Originally Posted by holograph

18 mil for 5ye budget sounds pretty normal.

I one time before internet bubble burst I was consulting for one Fortune 40 Co, by my rough and modest calculations just by judging how much staff have been employed to support that company's site i came up with +100k dollars per week, propably spending that much for much longer than single year.

lets say you have staff of 20 people supporting a website on all levels, from designers, admins to accounting and execs.
lets just assume that 15 of those people make 50k/y and other 5 make 100k/y
15*50k=750k
+
5*100k=500k
-------------
1.25mil/y only for HR expenses
add equipment, real estate, PR, advertizing and a bit of profit and you easily get plus or minus 5mil/y spending budget.