Why does this site management & promotion cost so much?

[Alex Ethridge]

My son owns this business and is paying over $2k a month for the management and promotion of the web site.

Bear in mind I know almost nothing about the subject; but, what on God's earth can they be doing that is worth $24K+ a year?

[hobbes]

Whatever it is, I'll do it for $12K/year

But seriously, ask the company they're paying to show what they have done and correlate that with whether the return on investment is worthwhile (i.e., has it generated at least $24K/year in revenue).

[Alex Ethridge]

Cost-benefit analysis is not what I want. What I want is to understand is whether anyone can possibly do enough work to justify that much expense.

To be clear, the web hosting is not a part of the $2K+ per month.

[Alex Ethridge]

Cost-benefit analysis is not relevant to my question. What I want is to understand is how someone can do enough work to justify that much expense for his labor. How many man-hours can someone do in a month to such a small site that has such limited function, to promote it.

All of the $2k+ is supposedly for promotion.

[Bob]

Alex,

Does the promotion include anything like a Yellow Pages listing or other "cost" type promotion?

-Bob

[Alex Ethridge]

No. All other forms of promotion are handled separately. He's is a micro-manager and has his thumb on everything. He partners with Alabama Power on mail and newspaper. I have been with him when he discusses and contracts with Yellow Pages and Yellow Book -- separately. It's all paid separate.

He found that (name withheld for legal reasons) was ripping him off for the same services recently and terminated their contract. They were charging the same $2K+ and when he checked their records, found they had put in less than 12 man-hours in the last quarter.

He's just now moving to a web presence in earnest. Before now, it has been just a side thing that wasn't given much attention.