Every guide I talk to asks the same question within the first five minutes: what’s a website gonna run me? And every one of them has already gotten a number that made no sense — somebody quoted three hundred bucks, somebody else quoted fifteen grand, and both were pointing at the exact same thing.
So nobody knows what’s fair. You’re trying to price a website the way you’d price a guide trip you’ve never run, in country you’ve never seen.
Let me take the mystery out of it. Here’s what these things actually cost, where the money should go, and where it absolutely shouldn’t.
The real range
There are basically three tiers, and the gap between them is wide on purpose.
- The DIY template (cheap, and it shows). A Wix or Squarespace site you build yourself on a weeknight. The platform fee is small. The cost is your time and the fact that it looks like every other template — same stock photos, same layout, same “Welcome to our website” energy. It exists. It doesn’t sell.
- The freelancer special (middle, a coin flip). Somebody local builds you a few pages for a one-time fee. Could be great, could be a guy who’s never set foot in a drift boat and thinks your spring season is in March. The work lives and dies on whether they understand the outdoor business at all.
- The built-to-convert site (more upfront, earns its keep). Real photography, pages built around the trips you actually run, online inquiry, and something that answers when a client reaches out. Costs more on day one. It’s the only one of the three designed to put trips on your calendar instead of just sitting there looking nice.
The number isn’t the point. What you’re buying inside the number is the point.
What actually drives the price
A website isn’t one thing — it’s a stack of decisions, and each one moves the bill.
- How many trip or hunt pages. A single half-day float is one page. Five species across three seasons with different rates and dates is a different animal. More distinct offerings, more to build.
- Real photography vs. stock. This is the big one. A client can smell a stock photo from across the room, and the second they do, they stop trusting you. Real shots of your water, your country, your clients holding real fish cost more — and they’re the difference between “looks legit” and “looks like a scam.”
- Online inquiry and booking. A contact form is table stakes. Letting someone check dates and start a booking right there, without a phone tag marathon, is more work and worth it.
- The Spotter. This is the piece almost nobody quotes you, and it’s the one that actually books trips. More on that in a second.
- An SEO foundation. Not magic — just a site built so Google can find you when somebody searches “elk hunt [your area].” Baked in at the start, cheap. Bolted on later, not.
- Ongoing care and hosting. The internet doesn’t sit still. Hosting, updates, the lights staying on. A small monthly thing, not a luxury.
What’s worth paying for, what isn’t
Spend here:
- Real photos of your real country. Every dollar. This is the whole ballgame for trust.
- A site built around how people actually book — clear trips, clear pricing, an easy way to reach out.
- The thing that answers when a client shows up and you’re on the water.
Don’t spend here:
- Animations and slideshow gimmicks. Nobody books a $2,000 hunt because your homepage faded in nicely.
- Ten pages of stuff nobody reads. A tight site that answers the real questions beats a sprawling one that buries them.
- A logo redesign you don’t need. If your brand works, leave it. Pour that money into photography and the front desk.
A pretty website is a brochure on a shelf. Whether it earns anything comes down to one thing: does something answer when the client’s ready to book?
The math nobody walks you through
Here’s the part that makes the whole conversation simple.
Whatever you land on for a built-to-convert site — say it’s a real investment, the kind that makes you wince a little — run it against one booking. One elk hunt. One multi-day float. One guided week. For most outfits, a single trip you’d otherwise have lost covers the entire site for the year, and then some.
That’s not a sales pitch. It’s just arithmetic. The website isn’t an expense you hope pays off someday. It pays for itself the first time it catches a client who’d have scrolled past you — and from there it’s working for free.
The bottom line
The site itself is table stakes now. Every outfit has one, so having one doesn’t win you anything — it just keeps you in the conversation. The real edge isn’t the brochure. It’s the front desk that answers the second a client reaches out, while you’re a thousand feet up a drainage with no signal and no idea the phone even rang.
Want a straight number for your outfit, with no mystery and no fifteen-grand sticker shock? Book a 15-minute call and I’ll lay out exactly what you need and what you don’t. Or just message the Spotter in the corner of this page — that’s the front desk I’m talking about, already working.
