How much it takes to create and run a web 2.0 site?

SXSW organized a panel and asks some real life guys on how much it cost them to build and run a successful web app.

The gory details are here. As a ballpark, if we take the median of the numbers talked about, then a web applications takes:

• 5k in Design creation
  
• 50k in Development costs (one-time costs) + 17k/month to maintain
• 7k in initial hardware and hosting costs + 5k/month ongoing
• 3k in initial legal costs + 2k/month ongoing
  

So, in all you are looking at:

• 65k in initial expenditure till the first version is launched
• And, another 24k/month for the first year after that.
• This excluded marketing costs.
  

Of course, these are from a highly unscientific sample of 4 companies so should not be considered anything more than just one data point.