Half The Money

I can understand losing a hundred dollars or so when you first start, but how in the world do you lose twenty three million and call yourself a business?  But that's the way it is in today's world.  In this great web rush day businesses are plunking down tens of thousands of dollars for a web site, "with all the bells and whistles, please" to represent the firm on the Internet. 

They never seem to ask if this is doing any good for them.  They are so proud of having a fancy web site up that they never even seem to ask if they are getting any traffic to that web site.  They are losing money on every hit they get but what are they asking the guru running their Internet counterpart?  "Can we BUY more hits?"

YOU, as an even mildly competent writer, can do these businesses more good than any three web site builders.  I don't know of any way you can convince BIG business firms of their folly, but for every big business fool on the block there are fifteen smaller firms that might know the truth when they hear it.  Posting YOUR stories about them on the web will do more good for them than throwing tens of thousands of dollars down the Internet drain.

Let's take a well drilling company tearing up great guns of service in the field, for example.  They want a fancy-dancy web site with all the bells and whistles.  Your web site builder quotes them a low figure of $40,000 for an eight page web site.  Yeah, I can hear you gulp, but let's follow this through.

The web builder then hires a writer to produce the content, and pays him or her $100 for a thousand word (or less) story for seven of those pages.   The bells and whistles, those are code already written in his head..  It is only the unique code that really takes any time.  Just change a few hrefs and the thing is done  The bells and whistles make the well driller happy, and the stories bring in the traffic.  Pay off your writer for the stories and the rest is pure gravy.

Do you realize you can turn this scenario around so that YOU get the gravy instead of a mere ten cents a word?  Don't argue if they want bells and whistles that you can't do.  Just as your web builder hires a writer for a few bucks YOU can hire a code writer for little or nothing.  "Hey, do me a flash scene of an oil well coming in a gusher."  Sure boss, I'll have it done by Friday.  What kind of music do you want, what do you want it to say?

Let's get back to doing this well driller some real good though.  A simple page with a phone number at the bottom so his customers can call him is probably all he needs.  $40,000.00?  You can do it for $400.  For a domain of his own and a year of service, ask for another thousand dollars just so he will respect you.  Respect costs money, so DOUBLE your figures and charge $10,000.00 

Ask for 25% down and collect the rest when his phone begins ringing with real customers on the line wanting to place orders.

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Then there are hundreds more smaller companies that don't even want the bells and whistles.  I did a setup for one small restaurant and all I charged them was one dinner per week for two years for my wife and I.  As a bonus, every time we dined out I wrote up another page about the food being served and the service given by the staff.