If I wanted to make a domain name, for a scholarship, www.(persons name).com, and I wanted to reserve it and not have advertisements on it, how much would it cost?

A "family friend" worked with my mom to get it done but I think he completely ripped her off and it infuriates me that I never knew about it, plus the fact that he wants to charge an extra 150 dollars for just adding a picture and a few lines of text to the website. Is it really that complicated?

btw: it was only one page (no tabs) and the text was already written

This post was edited by CallMeTibbers on Nov 14 2013 01:47pm

What was the total you paid? ($150?)?
What did you receive in return (website + picture/text on site)?

way too much. Again, I just found out about this now... She paid a total of 1000 dollars for him to make this website 2 years ago after my sister passed away. She wanted it in a hurry to get the scholarship info up last year

5 small pictures in total, and a big picture up front that rotates between 10 pictures on a cycle. i'd post it but I mean its kind of personal, sisters obituary, and scholarship.

All it is is literally like a home page, no interactive buttons at all. I honestly think my mom got ocmpletely ripped off

apparently he fed her some bull crap like it costs 500 dollars to reserve the name for 5 years and then he'd do free additional changes for 5 years.

My mom never told me about it due to the fact she didn't really wanna concern us with the financial aspects of it, but now apparenlty he wanted to charge her 150 just to add a picture of the first scholarship being given out to the first recipient and a few lines of text explaining it. I'm not a website expert but honestly it seems absurd! She confronted him and he said he said lowest he'd go is 100, and that its very complicated. I told my mom just to get the domain name and password from him and i'll make the edits myself, google it or somethin. Shes just gonna pay him the 100 to get it away from him cause she doesnt want him to hold it like a douchebag, but honestly it pisses me off. Am I right she got severely ripped off?

It costs about $10 a year to register a domain name. And as for the web development part, you should expect $20-$30 per hour of work, and an average website takes about 50 hours which comes out to $1500. The work he did probably only took about an hour or 2.

tldr, your mom should have paid less than $100 for that crap. She got ripped off big time

I figured. Thanks just wanted to confirm it. Wish she would have told me. She just lost her daughter and this douchebag " family friend" took advantage of her like that. Pathetic

Well if neither of you can perform the service, you have to pay someone to do it so it may as well be a 'family friend' as it's better he gets the money than some random person. While I feel the guy definitely overcharged it wasn't by any insane amount compared to what you would have gotten elsewhere. And you said you wanted it fast it was a 'fast' job, but you pay for speed).

If you got the end result you wanted, for $1,000 there's little to do/complain about unless you want to spend copious amounts of time and money for nothing to happen. Yes you overpaid, but only by a few hundred dollars if that. Most people would have done the additional change for free as a family friend that had already paid for a service, but like I mentioned earlier you're just paying for a service, forget he's a family friend.

Also while I feel bad about your situation, it doesn't automatically dictate free/cheap service. A job is a job.

ask for access to the service and say you want to take over (username/pass to godaddy or whatever account) and I'll gladly take care of this for you for no charge (assuming the domain name is paid, as that on average is 10$/y)

Thanks alot man I really appreciate it. She agreed to pay him 100 bucks for it, to be honest, she just didn't want to deal with another court case over this. She realizes she got thoroughly ripped off, but she also realizes she put too muich trust in him, and when she looked for a second opinion, she really didn't get that great of a response. I'm gonna see what it's like and if I'm stumped i'll definitely shoot you a pm thanks again




To be honest, she picked him simply because he was a family friend. He took like 2 months to get it up, so she wasnt thrilled at all, but figured friendship is important. She got a decent website, but not exactly what she envisioned, and when she asked him to change the background, he said it was impossible, i say its cause hes incompetent. She wasn't expecting free/cheap (as you can tell from the money she invested in it) but I mean honestly I think she just didn't care at that point. She trusted he'd give her a reasonable deal and from what i've googled about it and what was said here, I feel she got completely ripped lol. He doesn't realize what he just cost himself (a ton of business). He does jobs for local boys and girls club (of which my dad is currently a board member) so now they are reviewing what he is charging them to see if they can find a cheaper outsource, but again they were using him simply because he worked there a long time. He also cost himself business from a lot of close friends who were told about this. In retrospect though I just really wish she had told me the price before she paid it so I coulda asked here or done research for her... she trusts too much lol