If you run an online business, you need to have a security plan. Period. Protecting your business + your clients doesn’t need to be super intense. But just like health, car or home owner’s insurance, you can find yourself shit out of luck without it. If that’s not enough motivation, let’s talk about the cost of being hacked on WordPress.
Replace or repair hacking cost
Cost: starting at $400, but could go over $10,000
A hacked site (or server) has two possible resolutions — replace or repair.
Replace can mean two different things. First, it can mean replacing the hacked site with a backup. But if you don’t have a security plan in place, replace means replacing your entire website with a new one.
Because if the hackers did a bang-up job, they likely ruined everything on your account. Including your site, your content + your graphics. Which means you will have to replace it all.
Things would likely go faster the second time around, but if it’s been a minute since you built up your website, this simple equation can give you a rough value for the site you’re replacing. Take the amount of time you spent on your site + multiply it by your hourly rate. If you didn’t DIY your WordPress site, first factor in your time. And then add the cost of having someone else design + build it for you.
{hours invested} x {hourly rate} + {investment} = value of your site
Value can vary incredibly, but to fill in some numbers, imagine you spent 25 hours creating content. If your hourly rate is $65, that equals $1,625. If you add in a $500 retainer you purchased for help with the setup, that’s a quick $2,125 that you’ve lost.
On the more positive side, some hackers edit files or inject code that causes issues for site visitors + site owners. This type of hack can be repaired without a total site overhaul.
For these repair situations, we typically spend 4-6 hours on minor hacks. But we have spent over 10 hours for a bigger breach of security. The average hourly rate for a WordPress developer is $105, so your repair cost would start at $420!
The cost of being hacked doesn’t end there.
Lost income cost of being hacked
Cost: as low as $100 or into the thousands
Whether you need to replace or repair your site, you’re going to deal with lost income while it’s down. Customers will notice your hacked site.
Whether through viagra ads listed within your latest blog post, google flagging your site has hacked in a search, or downloads that happen any time they click a link. And visitors that see your hacked site aren’t likely to buy from you. They also aren’t likely to enter their personal information (like an email address for your opt-in form) onto your site.
While you can hope these customers come back to you down the road, there’s a high chance they won’t. Second impressions are hard to get, especially when it comes to safety + security.
Put up a maintenance or splash page as soon as you catch that your site has been hacked.
This will help protect your reputation + your customers. It won’t save your site from a hacked label in google search results, but it’s a start.
If your site isn’t repairable, each day that the replacement takes to get together is a day you’re losing income.
Multiply your average daily income (that you make on your site) by the number of days your site has been down. That’s how to put a number to the cost of lost income.
That may require you to take your digital product daily sales average times the number of days your site had a virus or spam content on it. Or divide your monthly revenue by the number of days you work in a month, then multiply that by the number of days you weren’t able to use your site.
Even if your site isn’t visibly affected by crappy code, you’re spending your time dealing with the issue. When you’re better off focused on your customers + fans. If you’re spending 1 hour a day on this nightmare, that’s still time that you can’t spend making money.
Search engine blacklist hacked cleanup cost
Cost: starting at $100
I already mentioned the cost to clean up your site, but what about cleaning up your reputation?
When your site shows up on google with the phrase “this site may be hacked” right below your company name, simply removing the crappy code isn’t going to make that label go away.
names changed to protect the unprotected
In fact, the process to remove the label next to your business name can take up to two weeks! That’s 14 days of potential clients running from your site out of fear of getting a virus.
At the bare minimum, a request can be made to google after your code is 100% clean of issues. But if there are bigger things to deal with in the code clean up, you may need an SEO expert. Someone to help undo the damage done to your website’s reputation.
Security game plan
Cost: assuming the lowest possible costs above, the total sits at $500
Hiring someone to fix your hacked site could easily set you back over $1,000 in the blink of an eye.
Add to that the headaches + stress of dealing with a hacked site to quickly realize that coming up with a game plan is worth a little bit of money + effort. Here’s where the good news comes in, we have 3 options to help you avoid being hacked —
- Take our free security quiz to assess the biggest issues on your site + deliver the exact steps you need to follow to fix those problems
- Grab a copy of the WordPress security guide to devise your security plan to protect your business immediately
- If you want peace of mind without taking your attention away from what you love doing, host with tiny blue orange + enjoy our guarantee that if your site is ever hacked, it will be fixed for free
Whatever option works best for your business will still save you hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars in the end. So take care of your business + client’s security asap, not when it’s too late.