be able to prospect for an exact match domain like wholesalesneakersjacksonvill.com and almost immediately rank top spot in Google even with a crappy website.  Algorithms have evolved though and that's no longer feasible in most cases. Exact match domains are still valuable but have been devalued significantly, similarly a websites age has become a much stronger indicator of trustworthiness.  The average website ranking in the top spot is about 900 days old (~2.5 years).  

Since many domains and websites are purchased in one year increments what I've seen is that your going to be swimming upstream to some extent for about the first year of the websites life, but there is a significant rankings boost after 1 year goes by.  Do yourself a favor and spend $150-$200 for a do it yourself website and put a couple pages of content ASAP if you are committed to the business. Let it age while you get your other tasks taken care of.

You can wait until you are actively selling your product to upgrade it, but you should also plan to spend at least 2k, probably closer to 5k for a quality business website.  I'm a little bias because I run a software company (Tortoise and Hare Software) but just make sure you hire a professional. 

I like to use the metaphor of an automobile to describe the value.  If you spend $500 or less you aren't going to make your way through traffic with it.  If you spend $5,000 grand you can get something serviceable that's going to help you along your journey and if you spend $50,000 or more you're going to be attracting a lot of attention (lots of website traffic).