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View Full Version : What is the state of web design biz going forward?



Harold Mansfield
09-01-2016, 11:40 AM
Hate to be so serious, but with so many web designers on the forum I wanted to hear some other perspectives.

I've been contemplating this for well over 2 years now. If you've followed any other threads that I've commented on, I frequently tell people that getting into business doing JUST web design is a losing battle these days.

With so many DIY options now, the average boot strapping small business who once saw hiring a web designer as a necessity now seem to be perfectly happy throwing up a Wix, Go Daddy Site Builder, or Squarespace site and never looking back till years later if/when their endeavor takes off and they need something a little more custom.

I personally think this is backwards thinking, especially if your entire business is web based, however, I can't deny that some of the DIY solutions are good enough for many people who just want a presence up and don't expect much from it ( even though everyone has delusions that their website will be insanely popular for some reason).

I kind of saw this coming a few years back when Squarespace started, and then Intuit, Web.com, Wix, and Go Daddy started getting into the game offering introductory offers that were insanely cheap. They aren't selling awesome websites, they're selling "good enough" and it's eaten into a market that we used to control alone. I knew then that not enough people understood anything more than putting some pictures and words together, and that these services would kill us with the average user who knows nothing...which is most of them.

I also knew that trying to educate the average person was a losing battle. They don't care. If it looks pretty and is online they consider that a major accomplishment because they didn't understand how to do even that before. When you try and explain simple marketing, all most hear is "blah, blah, blah...blah-blah, blah, blah". I get it. It's boring. You have to WANT to know it or care.

Over the past 2 years I've pivoted to offering more marketing type services and repairs, which are now 90% of my business (thank God for crap hosting and bad webmasters). But how much longer will that last? I've done well specializing in WordPress since so many people use it, and are loyal to it, but even that's getting a little weaker now that WordPress is almost bug free.

Most of my work today are hack repairs/recovery, updates, redesigns, and customization. If you had told me 5 years ago that I'd be cleaning up and recovering hacked websites I would have NEVER believed it. I was in no way interested in doing that at the time.

I do still get the older business who now wants something more custom and robust, but I rarely get the small business, new website start up anymore. 7 years ago THAT was 90% of my business.

The amount of people that now call me who are doing it themselves and just want a few hours technical support has grown. It used to be non existent, now it's most of my design related calls. And of course there's always going to be the "Just take care of it and send an invoice" customer. My favorite :).

The big gold rush of getting sites online is over.
The big push to mobile ready is kind of over.
The big SEO rush is kind of over since Google has matured, and that is combined with small businesses are seemingly less and less interested in doing more than the basics.
More people are interested in doing well on Social Media than they are in the SERP's.

The amount of small business owners who care about design is shrinking. Mainly since most figure they've "done it once" and either got burned, didn't realize things would change so fast, or since it wasn't wildly successful that it's not worth it anymore. That good enough is good enough. Consequently the amount of crap DIY or old websites is growing, and it doesn't seem to be as urgent as it used to be for many people.

So what's the answer for a small web design firm? Even if you pivot to a more advanced market, with more complicated, higher dollar sites, I gotta say things are a lot less maintenance than they used to be, and larger firms that need continuing support are hiring in house with all of the old freelance web designers now looking for jobs.

That's not to say the business is dead. There's always going to be a need, it's just smaller now, cheaper now, and more people than ever in the market.

How does a small design or support shop compete with a corporate call center who pays people $12 to answer phones and fix basic issues? Or overseas freelancers that have now gotten the hang of this market and work for cheap? The answer? You can't.

Keeping loyal long term customers is more important than ever, but you also have to offer them more. Be their go to person for everything web and marketing. I see it as the only way.

I've also started learning new skills so that I can develop my own products. Just seems like the natural progression.

So what do you guys think? If you've been in this for a few years, you had to have noticed the change in the market.
Where do you think it will go? Do you have plans to evolve, change, or get out completely?

Owen
09-01-2016, 02:56 PM
As you stated, you're right. Solely going into web design is a miss. ESPECIALLY if you only do front end. However, if you learn how to use MySQL and PHP, that opens the door. If you can create a fancy word for what you're doing, especially if you manage websites, that will help you too. Create a term like "Digital asset management".

Fulcrum
09-01-2016, 07:25 PM
"Digital asset management".

Dibs.

Sounds like industry growing pains. The big players figured out where good money was being made, came out with the "good 'nough" package (which as you pointed out satisfies the majority of the market), they took away market share from the independents who previously dominated, and threw their name brand in the mix.

As I see it, and remember that I'm not a web guy (though I have thought about it), the only way to compete will be to become a full service online company. From design to maintenance to marketing to online strategies you will need to be able to do it all.

Freelancier
09-01-2016, 10:50 PM
The biggest problem I always saw with web design is this: you're not mission critical. You can protest that you're important and can make or break a site, but that's only if you're comparing good design to a site designed with FrontPage. If you compare good design to a typical $50 template, you're just nibbling around the edges.

So how do you justify making the big bucks doing web design? I just don't see it. I also don't see it with Wordpress or Drupal. If you go with Magento or one of the bigger e-commerce platforms (NOT a recommendation, just an example), you can make the case that you're doing something the customer will value, since the platform will run the customer's growing business. If you expand your business so that you're providing full service marketing and communications, that's an option as well, because now you're taking over the function of driving customers to the business, so that will seem important to your client.

If you want to be valued, do something of value. What businesses value is improvements to their top or bottom lines. That means more happy customers or fewer expenses. If your customers don't see that you're meaningfully affecting the finances of their companies, then you're not going to keep their business for long.

Owen
09-02-2016, 12:18 AM
The biggest problem I always saw with web design is this: you're not mission critical. You can protest that you're important and can make or break a site, but that's only if you're comparing good design to a site designed with FrontPage. If you compare good design to a typical $50 template, you're just nibbling around the edges.

So how do you justify making the big bucks doing web design? I just don't see it. I also don't see it with Wordpress or Drupal. If you go with Magento or one of the bigger e-commerce platforms (NOT a recommendation, just an example), you can make the case that you're doing something the customer will value, since the platform will run the customer's growing business. If you expand your business so that you're providing full service marketing and communications, that's an option as well, because now you're taking over the function of driving customers to the business, so that will seem important to your client.

If you want to be valued, do something of value. What businesses value is improvements to their top or bottom lines. That means more happy customers or fewer expenses. If your customers don't see that you're meaningfully affecting the finances of their companies, then you're not going to keep their business for long.

I'm like 75% sure I rented your house when I went to Disney...did you have it on Vrbo in 2011?

Freelancier
09-02-2016, 07:20 AM
We bought our first one mid-2012 and the second one in Jan 2014, so... wasn't us.

Harold Mansfield
09-02-2016, 10:38 AM
The biggest problem I always saw with web design is this: you're not mission critical. You can protest that you're important and can make or break a site, but that's only if you're comparing good design to a site designed with FrontPage. If you compare good design to a typical $50 template, you're just nibbling around the edges.
Web Design isn't just about pictures and colors. It's part of your overall marketing. A good website designer will get to know your company and it's message and convey that effortlessly to your target market. Making it look easy is hard work. Problem is, most small business owners have no message and no knowledge of sales. It's just put it up and let's see if it floats. So then you have to teach them basic marketing just to get to the point of actually knowing what to say and how to say it on the website.

I learned a long time ago to stop wasting time trying to teach people marketing so that I can sell them a website, and to focus on people who are looking for what I have to offer.

My grandfather couldn't tell 2 pairs of jeans apart. You could put a pair of Levis and a pair of Girbaud's in front of him, and to him they were the exact same thing. Maybe he did see the difference in the design, fit, stitching, color and so on. But he refused to admit it. Refused to admit that there was anything different about them, and thought that everyone should also think of them as the exact same and be happy with either, regardless of what they actually wanted, and that they should be the same price. No difference. Jeans.

It wasn't important to him, so he decided that it shouldn't be important to anyone else.

Some people are just like that. Those people are not marketers and should not be in charge of messaging or selling anything to anyone. Ever.


So how do you justify making the big bucks doing web design? I just don't see it. I also don't see it with Wordpress or Drupal. If you go with Magento or one of the bigger e-commerce platforms (NOT a recommendation, just an example), you can make the case that you're doing something the customer will value, since the platform will run the customer's growing business. If you expand your business so that you're providing full service marketing and communications, that's an option as well, because now you're taking over the function of driving customers to the business, so that will seem important to your client.

I agree. Unfortunately the market for those services is not your average small business and that's why service providers leave the market. Yes, they do need more services. They do need marketing and sales help. But trying to bring them back down to Earth now that Go Daddy and Web.com have spent the last 3+ years telling them that it's easy and only costs $19 a mo. ( after a $1 start up fee), is a losing battle.


If you want to be valued, do something of value. What businesses value is improvements to their top or bottom lines. That means more happy customers or fewer expenses. If your customers don't see that you're meaningfully affecting the finances of their companies, then you're not going to keep their business for long.

Of course, that's true of every company or service. Totally agree.

Freelancier
09-02-2016, 11:57 AM
Problem is, most small business owners have no message and no knowledge of sales.
I'd also include a boatload of web designers that I've come across... they have no idea how to engage a client on improving their marketing, no real understanding of messaging. They're convinced! that the customer needs a web site, but have absolutely no idea what the customer should say on that web site, which means they're essentially making themselves worthless to the customer.

As you say: a good web site is not about pictures and color. Unfortunately, the average web designer loves their pictures and color and struggles with conveying a client's message. It's easy to put together a site or a template, but when you're left with nothing to replace "lorem ipsum", the designer has screwed the customer.

(yeah, a bit of a "hot button" topic for me)

Harold Mansfield
09-02-2016, 12:11 PM
I'd also include a boatload of web designers that I've come across... they have no idea how to engage a client on improving their marketing, no real understanding of messaging. They're convinced! that the customer needs a web site, but have absolutely no idea what the customer should say on that web site, which means they're essentially making themselves worthless to the customer.

As you say: a good web site is not about pictures and color. Unfortunately, the average web designer loves their pictures and color and struggles with conveying a client's message. It's easy to put together a site or a template, but when you're left with nothing to replace "lorem ipsum", the designer has screwed the customer.

(yeah, a bit of a "hot button" topic for me)

I totally agree with you. And yes there are a lot of perpetrators in the business. I liken it to when everyone quit their jobs to become a day trader because that was the hot new, make easy money trend.

And yep a lot of people just build something pretty. They treat the design as if it's outside of the message and not the message itself. Totally true.

I didn't get it at first, and when I started not many other people did either. The web was still reasonably new and people were still just getting on it. So pretty, flashy, and colors were the standard. Just having a website was considered cutting edge. And it wasn't that long ago kids :).

But once the thrill passed, and the dot com bubble burst, people started realizing that this is still marketing, things changed. I was lucky enough to be in it as it was changing and basically learned because I was in the room all of the time sucking up information from every magazine, blog, and podcast I could get my hands on. I stopped listening to designers and started listening to marketers.

Now I can't even look at the menu at a fast food joint without picking out all of the ways they screwed it up, could make it simpler, feature specials much better, and make it easier to order thereby getting people through the line faster, cutting down frustration (and employees spending time answering questions that should be CLEAR on the menu), and increasing sales. I could tell the menu sign was made by a graphic artist who wasn't consulted or read in about process, sales, or marketing at all. Just make something pretty and bright. And they did.

But since that company will also spend $500 million on TV and media ads this year, they can over come that with sheer numbers of people to their 1700 locations.

A lot of small business owners see that and think that they can replicate it without any of the resources to back it up. If a Mom and Pop made the same mistakes on their drive through menu, it would hurt the bottom line. And they'd never understand why because they were emulating "the big boys" who (in their minds) are doing the same thing.

Now try and build a website for those people that's going to actually work. You can't. All you can do is put together what they tell you they want because they don't want to hear that their messaging and customer service is flawed because they didn't call you and aren't paying you to hear any of that.

And that's the catch 22.

When you hire any kind of marketer, whether it be SEO, web design, copywriting and so on. If that marketer is not allowed to touch anything, change anything, or effect the messaging in any way, you're wasting your time and money and should just use a site builder.

vangogh
09-02-2016, 01:15 PM
My answer to the question of the subject line is that I stopped taking on new clients in 2015 and I've pretty much closed my design business in 2016. In the summer of 2014 I wrote a post about how I saw the market for freelance designers shrinking and then I started 2015 with a longer series about the topic. In part it's because of sites like Square Space and Wix and whatever others are out there, but it's not only that.

I've seen since the beginning of my business that small business owners don't really value design. Most people think design means making something pretty. That can be one aspect of design, but it's hardly the only part. The most important part of any website is the content. That's why people visit a site. The content could be articles. It could be products for sale. It could be video or audio or whatever. Design helps insure people find the content they're looking for and enjoy the experience. It's about making websites usable. It's about designing and developing them in a way that helps search engines index the site's pages and understand the content so those pages can be ranked.

I don't think most small business owners really get that. I think too many assume that everything other than the "pretty" part just happen and so they see little value in design work.


So how do you justify making the big bucks doing web design?

I'm not sure what you consider big bucks. Is a few hundred bug bucks? A few thousand? I can only tell you that what clients were willing to pay was far less than I needed to make a living. I wasn't charging people tens of thousands of dollars to design and develop a site. Probably a few thousand for a brand new site and usually a few hundred for changes and fixes. Those prices were based on my costs, which were mainly my time and effort both in the work and in all the hours I put in to learn how to do the work. My clients felt like they could email or call whenever they wanted, ask me questions, and expect I would then spend my time offering advice, all for free.

Over the last few years I notice several clients leaving me, hiring what I assume were cheaper designers/developers and then contacting me to fix the problems their new hire created. It certainly wan't everyone, but it was more than one person.

I've noticed since early on that most clients were only interested in the price. I'd have people email me telling me that they didn't need the site to look good so it shouldn't cost much or my favorite that work would be easy so it shouldn't cost much. My reply to the latter was always if it's so easy they should do the work themselves.

My business was a small business so I get the prices are important and that even if you wanted to spend more, sometimes you can't. However, as a business owner I realized I couldn't make a living offering my services at the prices my clients wanted to pay.

I think the future is going to see the disappearance of most freelance designer/developers. I think small and micro business will for for options like Squarespace to start and as they grow they'll realize they need more than the DIY companies offer. At that point they'll have more money and look beyond freelancers to agencies. I think larger companies will bring design in house. I think people like myself and Harold will get squeezed out. We'll either need to join up with others to build a larger company or learn how to maintain the DIY sites.

Neither is anything I want to do so I've left the industry to pursue other things. As it happens I was enjoying writing articles for my site more than I enjoyed client work and after writing a couple of books, I've decided my future is as an independent publisher. I enjoy it more. I realized more people had been asking me to write for them than getting in touch to have me work on their sites.I also think web design is becoming more of a developer thing than a design thing and my enjoyment comes more from the design side.

Harold Mansfield
09-02-2016, 01:53 PM
I see it the exact same way as VG. I've decided to do pretty much the same. Get out of services and into developing my own products and marketing them for me. I'm not shutting down, at the moment I'm doing both, but eventually joining to create a larger agency or working in house doesn't appeal to me.

I love working one on one with clients, especially when it all comes together and they are amazed what a little effort and concentration on the basics can do for them. At my root I've been in customer service for my entire life, but as VG said, at this level what people expect vs. what they are willing to pay or do to get it isn't worth it anymore. I end up giving people far more service and knowledge than they realize, and at that point I'm not helping myself make more money, nor am I teaching them reality.

As VG said, that will drive most freelancers out of the business, and there will be nothing left except cheap overseas freelancers that just fill in templates, or large companies that will charge you a la carte for everything.

You just can't mass produce good marketing, and I can't compete with "get started for $1" promises.

Owen
09-02-2016, 01:55 PM
The market is still there, especially if you go local. A lot of my clients have tried SquareSpace in the past and were either too lazy to learn or couldn't figure it out because it was too 'advanced'

Harold Mansfield
09-02-2016, 02:07 PM
The market is still there, especially if you go local. A lot of my clients have tried SquareSpace in the past and were either too lazy to learn or couldn't figure it out because it was too 'advanced'
It is definitely still there. For me, I've just decided that more opportunity for me lies in developing my own products. It's really where I always wanted to go anyway. The experience from this has been invaluable though, and I hope that I can take new experiences to offer better services down the line to a higher (paying) clientele of businesses.

Like VG, I was never a $10k per website kind of service. I've just outgrown the rates that the market will bear at this stage.

Owen
09-02-2016, 02:10 PM
It is definitely still there. For me, I've just decided that more opportunity for me lies in developing my own products. It's really where I always wanted to go anyway. The experience from this has been invaluable though, and I hope that I can take new experiences to offer better services down the line to a higher (paying) clientele of businesses.

What type of products? ;)

Harold Mansfield
09-02-2016, 02:27 PM
What type of products? ;)
Not ready to say yet. Still in development. Obviously one is an app.

vangogh
09-02-2016, 02:52 PM
A lot of my clients have tried SquareSpace in the past and were either too lazy to learn or couldn't figure it out because it was too 'advanced'

The thing is those same people see what SqaureSpace charges and expect you'll charge the same. Squarespace is hosting company. They make money through scale. A freelance designer/developer doesn't have the means to work at that same scale so we offer additional things to justify a higher price. I've helped clients with their marketing. I've helped clients develop business models. I've helped clients with the security of their sites. I've helped them set up email on their home computers. These aren't things the DIY sites offer.

The thing is to most of the people who had been hiring freelancers, their top priority is the price. I understand that. I'm a one person business and I often have to figure out ways to cut corners to save a few dollars. Not always, but sometimes. Most people don't understand the value of design. The best designs go unnoticed as if they were inevitable, but it took someone or several someones a lot of time and effort to come up with that inevitability. Unfortunately the people paying don't see that and wonder why something costs as much as it did. I don't blame those people. It's not easy to see or understand sometimes.

Given the priority on price people are quicker to pay a DIY site $10-$20 a month over hiring a freelancer for more. If you're a freelancer now, you're best bet is either to learn some of these services and figure out how to work with them and how you can help people with their Squarespace or Wix or Wordpress.com site at a much lower rate that you've been charging. Or you'll need to find a way to offer something no one else can offer. That might mean additional services or it might mean designing sites that are so beautiful and unique that the design stands out in a way that people can see the work that went into it.

I just don't see the typical client most of us have worked with choosing a freelancer as much as they once did. They'll go the less expensive route, which will be fine for most people. If their businesses grow, they'll start to bump up against the limits of the DIY services and want to hire someone to take their site to the next level. At that point they'll likely be making enough money and I expect they'll call an agency before a freelancer working at home. A business that grows larger enough and gets design will probably prefer to hire an in-house design team.

The market for design/development services is changing in a way that I think is going to push most freelancers out. Sucks for freelancer designer/developers, but the people who used to hire us will be fine. They'll get what they absolutely need at a price more to their liking. They'll ultimately get less than what we were giving them, but most won't care or need it. Those of us who have been serving clients will do better to become more entrepreneurial, develop our own products to sell, and use the skills we've gained over the years in designing, developing, and marketing websites for ourselves instead of selling the services to clients.

Freelancier
09-02-2016, 03:09 PM
I'm not sure what you consider big bucks. Is a few hundred bug bucks? A few thousand? I can only tell you that what clients were willing to pay was far less than I needed to make a living.
That's part of the equation. The other part is that selling a new client is high cost; selling that same client something more is very low cost (because you've already acquired the client). Following from that, it means that repeat work is where the best profits really lie. But with most web design clients, changing the look of the site is a once-every-three-years thing, so that means you're stuck having to sell new clients all the time instead of once in a while.

In my consulting business, we add maybe 1-2 new clients a year (last year was two, this year so far, just one), the rest of our income comes from repeat business from existing clients. That's a conscious business choice for how we positioned our services and the messages we push to our clients. I just can't see how that works in web design; content production provides a way to do that, though. But even complex content, like video production, my wife had some done by outsourcing it to Pakistan with a guy in Guam doing the voice work.

Bottom line: if it's not mission critical to the client and doesn't cost them much, it can be outsourced halfway around the world. Pick a niche where that's going to be difficult.

Harold Mansfield
09-02-2016, 04:28 PM
That's part of the equation. The other part is that selling a new client is high cost; selling that same client something more is very low cost (because you've already acquired the client). Following from that, it means that repeat work is where the best profits really lie. But with most web design clients, changing the look of the site is a once-every-three-years thing, so that means you're stuck having to sell new clients all the time instead of once in a while.

In my consulting business, we add maybe 1-2 new clients a year (last year was two, this year so far, just one), the rest of our income comes from repeat business from existing clients. That's a conscious business choice for how we positioned our services and the messages we push to our clients. I just can't see how that works in web design...

It doesn't. That's why continuing support services, and offering other things that they need are important. The real problem is that most clients look at everything as a one off transaction, and expect it to last forever. They need some SEO help, so they want you to do a few things, push that button, turn that knob, and then that's all they are going to do. Ever.

It's common for someone to tell me they want to do what someone else is doing. "These guys are all over the web. How do I do that?". And then you reverse engineer and tell them how they are doing it, and it's too much for them and they give up and start saying how "the web doesn't work".

I've tried every way I know to get people to understand that it's a marathon, not a sprint but it's futile. They don't want to spend to do it all, but don't see the value in taking baby steps and getting one thing done at a time either. They want it all, they want it cheap and they want it to work by the end of the week.

It's not everyone of course, but it's more prevalent at the start up and small business level because they are the ones who are more prone to believe that it's supposed to be cheap and easy, which is our point. If that's your market, it's a tougher grind for less money. So you have to determine if it's worth it and that you're going to double down and commit, or use your skills for your own projects.

I've worked with people lately where I've not only built the website, but consulted and created everything from a start up social media strategy, to helping them with the sales process, to advising them on how to best use their billboards. All for the same price as just building a website. Because like I stated, I can't do my job of communicating their message and story, when they don't have one. So I have to build them one to even get started, which they expect to be included because that's what the TV is telling them.

So is the answer market your services as all inclusive? I thought so. But it seems the word "marketing" turns small business people off. They act as if it's an abstract experimental idea that's only for corporations and doesn't apply to them. They think they already have that covered since they have a logo and some business cards. That marketing is a cool slogan, and if it's cool enough it will go "viral". If it doesn't go viral then you don't know what you're doing.

Those ads are selling people a bill of goods, while killing the alternative professionals that can actually deliver. It's a double edged sword and the people with the huge marketing budgets are going to win the messaging battle and turn everything generic.

If you think every website is the same now, wait a few years.

Brian Altenhofel
09-02-2016, 07:57 PM
I've never done much design - always development. Seven years ago the templates that were generally available were mediocre and never took into account UX. During that time, I would always recommend hiring a designer to do a custom job.

Now you can get Bootstrap themes that have excellent UX and a good level of branding customization for relatively cheap. That's usually what I recommend people to do if they need more than just a presence, but not a truly custom experience. If they just need a presence (brochure site), I direct them to Wix or Squarespace and recommend a few people that I know are good at customizing those. Some that are in between I either send to 99designs or work with 99designs on their behalf.

I used to do a lot of general e-commerce work, but I don't anymore. I refer those folks to BigCommerce or other similar services (especially if there is one that already serves their niche). The ones that I do still take on as clients are those that are moving enough product online that they need to tie in with their vendors, inventory control systems, accounting systems, ERPs, CRMs, etc. and automate as much of the process as possible.

Most of the development work I do now is emulating a business' processes. That's because the solutions I mentioned above are generic and require businesses to conform to the processes the service has built. As a business grows, they learn what they need to do better for their business, and if their website/app is a revenue driver it needs to conform to their processes. The website/app should not limit the business. Quite often I'm called because a business needs a certain process in place to comply with insurance or regulatory obligations that their business has.

I've shifted more into support work, but that is mostly automated and has become a mostly passive revenue source. For example, Drupal requires regular updates to be applied, as well as any libraries that a site is using. With good automated test coverage (including UX testing), 100+ sites can have updates applied, tested, and deployed within minutes of an update being released. Clients will pay for that because it saves them a ton of money versus paying someone hourly to download the update, apply it to a test version of the site, re-apply any custom patches that weren't included in the update, manually make sure nothing broke, and deploy. The only time I have to intervene is if a test fails or an update does something that is known to likely cause an issue. That's why I can do service level agreements that require updates to be applied (even with manual intervention) within a few hours of release.

I've also shifted much more into operations management (mostly managed hosting). This is an area that can also be automated and generates passive income.


I also don't see it with Wordpress or Drupal.

Drupal for brochure and simple e-commerce sites? Definitely not. Drupal for sites with a lot of custom processes? Definitely.

Several of my development clients are using Drupal only for what it does best: data access and management. The customer facing interface may be a mobile or JS app, but the backend is Drupal. Another large subset uses it because they can provide copywriters with the ability to enter product information through an easy-to-use CMS interface (including building completely custom landing pages) while the system pulls product data from an inventory system, pricing from another system that provides prices based on B2C or different B2B levels, product listings from a search engine or recommendation engine, arrange shipments with carriers, etc. while the customer experiences what looks to them like a simple shopping cart system.

Owen
09-02-2016, 11:13 PM
There's a reason I'm trying to start a software company with the money I have made from Staples job (yeah I work there again, the internship ended) and the money from my consulting job. People really try to take advantage of you. I have two clients who are the parents of one of my best friends and they act like my service is too expensive. I don't even charge anything near as what other people do. I charge monthly for them ($50 per month none the less) and that includes a basic one page website and basic SEO. That's the issue with services like SquareSpace and Wordpress is that they can make it so cheap. Even with other clients I always have to explain why I have to charge more than they do. I have to put in around 5 - 20 hours of work for your one website. I also have other things I have to pay for including the servers I host your website on and everything else I use. Your WP.com site is a shared server running the same script over and over again. They do no work, you do the work yourself.

The website management game is dying, I can see about 25% of the amount of freelancers currently on the market now in 5 years. It's the same way with everything for small companies. Want a logo? Fiverr exists or some logo maker website. Need a website managed? Well for an extra fee your web host will do it. The ONLY market that I could ever see still staying alive is backend development (PHP, Ruby on Rails, etc.) and that's of course if no one figures out how to make that a service too.

I won't lie, I'm the same way. The product I'm working now is being developed by a company based in India. It's cheap, and for a startup with limited money I'm going to look for price over actual full on quality, ESPECIALLY for a small prototype or beta software. If I really care that much about the quality of the first version I'll seek an investment or somehow get more money. The logo is being developed by a friend of mine whom I'm not even paying, and my website is being hand crafted by me.

Harold Mansfield
09-02-2016, 11:46 PM
The website management game is dying, I can see about 25% of the amount of freelancers currently on the market now in 5 years. It's the same way with everything for small companies. Want a logo? Fiverr exists or some logo maker website. Need a website managed? Well for an extra fee your web host will do it. The ONLY market that I could ever see still staying alive is backend development (PHP, Ruby on Rails, etc.) and that's of course if no one figures out how to make that a service too.
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When I first started out I checked out competitors to see what people were offering, charging and how they had things set up. None of those people are around anymore. Can't find their sites anywhere.

Backend development will still be viable, but that's not small businesses. Freelancers doing that also get priced out by overseas freelancers who will work cheaper.

If you ever go on some of the freelance boards or like the WordPress jobs board, it's laughable. People are asking for things that are simple, yet want you to have a ton of degrees and certifications and their budget is $50. Why would anyone with all of the degrees they're asking for work for $50? and why do I need a BA in Computer Science to troubleshoot a plug in or make CSS changes?

Or they want the world, full stack, for a few hundred. Then there's the people looking for volunteers and interns to run their entire web project. Supposedly those are great opportunities for struggling freelancers looking to build a portfolio :(

It's crazy out there. Sometimes I feel like Rodney Dangerfield.

Owen
09-03-2016, 12:10 AM
When I first started out I checked out competitors to see what people were offering, charging and how they had things set up. None of those people are around anymore. Can't find their sites anywhere.

Backend development will still be viable, but that's not small businesses. Freelancers doing that also get priced out by overseas freelancers who will work cheaper.

If you ever go on some of the freelance boards or like the WordPress jobs board, it's laughable. People are asking for things that are simple, yet want you to have a ton of degrees and certifications and their budget is $50. Why would anyone with all of the degrees they're asking for work for $50?

Or they want the world, full stack, for a few hundred. Then there's the people looking for volunteers and interns to run their entire web project. Supposedly those are great opportunities for struggling freelancers looking to build a portfolio.

It's crazy out there.

it's get rich for as little as possible. The only reason people still do it is because it works. People overseas will do that type of work for almost nothing. My project would easily cost $30k if I went American.

Harold Mansfield
09-03-2016, 12:35 AM
My project would easily cost $30k if I went American.

That's why I'm just buckling down and learning on my own. I JUST lost a job because one of the partners quit, and the other guy didn't know how to code so the entire thing was dead immediately. They were in the middle of an ad campaign and everything. I was supposed to help stop the bleeding and correct the ad mistakes. Then just like that I get a call that the only guy who could code quit. Full stop.

Just reaffirmed my stance against partners. Finding a good fit for a partnership is rare, and I'm sure good ones exist. It's easier for me to be involved in a partnership for a side project or joint development, than it would be to be in a partnership for my main source of income. For my main thing I want/need to be completely in control up to the point I have at least a proof of concept built, and everything protected.

Being dependent on someone else being the only person who knows the core of the tech side of the business scares the bejeezus out of me and I don't think I could do it.

Even if I had the money to get it built, how would I manage it? How would I keep it updated? How would I be able to put out fires on the fly?
I just can't be in that position and have things go south if my developer becomes undependable and now I'm out my only $30k and can't hire someone else.

Understanding that myself, I've always been adamant that my clients learn something from me. So that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow they wouldn't be completely lost. They at least knew enough to keep the basics going until they could find someone else, and know what to look for when doing so.

Owen
09-03-2016, 01:03 AM
That's why I'm just buckling down and learning on my own. I JUST lost a job because one of the partners quit, and the other guy didn't know how to code so the entire thing was dead immediately. They were in the middle of an ad campaign and everything. I was supposed to help stop the bleeding and correct the ad mistakes. Then just like that I get a call that the only guy who could code quit. Full stop.

Just reaffirmed my stance against partners, and being dependent on someone else being the only person who knows the core of the tech side of the business.

Even if I had the money to get it built, how would I manage it? How would I keep it updated? How would I be able to put out fires on the fly?
I just can't be in that position and have things go south if my developer becomes undependable and now I'm out my only $30k and can't hire someone else.

Understanding that myself, I've always been adamant that my clients learn something from me. So that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow they wouldn't be completely lost. They at least knew enough to keep the basics going until they could find someone else, and know what to look for when doing so.

For what I'm doing it would take too long to learn. I'm scared that if I wait and learn that it will already become a thing.

Brian Altenhofel
09-03-2016, 02:40 AM
Freelancers doing that also get priced out by overseas freelancers who will work cheaper.

That's why several of my clients are just for consulting and some for code review. I'll meet with their stakeholders and translate their business-speak into a specification for the programmers to follow. They're welcome to hire me to write the code, too, but often they'll find someone who charges 1/4 my rate or ship it overseas (if it's not barred by regulations). Some of those who have me build a specification will then retain me for code review to ensure that it is being done right before it gets deployed to production.

What most learn about going overseas is that it costs pretty close to the same as keeping it here (especially when hiring someone from the flyover states) when all of the overhead (management, language and cultural barriers, etc) are factored in.

Freelancier
09-03-2016, 10:36 AM
What most learn about going overseas is that it costs pretty close to the same as keeping it here (especially when hiring someone from the flyover states) when all of the overhead (management, language and cultural barriers, etc) are factored in.
That's been one of my value propositions for the past 15 years: that overseas development will end up costing the client more than it will keeping it with my team.

The real-life example I use: I was managing an overseas project for a client. The spec was pretty clean, but we came to a spot in the spec where the developers decided they needed an answer to a question: Do A or do B, basically. They sent me this question at 8 pm my time, I was gone for the evening, got it in the morning at 9 am. So 11 hours went by with NO activity on the project. I chose A. They said "That will cost $3000 more." I said, ok, then let's do B. "That will cost $4000 more." WAIT! Shouldn't ONE of the options have been included in their original quote? How is it that it wasn't?? By the time we negotiated the next step, no activity for 72 hours. They wouldn't even go around the question and work on something else.

I landed a client last year who had been working with a local guy who had a "team" in India. That guy charged my client over $100K and then abandoned the project without completing it. He really had no idea how to do it and had gone down a blind alley with Microsoft Office running on a server (which has been a known "no-no!" since 2001). So we took it over, took a look at his code and I estimate that about $25K of my time would have created the same code.

But clients will still compare their low per-hour charge to my high per-hour charge and think they're getting a deal.

I have a friend who is having an overseas team create a web-based application site, matching IOS app, and matching Android app. The quote was for $70K. I told him he should expect to spend at least $125K for all the features he wanted and I'll be shocked if they don't try to renegotiate about halfway through. Their project timelines and deliverables were so vague as to be unmanageable, so I got him to get them to focus on cleaning that up. Still waiting to see if that ever happened.

Harold Mansfield
09-03-2016, 12:13 PM
For what I'm doing it would take too long to learn. I'm scared that if I wait and learn that it will already become a thing.
I used to think like that, but the more time I waste NOT learning, and waiting to miraculously "Find" the money, the more those odds increase.
Besides, it's probable that more than one person can come up with the same general idea. Happens all of the time. But the odds of it being the exact same thing, and them executing it the same way are really, really slim.

As you've heard here over and over, execution is everything. So what if someone else comes up with something similar?
Doesn't mean yours, doing it your way still won't work.
Doesn't mean they'll be any good at marketing it.
Doesn't mean that your specific spin on it won't be a better idea.
Maybe they do and you learn or get a better idea of how to fine tune it in a way that they failed.
Maybe you let them test the market, see if it's viable, and then come out with a better version.

Don't let that cripple you. The sooner you get started, the less time you're sitting around worrying about someone else doing it.
You can find all kinds of reasons to talk yourself out of it, but instead of asking yourself "What if they do?", you should be asking "What if no one does?", and now a year later your still no closer to it than before because you talked yourself out of it because it would take a long time. Do you know how much you can learn in 6 weeks? 6 months? A year?

Especially now, for you. Living at home, no crushing bills, nothing but time. You'll never have this kind of time, and lack of responsibility ever again. Use it.

Harold Mansfield
09-03-2016, 01:31 PM
That's why several of my clients are just for consulting and some for code review. .

I've kind of pivoted to kind of the same strategy. I never bid on projects because I'll never be the lowest bid and price shoppers usually are looking to gather all the best ideas, and then will give them to the lowest bidder to complete. Consulting has been a better business model because you can't fake or mass produce knowledge. Especially when it comes to marketing.

Many times I'll do a prelim consulting call, give a few ideas out, and check back and watch people try to implement them themselves. It's laughable because they end up just making things worse. Or people will call me back with, "Hey, we're still investigating options, but what was that thing you said about how to...".

People can be very crafty. Hence why deposits and up front payments are pretty standard these days.

nduncan
09-04-2016, 01:53 AM
Hi Harold,

I think the majority of small businesses don't value web design at all. This is regardless of the fact that a well designed, well optimized site can significantly increase their revenue and significantly increase their profits. I used to own a small web design business however scaled it back significantly last year because the lack of understanding from small businesses and the competition from Asia made it really quite unprofitable to run. I now focus on my own web businesses and am applying all of the skills that I learned during those web design years to grow those businesses.

I still think that there is money to be made in the Web space however I think it is more in the SEO (decent SEO that is) and conversion rate optimization space. If people can clearly see a direct relationship between the money being spent and increased profits then they are likely to commit. This however is probably more in the medium sized business market than the small business market as the medium sized guys are usually more willing to spend a bit of cash.

Freelancier
09-04-2016, 08:27 AM
I think the majority of small businesses don't value web design at all. This is regardless of the fact that a well designed, well optimized site can significantly increase their revenue and significantly increase their profits.
This is what I'm talking about. I think small businesses do value web design appropriately, it's the people doing web design who are inflating their worth to a small business by claiming that it'll significantly increase revenue and profits. When you do that, you'd better be able to back it up with actual numbers and explain why your web design is going to somehow be 50x - 100x better than a well-designed $50 template. That's a tough sell to anyone on a tight budget.

Added: it's NOT up to the business to figure out your value. It's up to you to do a good job of demonstrating your value. And web designers used to be able to do that, but -- like many professions -- lately that value proposition isn't as certain as it used to be.

Fulcrum
09-04-2016, 10:05 AM
An issue that I've had with web designers when pricing builds was the amount of WAGs I received. It didn't matter if the designer built from nothing or used a template (one developer's template had a nasty colour scheme and layout). $2000/page for entering data into a template is ludicrous (maybe 500 words and a few interconnected links). It's no longer the wild west and you need to justify that kind of pricing.

Depending on the overall quality of how you build, you really need to justify more than $1000/day of actual work (just over $100/hour while most overhead is labour and possibly office space) per person. Thinking time doesn't count towards this. I don't mind someone making a profit, but you ain't retiring off me.

Look at your customers and where they might be getting their thinking for your pricing structures from as well. Many freelancers are still viewed as working from home in their underwear. These freelancers have minimal overhead outside of rent, food, and utilities (downfall of working from home and calling yourself a freelancer). If you want a comparison from an offline company, look at quality machine shops that do small to mid volume production. Sit down and talk with the owner and find out how what some of his possible customers wanted to pay.

Here's my opinion if you want to charge the big bucks on the web now. You build sites, you maintain sites, you set and develop SEO, you also set online marketing strategies. You are, in effect, an IT contractor for your client. Monthly fees are fine if the work you are doing is turning a profit for me (personally, I'd tie the monthly fee into a commission with hard minimum and maximum values). Designers either need to grow into multi person businesses that offer a full range of services or stay a 1 person show and limit the size you will grow to.

Harold Mansfield
09-04-2016, 12:47 PM
My responses are purely for information to understand what that sounds like on the other side.


An issue that I've had with web designers when pricing builds was the amount of WAGs I received. It didn't matter if the designer built from nothing or used a template (one developer's template had a nasty colour scheme and layout). $2000/page for entering data into a template is ludicrous (maybe 500 words and a few interconnected links). It's no longer the wild west and you need to justify that kind of pricing.

Actually, I don't think you ask anyone else to "justify" their pricing. The kind of designer and marketer that most people claim they want, doesn't compete on price and their rate is justified by their knowledge, professionalism, the skills they have, and the work that they do.

Most web designers will get a full understanding of what you want, list deliverables, and give you a flat rate based on it. With the understanding that if you veer off of it, continue to add "Oh yeah"s, or otherwise delay the time frame they've set aside to deliver for that price, that there will be additional charges. And if it's the designers fault, you'll get some kind of discount. You either agree to it or not.

They don't owe you an accounting of their overhead and expenses unless you are paying for expenses as part of the job.

As for "data entry". I have one set of rates. It doesn't get lower because the client decides that my time should cost less for some things than others.

For large projects with a lot of information to be input, I do give people the option of saving themselves some money by doing the menial data entry themselves, and using me for the things that they cannot do. Most times I already know the full scope and it's all included in the price so this isn't an issue.

You can't expect a freelancer to both, have low wage employees to do menial work so that you can pay less for it, while also wanting to work with someone who gives personalized service with low overhead.

There have been times where I've been called by people who need just that. Someone to "help" them put in a ton of products in an E commerce system. Wanna know why someone like me won't do it for less? Because 9 times out of 10 they don't know anything about eComemrce, don't have proper images, sales copy, haven't figured out any of their sales tax info, don't know anything about shipping and so on. Most times there are also technical issues and the installation was done improperly so you'll be expected to "help" them fix that too.

So what they claimed on the phone is just data entry ends up with me doing my normal job which should be billed at the full rate. This is no accident. No one goes to a web designer or marketer for data entry. They knew full well that they wanted someone who knew these things to guide them.

So this is the potential client trying to get me for cheap with semantics, while EXPECTING to benefit from the same knowledge, guidance and technical expertise as people who pay full price.

There's a reason why you don't call the $8 hr person to do data entry. Because you don't want some random person in the admin area or messing with coding on your website.

No one lets the client dictate the level of difficulty and price. If you did you'd be out of business because according to every client, they just want something simple.


Depending on the overall quality of how you build, you really need to justify more than $1000/day of actual work (just over $100/hour while most overhead is labour and possibly office space) per person. Thinking time doesn't count towards this. I don't mind someone making a profit, but you ain't retiring off me.

Again, no they don't. Time is everything. I think you're too focused on trying to figure out other people's costs and personal lives to use as a justification to dictate what you will pay. Hey, no one can stop you from feeling that way, but you will never be right or win that battle with the level of professional that you want. It may work on kids and noobs, but not with grown ups.

How would you feel if I questioned your pricing by saying "Yeah, but the machine you're using for my work is already paid for, so you should charge me less. "

You don't just get to pay for when I'm actually touching the keyboard. I'm not a typist. The keyboard is just a tool. HOW to do it properly is in my head and it took me years of experience and knowledge to be able to do it quickly and correctly.

If we're over time, that means I'm making less money on your project, while not being able to take on a new project in it's place. I'm losing money on both ends.

The argument "but you work from home and have less overhead", really means, "My time is more important than yours and you should just eat the cost because I've determined that you don't have the same expenses as I do, therefore only deserve to make what I've determined is fair.". I will when it's my fault. But not when it's yours.

People confuse hiring a freelancer to do a certain job, with having a salaried employee who does whatever task you tell them to do, no matter how long it takes or what the cost is.


Look at your customers and where they might be getting their thinking for your pricing structures from as well. Many freelancers are still viewed as working from home in their underwear. These freelancers have minimal overhead outside of rent, food, and utilities (downfall of working from home and calling yourself a freelancer). If you want a comparison from an offline company, look at quality machine shops that do small to mid volume production. Sit down and talk with the owner and find out how what some of his possible customers wanted to pay.

Again, it doesn't matter where people work from. Do you really want to pay more because I put on a suit to take your call? You seem angrier that people have skills that allow them to work with lower overhead, than any logical justification that someone is worth less because they have a streamlined business model.

It doesn't change the fact that they have skills, and an expertise that you don't and that you need. What matters is that they can do what you want, you've come to an agreement on price, and that they deliver as promised and do good work. Not how much you think they spend on groceries.

Sure, less overhead means I can complete. It doesn't mean I got into business to give it away. I'm well aware of what the market rate is for my skills.

I agree with some of that, the market will bear what customers are willing to pay. And that's why most of us are in agreement that the Small Business Market is dying and it's time to move on and let Go Daddy have the $30 customers.


Here's my opinion if you want to charge the big bucks on the web now. You build sites, you maintain sites, you set and develop SEO, you also set online marketing strategies. You are, in effect, an IT contractor for your client. Monthly fees are fine if the work you are doing is turning a profit for me (personally, I'd tie the monthly fee into a commission with hard minimum and maximum values). Designers either need to grow into multi person businesses that offer a full range of services or stay a 1 person show and limit the size you will grow to.

I agreed with you about charging "big bucks" and offering more services. But that conflicts with your earlier notion that I should charge less because according to you I have less overhead. So you're asking for more and wanting to pay less...which goes into the next paragraph....

I like and want to work with small businesses, but they are quickly becoming a market with unrealistic expectations and budgets to match. I realized that the average small business doesn't want to pay for those services. It's supposed to all be included in the website price. They want something cheap, only want to pay for it once, and expect it to be magic and "work" forever. This is what they are being told on television. That you can get a personal marketer for a buck a month.

I do have packages for that market. All inclusive, web, social, seo, and overall marketing help. And I still get those people. But there's fewer of them now.

I can't even get people who's websites are 90% of their business, to stop using $4 mo. hosting for their most important sales and marketing asset. They'd rather pay me $500 a pop, over and over again, to fix it every time it gets hacked, or investigate why it keeps timing out. To me that's insane.

People who are new to this just expect that nothing online is supposed to cost any real money and it's impossible to break them of that belief. They have to come to the realization on their own. When they do, THEN they are my target market.

Larger businesses understand (that's how they got to be large businesses) and ARE looking for that person, maybe work with other departments to launch social media with other ads, and so on. They do want that person that they can call for all of their web stuff. For them paying a freelancer what ever his monthly is, is cheaper than hiring in house, and much more flexible for them. They don't care what my overhead is. They care if I can do the job and whether or not I'm dependable. That's it.

Harold Mansfield
09-04-2016, 01:47 PM
But I should add that yes there are unscrupulous people out there, just like every business. Yes there are fly by night designers that will try and hit a home run on you if they can get away with it. Yes some people are ridiculously over priced and many are still living in the 90's.

But that's not an accurate reflection of the entire industry. That's just those people.

I'm very conscious of people who have been ripped off, or had bad experiences and I try to provide a better experience for them all around. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do a bunch of work for free because some other guy ripped them off.

And amazingly, some people actually expect that.

Brian Altenhofel
09-04-2016, 06:20 PM
An issue that I've had with web designers when pricing builds was the amount of WAGs I received. It didn't matter if the designer built from nothing or used a template (one developer's template had a nasty colour scheme and layout). $2000/page for entering data into a template is ludicrous (maybe 500 words and a few interconnected links). It's no longer the wild west and you need to justify that kind of pricing.

These days with content management systems, there is no reason for anyone to charge by the page. If someone needs data entry done, go hire a broke college kid for $10/hr.


Depending on the overall quality of how you build, you really need to justify more than $1000/day of actual work (just over $100/hour while most overhead is labour and possibly office space) per person. Thinking time doesn't count towards this. I don't mind someone making a profit, but you ain't retiring off me.

An 8 hour day will typically yield only about 6 hours of productive work. That's why my "day rate" starts at $1200/day. As for "thinking time", you're not paying me $200/hr to be a human keyboard; you're paying for knowledge and problem solving abilities. If you want a human keyboard, go to Elance. I don't work with people who see me as a human keyboard. I work with people who see me as an investment with a measurable return.


Look at your customers and where they might be getting their thinking for your pricing structures from as well. Many freelancers are still viewed as working from home in their underwear. These freelancers have minimal overhead outside of rent, food, and utilities (downfall of working from home and calling yourself a freelancer). If you want a comparison from an offline company, look at quality machine shops that do small to mid volume production. Sit down and talk with the owner and find out how what some of his possible customers wanted to pay.

There is much more overhead for a freelancer that is truly professional. I may work out of my home, but I pay 4-5x the normal residential Internet connection rate to get guaranteed bandwidth, reasonable upload speed, and an SLA. I pay a fair amount for business liability, errors and omissions, data breach, data loss, and workers' compensation insurance. There is infrastructure to maintain to ensure that we can exchange files and work through development, testing, and quality assurance processes in an efficient manner.

Bijingus
09-13-2016, 04:03 PM
It's interesting reading this thread, then another thread currently below titled "What is the best website builder for you?". It's obvious there are a lot of small business owners out there that don't see the value in hiring someone to build their website, which is too bad as professionals in this area can add a lot of value to their businesses.

There seems to be a lack of understanding with small business owners as to the power of their websites, and their potential if they are done properly. There is also an unwillingness to learn and invest. Try educating a small business owner about SEO or social media. "You mean you can't rank me #1 for Dentist (Insert City Here) tomorrow for $100?" I had one client who said he could buy 10000 Facebook likes for $100 and asked if he should do it. I said absolutely not, they're all fake, will dilute your reach and ruin your page. What did he do? He bought them...

I've only been freelancing for a little over two years now, but have learned a lot. So far I've landed about 20 clients, 3 of which have brought in 80% or so of my revenue. One was an online wholesaler that needed a custom web app, the other was a large(ish), established company and the other a small ecommerce store with decent monthly sales. What these three clients have in common is they're all established businesses with decent cash flow. They don't have time to screw around with website builders and understand the value of hiring a pro. Then there's been about 3 that bring in about 15% and the remaining 5% are very small businesses that come to me needing help with a popup or slider on their WordPress site. These border on a waste of effort and time, but they do refer larger clients sometimes and help build my reputation in my local area. I swear I can send as many emails back and forth discussing adding a new slide to someone's slider as I do discussing a new website.

There seems to be a sweet spot where the business isn't too small and it isn't large enough that they just hire in house. I'm still trying to figure out how to target these businesses more effectively.