David said:
Hi Newsgroup
I have lurked here for quite sometime now and occasionally
contributed. I would like to thank the regulars here for their
excellent advice, I have learnt much. I am on the verge of
trying freelance web work (I will post my site to
alt.html.critique once I've polished it up a little) My
question is more a request for advice. I would like to
ask the people in this newsgroup how they have gone about
building up a home based web design business. (I assume
most of the regulars are or have been involved with free
lance web designing)
thanks
David (hope this post is not too OT)
Hi David:
1) Will you be cold-calling your client prospects? Let me tell you
what you are up against -- every high school or college student in your
area who has a class project to do, and all of your prospect's friends
and relatives who say they will write their page as a personal favor or
for some small consideration. I countered this by telling my prospects
that I am retired, have been in their business, and have actually sold
the product they sell, so I had some idea what was on their customers'
minds. If you don't understand a client's business, then how are you
better able to do what they need than their relatives or friends?
2) Are you planning to work on clients' web pages under their
direction, or will their web pages appear on your own web page as small
parts of your larger whole? In the first instance, when you leave you
leave with nothing. In the second, you can sell your collection of
pages you maintained under your own banner.
Let me give you an example. If you have as clients a new car dealer, a
used car dealer, an RV dealer, a motorcycle dealer, a boat dealer, an
auto parts store, a vehicle insurance broker, etc. (businesses not in
direct competition, but are transportation related), then you can
maintain individual pages and domains for each. However, if you have a
transportation/recreation related page and each of these pages appears
as part of a symbiotic effort (you know, 1 + 1 = 3), then you can sell
it off if you retire or find bigger fish to fry.
3) In sales, you have maybe a few seconds and perhaps two or three
clicks to draw someone in and get them to the information they need.
To me, this means a simple interface without any bells and whistles.
You want the page to load quickly (a lot of people still have dial up),
you want the eye to be drawn to the essential material right away, and
you want as many people as possible with older browsers to see content.
To me, this means skipping animations, flashing words, even javascript
(some people turn it off because they think it's a security risk). My
idea was, and I would be the last person to try to force this opinion
on anyone, if it can't be said/done in html 3, then you may be
saying/doing too much. If you're in the entertainment industry, fine,
create a masterpiece for the bells-and-whistles deprived, but a sales
page needs none of it. K.I.S.S.
4) Get paid up front. All or most, anyway. If you are working at
home, then a client has little or no idea how much work you actually
do, so they will assume that you're living high off their hog. Doing
the work and then asking for payment does not foster the same emotions
in a client as asking for the payment and then doing the work. If you
can't convince a client that what you are doing is worth the money up
front, then you will surely have an even harder time doing so after the
fact.
5) Look for an established business that HAS a web page (or needs
one), not a business that IS a web page. The former will be there
longer for you. If web-based business is your thing, then start your
own. Find a couple of partners and go for it.
Disclaimer: None of the above is intended to provoke argument.
Rather, it is intended to generate discussion. I'm not going to go to
the mat over any of it. Like what you want and delete the rest.
