Tag Archives: web design

When times are hard, barter works well.

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, ,

As my regular readers know well, I like to do computer things for people.  I have made my living from this for over a decade now.  In this tough time many people don’t have the money for my services, I am good at what I do so I charge for it.  So I decided last week to barter my services for those of other small businesses.  I can make great websites for business, and I can fix computers so that they are like new.

So I looked around for what I needed, I saw right away that I needed some yard work done (I am highly alergic to grass.)  I posted a small ad and the next day I had a landscaper call me, he needed his wifes computer to be fixed and the best quote he received was $150.  So he is going to come here in the morning and do 2-3 hours of yard work for me to remove some adware and install a few programs on his wife’s computer.  Good deal for me.  Trade 2 hours of my time doing something I like to do for 3 hours of something I hate to do, it is also a winning situation for Chris, the landscape guy, he just does 3 hours of work and saves himself $150.

I decided to take it to the next level, I found a company that will go in your attic and put this foil stuff down so on the hot Arizona days 95% of the heat is kept out of your house.  The materials and labor for a house my size is about $2,000.  I talked to them today and I am going to build a 10 page website for the materials guy and a 3 page site for the installer and I will get what I need for FREE.  They say this should save me at least $100 a month during the summer.

I am also working on my wife’s OB/GYN so that all of our prenatal care for my second child will be free, at least the part that insurance does not cover.  She is in need of a website.

I need some work done on my roof, I need new paint for my house.  I would like some rooms painted.  I am in talks for all of these things.

Once you start looking around and asking for such things you really start to find some great places.  Also what is nice is that I don’t barter with hardware so when they buy hardware I still get paid.  Also, when I have done this in the past they usually buy much more from me than I buy from them so I get a new customer and I get something done that I needed and I still make a profit.  It works well, and I suggest that every small business owner try it out.

(On a side note, I have seen many formal barter systems, and they don’t work, I would avoid them.)

Bootstrap your business.

Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Marketing

Every day people start businesses.  Today I am going to talk about the real businesses, not the home based small business that you do part time, but a business where you hire people, you work at it, you create systems and build something that has long term value. This will be the first in a series of blogs about this subject.  HOW TO BUILD A BUSINESS ON A SHOESTRING.  AKA Bootstrapping.

When I see people doing this I see two VERY different type of people.  I see the first type, the people who have worked in the corporate world for a long time who decided they can do it better.  Then I see the people who just have an idea that they think will make a lot of money, and they have the drive and will to make it happen even if they don’t have much money.  The biggest difference between these two is the amount of money they will spend and blow through.

The Corporate Guy

Lets assume that both guys want to start a web design company. (The following is a true story, I know the guy well, the numbers are correct.)   The corporate guy sits down and start to think about what he will need to run his business, he thinks about all the tools he had at his last company and starts to write a list.  He needs a conference room, he need a high end server with redundancy and $10,000 of software to make it all work.  He need high end printers to show samples to customers he need an impressive office so that he can hire the best talent.  He spends $80,000 on furniture and making his office suite look great, he then hires 3 techs to sit down and create logo generation software, scripts to automate the entire interview process with the customer.  All things he was used to.  His techs also generate templates, then he goes out and advertises his services in many different mediums, he started with $150,000 and that is long gone, he has borrowed $100,000 more and has monthly expenses of over $25,000.   He gets some calls and some business but even with $10,000 coming in each month he quickly runs out of money, gets rid of his staff to reduce expenses but it is too late, he can’t pay the bills and after only 10 months he is our of business, he lost his $150,000 the $100,000 of his investor and he has bills to his landlord and other people who gave him things on credit for another $80,000.  And about 300 customer who paid for sites were left with nothing.  (I know all of this is true, he STILL owes me over $15,000)

The bootstrapper.

Next is the story of another guy that I know, he is a bootstraper, a real entrepreneur.  He also decided to build a web design question, he asked himself, “What is the minimum that I need to really function?”  The answer is a nice desk, nice chair with a nice computer loaded with the proper software.  He does not need to host the server locally, he can host it at one of the many hosting companies for about $200 per year or less.  Every time he sells 25 web sites he needs to pay $200 again but that is ok, he will be making money then.   He does not need an office, he can meet the customers at their office, or just over the phone.  He needs very little to get started.  He does not make an automated system for customer interaction, he just talks to them and finds out what they need.  He finds free advertising, and starts getting word of mouth.  His costs are lower so he charges less than the other guys but not too little to kill his business.  He saves most of his money so that his business can grow.

After a few months he has enough money for a small office, he finds a few people who are young and eager to learn, maybe not top talent, but people he can train from scratch and pay less than going rates  People who have a good attitude and are sharp.  He hires some sales people paying them 100% on commission so that he only pays out when he makes money.   9 months into his business he has a few hundred customers a small staff and a nice office.  He brings in 50 new customers a month at an average of $600, making 30k per month, with expenses under 10k per month he is quickly building his networth, and building his company.  He also has a business that can run without him, he can start to take time off, and if he got a bit bigger and put all the systems in writing and have everyone follow it he could even sell the business for huge money.

Findings

I would always invest in a bootstrapper well before I invested in a corporate guy, the problem is that the bootstrappers almost always don’t ask for money but when they do you should listen.  One company that was a bootstrap company, that did everything in house and did it on the cheap was Google.  1000’s of other companies started up in Silicon Valley with tons of different ideas but most were run by people who could simply not be frugal, they needed the fancy cars, and parties and cool offices.  Most of these companies failed.

When you are looking for a company to invest in look to see if they are a bootstrapper.  Don’t be impressed with the fancy office or cars, be scared.  If you are running your own business or looking to start one think about what is really need to make your business money, don’t spend money that you have not made yet unless it is 100% needed.

Over the next few weeks I will write blogs about bootstrapping, simply click on the bootstrap Category to see the other entries.

Web design is still a growing part of computer industry.

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, , , ,

Believe it or not, most business STILL do not have a real web page.  The market really fell out for the computer hardware business but we still are seeing a large demand for web design. The good thing about web design is that it has become easier and much cheaper to do but the perceived value has not gone down.  There are many companies out there selling sites for $5,000 or so that outsource it and pay less than $200 to get the site made, pocketing the rest.  I figure I can find a way to make a better site and charge much less.

When it has come to web design our company has usually passed it off.  It was not our core business, it was something that no one at our company knew how to do.  A few times we hired people to help us do web design for clients but every time it has failed, the designer was not as good as they thought they were and the client demand more than they originally wanted.

So now that our core business is down I decided that I would personally learn more about it.  Yea I know HTML, I know tables and forms, and I have built many pages over the years but to do the really good ones you need much more.  You need to know CSS to make it look good and have the same format.  You need to know PHP so that it is easy to change, dynamic and more functional.  So I set out last week to learn these two things.  CSS was easy, it is a simple concept that took only a few hours to learn.  PHP was much more complex because it is much more powerful, but after a few long days I feel I am good at PHP also.

The next step was to test out my ideas by making a simple website for one of my customers, I just happened to have one who needed a web page, so I built one for them.  You can check it out here. During the process of building this site I also have found a ton of really good resources

If you have been a reader for a long time you will know that I am all about delegating things.  My general rule is that if you can find someone who can do what you are doing for less, and is at least 80% as good you should have them do it.  The problem is that for me I have not found this, everyone wants to charge way too much and I have not found anyone who can even do the whole job at 80% the level that I now can.  I have found people who can do parts better or worse.  This is why I am not delegating.  If I start getting larger I may start to delegate more.  But in reality if you are building up a libary of tools it makes it much faster and easier.