

I need someone to build my website. My budget is $200 and I need it ASAP.  - bdclimber14

How many times have you been asked this by friends, colleagues, and referrals. The person generally continues to say...<p>"I really don't need anything too advanced. Just a simple ecommerce/wiki/forum/community website. With a blog. It shouldn't take you more than a few hours. I actually could even do it myself no problem, but its just not worth my time. You know, I used to be the #1 COBOL programmer in the 70s."<p>At this point, I sarcastically interrupt "Would you like me to program your website in COBOL so you can maintain it?" They never get the satire...<p>"Oh, and really important. I like this website (shows random crappy website) that my friend has. Can you make it like this? You know, but different? We're ready to launch, all we need is the website, and we need it done ASAP. If you say its going to take 8 hours, I expect that you could get it done by tomorrow."<p>I usually respond to this with "Sure thing, if you pay in full now, I'll have it ready tomorrow morning." I'm never serious, but no one ever pulls out their checkbook either. Usually this ends the conversation, as if the website were so trivial, it doesn't warrant compensation.<p>My Analysis:<p>This happens to me almost weekly. I never accept these jobs obviously, but I find the apparent, almost desperate, need fascinating. Despite the plethora of "do-it-yourself" website builders (weebly, SquareSpace, Clover, heck even WordPress.com) these "small business" minded people aren't having their needs met. In fact, they are generally so technology inept (despite their COBOL tenure) that they wouldn't be able to navigate the "3 easy steps of building a website" on any hosted CMS if their lives depending on it.<p>I think this is where the hosted CMS market is failing. These companies are trying to make a CMS so easy, it's like making a Facebook fan page. The problem is, these small business people can't even make those! They usually hire a student to do that as well. What they really need is someone to hold their hand through the entire process. They demand the service of a $10k+ project budget with a top design firm, but have a $200 "I can do it myself if I wanted to" budget.<p>If someone could figure this out, they'd be siphoning up a billion dollar market easily. I don't think technology is the sole answer. I think it's a combination of extremely lean business processes with technology. Get cheap labor to do the hand holding while using the 3rd party CMS solutions. The small business wants to send an email describing what they want the homepage to say. They don't want to use a website builder to edit text. They don't want to do anything but talk to someone. The cheap labor can do the transition, and margins can be high.<p>I'd REALLY love to hear your thoughts on this. I never leave a problem as big as this just complaining. I always race to come up with a solution, and this one is a toughy.
======
SHOwnsYou
I am either giving up a huge secret or revealing how little I actually value
my time...

You guys are giving up a huge opportunity.

It is easy to make a thousand or more per week from these types of jobs. A
thousand isn't a lot, but it is easily done in a few hours.

 _If they are paying commodity prices, then you give them a commodity._

The key? Boiler - Plate. Have a standard contract. Have a standard website
theme, perhaps with multiple skins. Make it easy for them to enter their own
content. You can build a decent CMS in a few hours or a great CMS in 10-15
(for clients like this that don't need extensibility). Amortize it over the
5-10 websites you're selling each week and you're time costs go down
drastically.

I stumbled onto this strategy accidentally.

 _I had nothing else to do for a few hours._

My BATNA was earn $0/hour. I wasn't going to let my pride get in the way of
easy money.

So I took a small "build me a website" job. Knowing they had small
requirements, it was easily done in a few hours. I kept getting more requests,
I kept sending out virtually the same website, over and over. I was getting
them onto the host I use also and making an additional $50-$100 for each
client as well.

Eventually it was only a matter of explaining how hosting works and how to add
new pages and content. After the 30-45 minute explanation, it was coming out
to move like $400/hour rather than $200 for a website.

Big Tip: Record your phone calls and meetings when you're explaining how
hosting works and how to work your CMS. Go over what you said each time and
work to actively improve it. Take 30 minutes, record screen capture videos
with voice over. Give these to the client when you give them the minor
training required.

~~~
benchmark
I tried something similar. I designed websites for five local restaurants, all
at the same time, then SEO'd them into top positions on Google. Then I went
door to door to each restaurant and showed them the websites, live online.

The restaurant owners wouldn't need to do anything. They could assume
possession of the website that very day (I would only need to change some
pictures and change the website name from "Your Family Restaurant" to their
name).

Guess what... I only moved one, and even that one was a special deal. I
couldn't even rent the other websites out for a small monthly fee.

I figure it wasn't a price point as much as they just didn't see the value in
having a website. If they did, they'd already have a website.

Lesson: Let people come to you. Let them have the need first.

BTW: Every now and then, late at night, I'll get a takeout order for lettuce
wraps and fried rice (sigh).

~~~
SHOwnsYou
>"Lesson: Let people come to you. Let them have the need first."

That is not the lesson your experience. The lesson is the make sure there is
demand before putting in a ton of time, especially when you're going to be
bitter about it later.

Your project was doomed from the start.

You committed the time to build 5 websites and SEO them to the top spot before
you had _any_ demand.

If you had waited until a restuarant actually wanted a website, and then
realized that even a small application can be made in a few hours for a few
$hundred, then you may have had better results. Pre-emptively making websites
or scripts is the opposite of what I've suggested.

So the next lesson is to not do work before getting paid (unless it is also a
hobby - like building a database class that you will use in freelance
projects).

I would have also approached selling the websites differently. Showing someone
a website you're trying to sell them and then finishing with "I just need to
change some pictures and stuff" isn't that compelling. You have 5 websites.
Customize one for each restuarant you're talking to. They pass? Change it up
with different pictures and titles. Let the customer see what they're buying,
not some representation. This is more time consuming, but it will help sales.
You already sunk time to designing, building, and SEOing the sites, so an
additional unpaid 20 minutes probably won't hurt you too much.

Also you can't just assume why people didn't buy the websites. You should have
done some random calling after the fact to determine _why_ people weren't
buying. But I will throw out a few ideas on that too.

You approached restaurants trying to sell them a commodity without knowing
what they want. They could have not bought because of the price, because they
didn't like the colors, they were intimidated by it's complexity, underwhelmed
by its simplicity, or because they didn't think they needed a website (you
really need to be making calls).

When someone comes to you with a budget and a need for a website, you are in a
position of power. You can dictate more terms. Building a random websie
without requirements or a scope and then approaching people takes the power
out of your hands.

Finally, there are thousands of companies that don't have a website because
they don't know how to make one or think they cost tens of thousands of
dollars. These are the types of companies you can be trying to advertise to
(but not cold call/approach).

~~~
benchmark
I knew the risks I was taking, but I took them anyway. I thought a pre-built,
pre-ranking website would be a sweet offer, but I was off.

~~~
Pharmguy
Benchmark, are you still designing websites?

------
dpcan
In my opinion, SquareSpace (and others) is missing the boat by not having a
white-label system for web developers to resell their services invisibly.

People pay web devs because they don't want to take the TIME to learn it and
do it themselves.

The reason people offer $200 is because they really want to pay someone for 8
hours of work for $200, it has NOTHING to do with web design.

If you are starting a candy store, that's the business you are in. Candy. They
don't want to be web developers. At the same time, they don't have much money.

A hired hand who can do the work, manage the content, setup the design, but
still use the easy tools available would be perfect. Then we COULD charge
$200, be done in a few hours, and have happy clients.

Most people won't care what you use to create their site as long as you get it
done and it was affordable.

~~~
slantyyz
Aren't all the web developers just white-labelling WordPress these days?

On the money part, you're right. Small businesses that are used to paying
their staff < $10/hr aren't used to paying the prices for a pro.

For some reason, devs aren't in the same mindspace to these potential clients
as lawyers, dentists and architects.

------
kls
The margins are just too low on these, hell a decent copy writer is going to
cost you half of that if not more. If it needs to have a polished look add a
graphics person to that. And that's just to get all of the creative done. I
just don't see how on the thin margin of $200 to $500 it can be done. Even
with offshore labor the onshore management would eat it up to the point that
it would not have a value proposition worth perusing. With canned text, stock
images, and a stock template, sure it could be done. But these people never
look for a just add water site. They want the "make it like x" twitter,
Facebook whoever they want to knock off that week.

I have a friend who owns a vending operation and I promised to sit down with
him and show him how to design his own site with GoDaddy's tools and how to
use Ad Words to market his service online. He was actually surprised at how
easy it was to do. Now he wont win any design awards but for his market
something that disseminates some simple info is all he needs. $200 is really a
DIY budget and that is all I could really see that someone could do to service
this market. It took me 3hr to teach him how to handle it himself. And if
someone where instructing people how to do it themselves with these simple
site builders they could make a decent freelancing salary. I just don't see a
product here that could do better than the existing watered down site
builders. Without professional a copywriter and graphic design you will get
the same results, offshoring copywriting seems like a bad idea and offshoring
graphics requires some management oversight. Until these can be automated I
dont see the margins.

The reality is $200 barely covers 2hrs labor for a good mechanic. Developers
require a lot more knowledge and skills than mechanics. For some reason people
get the idea that this should not be the case but $200 for professional
services set's up unrealistic expectations.

~~~
phranc
> Developers require a lot more knowledge and skills than mechanics

Oh? Care to elaborate on this statement or stop while you're ahead.

~~~
kls
Yes I can, my grandfather, my father and myself (in my early life) where all
Aircraft Mechanics. I am still a motor-sports mechanic (hobbyist for off-road
motor-sports team) and restore old Jeeps, Bronco's and Scouts. From Frame to
finish. I can tell you emphatically that software development is more complex
than Mechanics. Further, I do hobbies work in the automotive electronics space
and develop software that uses CAN, OBDII and hack ECU's. The development
environments and list of technologies required are far more spare because it
is an fairly heterogeneous environment but I did not say anything about
automotive programming (though I do believe that it is less complex than web,
mainly because it is not cluttered by technology soup) I was speaking
specifically about pull a part off, replace it, run a diagnostic machine on it
mechanic. I specifically chose mechanic because it is a trade I know a lot
about given that it is the family business.

------
drivingmenuts
Well, one solution is to point them to that freelancers site. There's always
people there who are willing to put together some sort of solution for the
bottom dollar. I went digging around there the other day and was completely
appalled at all of the budgets I was seeing. Some of them wouldn't even cover
the cost of writing a proposal for the solution.

In one sense, yes, they deserve a solution to their problems, but one can
always hope they learn a bitter lesson by going with the lowest possible
bidder on that site.

------
acconrad
So I'm going to be brutally honest with you...I was a freelance web designer
in college and I completely agree with what you're saying. The trouble is, the
solution is already out there...

www.vistaprint.com/websites.aspx

DISCLAIMER: Yes, I work for them, and yes I built that page. But you guys
aren't our market (too savvy) so I posted it because you probably didn't even
know we made websites.

If I were still a freelancer THAT would scare me. The price point is exactly
in the budget of your stereotyped user - $200 is like the price of the
PROFESSIONAL package, you could go even cheaper for the simplest stuff. As
SHOwnsYou pointed out, paying commodity prices is using boilerplate, and that
is EXACTLY what we use...there's no magic tricks here: we make it easy for
non-technical baby boomers and older (the LEAST tech savvy) to have a website
at a price they can afford. The UI is simple enough for a 40-yr-old business
owner to make a site. And to the point of the original poster, yeah we are
capitalizing on a booming market.

I think the problem is that people want what they can't have: a beautiful
looking site at a great price. As I said, speaking frankly, you get what you
pay for with our templates. I would never have created those templates and
called them my work as a freelancer, but I think the HN community of
aesthetically-seasoned designers/developers/entrepreneurs generally forgets
that the overwhelming majority has NO IDEA what good design is like and truly
DOESN'T need it. This is perhaps the BIGGEST lesson I've learned about
business, and truly echoes the sentiments of the greatest creed in marketing,
"KNOW YOUR TARGET MARKET."

I guess in the end, the problem from a web designer is that they refuse to
produce commodity work, and justifiably raises their rates, when they COULD be
making money hand-over-fist if they just kept a slew of simple, cheap
templates and just did the labor of porting them to a website for their
customers and charging next to nothing. Each transaction would seem like
peanuts to most freelancers, and they would feel like they aren't earning
anything, but this is a numbers game, and the numbers don't lie.

------
coryl
You're right in that its not completely just the issue of technical solution
or implementation.

When your friends come to you, they trust YOU to understand their problems,
and know that they can lean on you (ahem, extra features please!) and that you
won't run them wrong. It may be a matter of intimidation; they're too scared
to ring up a web design/consulting place because of embarrassment, price
rates, whatever. After all, if they really just wanted the site done, they'd
have already looked at some solutions before coming to you, but often, you're
the first stop.

So I wouldn't go ahead and necessarily say that their needs are being unmet,
and that this is a billion dollar untapped market. I'd say your friends are
ignorant of a bit of knowledge, and simply exploring their relationship
network. Its the same way we'd go to our mechanic friends for an idea about
getting our engines fixed, or the same way we'd ask other expertise friends
for their advice.

~~~
bdclimber14
True, but most of the referrals I get are friend of a friend (or more layers).
However, if my mechanic friend said "Here's a really easy way to figure out
the problem yourself" I would definitely take it.

------
zbruhnke
I get this kind of thing all the time from friends and family mainly, almost
always it is someone who "just needs something basic" and "it shouldnt be a
big deal" however, I am a perfectionist and everything is a big deal lol so
inevitably i spend time on it making it perfect and they go on thinking that
what I did it for is what those services cost. most of the time I feel I am
simply doing a disservice to people who actually have to make their living
designing sites, however at the same time I have a problem saying no and
throwing together a website in a couple hours typically just gives me a break
from whatever coding project i am currently working on ... I guess to each
their own, but I dont mind this kind of thing as something to pass the time.

Although to share a recent favorite, my Dad owns a company in which he sells
gate operators and automated entry systems and he had a client that wanted to
be able to bill every month by how many times an individual went in and out of
the site, after explaining a few options to him i decided it would be easiest
just to write a batch file that dumped the transactions form the controller
into a CSV and from the CSV into access which would then generate the reports
for billing with memorized reports.

I told my dad that which he understood (barely) but when the job was given to
another vendor he called dad to ask what software he needed to purchase to do
this, when dad told him i was just going to write a batch file to do it he
responded "Oh yeah, well I could do that but I really dont have the time, so
ill just let zach do that if he wants to then, let me know what I owe ya"

lol dont you just love the guy that doesnt have enough time to use the
switches in a batch file?

The nerve of some people...

------
mzslater
When we started Webvanta (a hosted CMS), we spent quite a bit of time talking
with small business owners, understanding their web needs, and trying to
figure out if we could provide them with a "do it yourself" solution.

Our conclusion was that, for the vast majority of small business people, there
is no such thing as a do-it-yourself solution that is going to yield a quality
site. They need help with their writing, marketing strategy, and approach,
even if all the technical issues go away. And most of them need help with
email marketing, social media, and so forth.

For the $200 customer, they're just going to have to figure it out on their
own, using something like Wix, or Weebly, or -- if they have a little budget
-- SquareSpace, GoDaddy Website Tonight, or Intuit Sites, or something like
that.

For anyone who wants a quality site, and wants to have an effective Internet
marketing strategy, they should hire someone to help them. That someone
typically goes by the name "web designer", but a good one is as much a
marketing consultant as a designer.

Typically, this is going to cost at least 10 times the $200 figure, but that's
life. Most business people undervalue design and undervalue the web, and
that's what needs to change if they are going to use it effectively.

So with the Webvanta hosted CMS (www.webvanta.com), we have focused on serving
professional web designers, to give them a powerful tool they can use to
deliver great sites to their clients. We did not attempt to make it easy for a
business owner to create their own site; instead, we made it easy for a
designer to create a great site, and for the business owner to then be able to
add content and maintain the site.

------
Mamady
Every project has overheads, and when you squeeze the budget very low, the
overheads can outweigh the budget itself.

Websites require a lot of communication as overhead - and cheap labor will
only get you so far.

Considering the ONLY value proposition you will be providing is 'price', its a
difficult business model. Any business with extremely tight margins and price
as their only competitive point is an uphill battle.

Keep in mind the service you will be providing will generally be poor -
because your price is low, you need to keep customer service time to a minimum
- leading to a poor service.

Its better to reject these clients, rather than try to adopt them.

------
Yaa101
The hosted market is not failing, it's just that these socalled technical
inept people have an entitlement problem.

The options in our society are very easy, either one does it him/her self or
one pays another person a fair fee.

