Hello, I am a student at Gaston College in North Carolina.  I am in a group with three other ladies that have to come up with a mock proposal asking for grant money for a project in our English 114 class.  We have decided to ask for money (fake of course) to start and online bookstore for our college to aleviate the long lines we have experienced in the past ( a 4 hour wait) when we try to buy our books.  We have to present a budget and timeline in our proposal, and none of us know anything about computer programing.  We need to know how much a program to handle the ordering and paying for of books online would cost, (ballpark figure is fine) and how long it would take to write such a program on average.  Also, is this type of program something that the IT department of the college should be able to write, or would we have to get it from an outside source.  Thank you for any advice you can give us, Alison

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Answer from Richard Rost:

Wow. Interesting question.

Well, there are many online "stores" available that you could pick from if you had a limited number of books you wanted to sell. For example, you could set up an eBay or Yahoo store relatively inexpensively. You'd pay a small setup fee (I think eBay is like $19.99 a month) plus a small fee every time you sell an item.

To have a CUSTOM web site built for you can cost anywhere from $500 to $10,000 depending on bells and whistles. If you want inventory control, automatic credit card processing, and the whole nine yards, you're going to easily spend $5000 for someone to build it for you from scratch.

Could your IT department do it? Sure. I'm sure there would be someone there who could build it. The problem is SUPPORTING it. If you have Joe from the Comp Sci lab build it, will he be around next semester when something breaks? If this is a concern, you're better off with a reputable Web Design firm.

Hope this helps.