Website DIY #18: Finances (How To Lose Money!)

This is just a list of things we’re paying for to do the site. Definitely not the ‘right’ way to do things. Probably a lot here we will cut if we can. But maybe it helps you budget if you’re launching something similar.

(Amounts are assumed to be USD.)

Website

1. Domain: ~$15/year (x2: widgetmag.com, workitpod.com)
2. Hosting: $300/year (Flywheel)
3. WP theme: A few hundred dollars like 8 years ago… Typically between free and $100
4. WP premium plugins:
   1. ACF Pro: ~$100 CAD/lifetime
   2. All In One Unlimited Migration: $69/lifetime
   3. Imagify: $4.99/mo.
   4. Theme My Login misc. extensions – $a few dozen/year
   5. WP Rocket – $50 year (for 1 website. We pay $250 b/c Sam uses it for client work)
   6. WP to Buffer Pro: $199/lifetime
   7. WP Forms Pro: ~$200/year
5. Placid: $190/year
6. Buffer: $144/year (though we can probably downgrade to free, no problem)
7. Scrutiny: $145 CAD
8. IFTTT: $2/month (early PWYC plan)

Content

1. Adobe Stock: $33.89/mo. for 10 assets/mo.
2. InDesign templates: $20/template
3. Adobe Creative Cloud: $69.99/month
4. Contributors (and exchange rates): Per GftW, we pay each contributor $200/piece.
   1. We lose a bunch on conversions or maybe it’s on Visa fees. Just for one example, one of our invoices for May was $1,250 USD. We got charged $1,580.04 CAD. When we converted $1,250 USD back to CAD to reimburse ourselves that was 1,498.00 (-$82.04). One more example: charged $2,000 USD, which converted to $2,484.60 CAD. Reimbursing ourselves, 2k converted to $2,357.40 (-$127.20). So, multiplied by 12 which is about how often Outvoice is billing us that’s a loss of, let’s say, $1,200 during our GftW period. Whoops! Uh, flee Canada? Or boycott American writers?

Podcast

1. Gear
   1. Mic, stand, pop, headphones: probably ~$1k total
2. Audio Hijack: $59
3. Loopback: $99
4. Farrago: $49
5. SFX: Maybe ~$50-100/year?
6. Descript: $12-24/month
7. Highland 2: ~$69.99/one-time

Misc.

1. Notion: $48/year
2. Missive: $10-15/month

Huh. That’s at least $5,000 a year in costs not even counting contributors, isn’t it? Dang. We’ve been thinking about moving off WordPress to Ghost, which would slash our costs, replacing all the WP-specific expenses with just Pro Ghost hosting plus podcast hosting. The trade off would be a much simpler site. But jesus, at those numbers…

More in the series

1. Website DIY #1: Intro & Domain
2. Website DIY #2: On Starting A ‘Magazine’
3. Website DIY #3: Site Setup
4. Website DIY #4: Monetization (Quick Overview)
5. Website DIY #5: Newsletters
6. Website DIY #6: Social Media
7. Website DIY #7: Pitches/Submissions
8. Website DIY #8: Analytics/Traffic
9. Website DIY #9: Accessibility
10. Website DIY #10: Podcasting
11. Website DIY #11: Equity
12. Website DIY #12: Email & Responding To Pitches
13. Website DIY #13: Payments
14. Website DIY #14: Admin Tools/Apps
15. Website DIY #15: Networking
16. Website DIY #16: Audience
17. Website DIY #17: Stock Assets (Photos/Illustrations)
18. Website DIY #18: Finances (How To Lose Money!)
19. Website DIY #19: Wrap Up: Wins & Losses