Thank you for taking the time to talk with us about your website. The proposal should give you an overview of our process, timeline, budget, and scope of work for Cultivate Arc.
Cultivate Arc is a private 3-month guided program to help you become a professional food blogger.
Cultivate Arc also includes a website launch using a personalized Cultivate Arc theme. You choose one of our core themes—which we personalize with your logo, brand colors, and typography—and then we set it up on your staging environment and launch your site within 1 week.
Cultivate Arc is not a custom-from-scratch theme design service. Those are Cultivate Pro and Cultivate VIP.
We will start by designing and building your new website on a private staging environment, and then you will work through our 3-month guided course to build out the content on your new site. Once we have 20 posts written and your key pages built, we will launch the website for you.
Cultivate Arc is built with the same core technology as Pro and VIP, so you’ll have the exact same features, functionality, and support as our fully custom themes. Your Cultivate Arc site can compete on an even technological playing field with bloggers who have millions of monthly pageviews.
If you’d like additional custom blocks, more key pages, or other modifications to address any specific out-of-scope needs you may have, we can easily add them through CultivateWP Support.
If our proposal is agreeable, please complete the form at the bottom of this page. After signing, we’ll create a mockup of your selected Cultivate Arc theme with your brand assets.
— Bill & Duane
What’s Included
- 3 months of access to our Cultivate Arc Learning Management System (LMS), which contains our guided course on every aspect of creating a successful food blog. Each section of the course includes a video, detailed written content, and a checklist of tasks to complete to move forward.
- After completing each section, we will personally review your created content and provide recommended improvements.
- Two 1-hour phone calls with Duane to review what you have learned and completed, and answer questions.
- Your choice of 1-of-6 Cultivate Arc themes.
- Mockup of your selected Arc theme with the following customizations:
- Theme colors updated to match your brand and tested for accessibility color contrast
- Typography customization – selection of either system fonts or a custom Google font for headings, paragraphs, and interface elements
- Your logo added to the header and footer, sized and spaced appropriately
- Selection of desired image aspect ratio for post listings (ex: tall, wide, or square)
- Development and configuration of your Cultivate Arc theme on a private staging environment.
- Once you have completed the Cultivate Arc course and have your initial content complete, you can select your desired launch date for our White Glove Site Launch.
What’s Not Included
Cultivate Arc is designed to deliver a semi-custom branded theme and guide you through your initial content creation. In order to provide a fixed cost for this service, we maintain a tight scope of work. Additional services and customizations can be completed as out-of-scope changes and quoted separately. Here are some items that are not included in the Cultivate Arc scope:
- Branding — Cultivate Arc assumes you already have a logo and brand colors. If you do not already have a defined brand guide, or would like to modify your brand before starting, we have a variety of branding options available, or you can work with an outside company for branding.
- SEO — Cultivate Arc is based on sound SEO expert advice and industry best practices. For SEO guidance relating to your particular site, we highly recommend speaking with an SEO expert. We recommend Casey Markee for site audits.
- Initial Content Creation — As the subject matter expert, you will need to build your content and category structure. We will of course provide feedback and guidance, but we will not write the content for you.
- Element modifications — Cultivate Arc elements and blocks are pre-defined by the theme you select. That means you choose an existing theme, we apply your brand colors and fonts, and the application is inherited by the theme. We can modify the styling and functionality of individual blocks and elements through CultivateWP Support.
- Custom blocks — Cultivate Arc includes our Post Listing block with 16 unique layouts, our Quick Links block with 4 unique layouts, and over a dozen custom blocks. If you would like additional custom Post Listing layouts, additional Quick Links layouts, or a custom block, we can do so through CultivateWP Support.
- Additional Key Pages — Cultivate Arc includes 6 key pages1. If you would like additional key page designs—for example a Cookbook page, or an affiliate links shop page, or an Instagram link-in-bio page, or a unique single post style for a separate blog category—we can do so through CultivateWP Support at our standard hourly rate.
- Technical debt — Cultivate Arc is a service for brand new websites, so it does not include custom development time required to solve unique technical problems introduced by your previous website. If you have such issues we will let you know, and if you wish we can solve the problems at our standard hourly rate.
How Long it Takes
Cultivate Arc is designed as a three month process, but you can move at your own speed and launch as soon as you have 20 posts written.
During the first two weeks we will design and build your personalized Cultivate Arc theme and set up your private staging environment. Once this is complete, you can access the Cultivate Arc LMS and begin the guided course.
Budget
Please consult your unique estimate for the specific price of your Cultivate Arc project. The base price of Cultivate Arc is $12,000 based on the scope of work, deliverables, and timeline outlined in this proposal.
Fees are divided into two payments:
- $6,000 deposit for Cultivate Arc + the full cost of any additional addons requested, non-refundable
- $6,000 balance for Cultivate Arc, issued at the start of the project and due within 30 days.
All invoices must be paid in full prior to scheduling your site launch.
Any additional out of scope work will receive a separate estimate and will be invoiced separately.
Hosting Requirements
You will need a website host that includes a staging environment where we can build and test the new theme. Most high quality hosts include a staging environment.
When it is time to launch the site, we prefer one-click deployments from staging to production (more information). If your host does not offer this, your host can manually copy the staging site live at launch.
We strongly recommend using BigScoots as your host. We find that our clients are most successful when using them.
BigScoots will give you 3 months for $1 on any size plan. Simply go to their live chat and say “I’m a CultivateWP client and would like to setup my site with BigScoots using the $1 for 3 months plan.”