Funding for a new website

[HWT]

Seems to be a few options out there.

The Government grants are nice, and I'll qualify for those when I get around to finishing this site off (which is going to require going Alpha or Beta to get some live testing happening). Currently juggling a newborn so I don't actually have the time to work on this right now but he's steadily getting better and I'm starting to get things done again.

Also found this thing by Microsoft - Website Spark. Looks very interesting, and we qualify for it, although it does have some catches.

Advertising - I can probably squeeze a bit of free advertising out of press releases and approaching site owners directly to buy/sell through me just to kickstart it but I don't know how effective that will be.

The biggie is hosting. We've scoured the internet and the cheapest plan we've found is $US39 a month, with all other plans I've seen scaling up from that to about $900 a month, with most being around $150-300. $39 a month I can afford (once we have our new house deposit) without having to cut back on something like food.

Anyone know any other good sources of dosh for a new website?

[jeremy]

I've been pondering this myself a bit lately. I don't really like asking for money for things. For my own situation when I've decided to try out an idea the strategies of used were:
- start with something minimal, like leave out anything that isn't absolutely essential to get started
- do the development concurrently with other projects so that the costs are spread out
- if there is a way to get the eventual benefactors of the website to pay for something in advance like membership or to secure discounts or some other benefit then that can help a little
- do the most profitable bits of a project first
- mention what im doing to a few people that i think might find it interesting and see if they volunteer to help in some way
- look for contra deals that can be done

I've never applied for grants and things, if you can get them it could be pretty handy so long as it doesnt lock you into anything arduous.

what sort of hosting is required? I guess you would already know you can get basic sorts of hosting plans for a fair bit less than that unless you need dedicated servers or proprietry hosting facilities like mssql or coldfusion.

[HWT]

$39 is *the* cheapest I have seen.

Some local councils and development boards have small grants to get new ideas off the ground. Development of the site is free, and it is currently sharing a host with our other sites, so it really comes down to hosting and advertising. This is actually one of the concurrent ideas to our main one - the main one needs about $10k of commercial software to continue, which we don't have and won't have for ages.

I just got an offer on a house I have for sale though so this may all be a non-issue if they don't find something in the building inspection that scares them off. Fingers crossed on that one!

[Brendan]

HWT, sounds like you have done your homework, and getting a grant is a great way to get some cash.. although from what I have heard there are quite a few hurdles you need to jump through.

On the topic of hosting I am sure as you know that hosting is relative to what your site is doing, how much traffic it has and how popular it is, if the on going costs are an issue, maybe start on a low plan, maybe an 'off shore' cheap host and as the site grows move it to something bigger and better that you can afford with the success of the site.

We do this with a few clients that have a great idea, low start up costs and want to basically test their idea without over committing themselves to high hosting costs.

Can I ask what your website is?

[HWT]

I don't want to put links to it out until it is fully-featured (I find the average internet user would happily sign up to a site like this one, ignore the 'under development' status and then complain that all the features in red aren't working yet) but I can PM it to you :)

I only have a live mirror online so that people I talk to online can come have a look-see at it, and of course venture capitalists if I get that far. The masses can wait.

My current hosting plan is positively geared so it costs $0 where it is now.