I will have some more projects to post in the next week or so, but in the meantime, I wanted to plug this little column I have been working on called "Work 2.0" on Babble. It is intended to be a lighthearted look at the ups and downs of running a home-based business. I hope that you can subscribe to it, tell your friends about it, and do all that viral interwebnets magic that I know you can!
The first main column is called The Accidental Entrepeneur: How to start a business without really trying. Check it out!
With so many sites like bludomain, bigfolio, or other template sites selling Flash-based websites for $100-$400, I find myself having to "defend" my pricing to photographers (and other creatives, who, ironically, also charge thousands of dollars for their own work - you’d think they’d be more sympathetic if anything :)), who either don’t understand why the template sites charge what they do, or even flat out refuse to pay a designer for a bespoke site.
I refuse to compete in the hundred-dollar market and here’s why. First of all, the only reason that Bludomain and BigFolio can sell websites can sell a Flash website for a ridiculously low price is because they are selling on volume. A Flash site with a content management system will cost you at least $15,000 - often much more. But the template guys spread their costs over a hundred people instead of one. Of course, the downside to this is that 99 (or even more!) other people have an identical website!
With a template site, you may get the benefit of a cheap website, but what is the real cost of that? I have browsed many, many, many photographer’s websites, and if you put yourself in the "browsing photographers" position, as most brides are, you’ll notice that they all start to look the same.
In a highly saturated market, a good stand-out web presence can make all the difference. Custom sites will instantly stand out from competitors (from a web browsing point of view)… simply because templates are so common!
My clients have noticed a significant jump in enquiries and bookings, just from having a site that is different from 90% of the other photographer’s sites. Part of it is in the SEO, but I think a big part of it, anecdotally speaking, is that if a bride is surfing through 15 (or 30 if shes particularly obsessive :)) sites, 95% of which are bludomain sites… I guess that it has a homogenising effect in terms of the experience of the website.
And you are naive if you think that people don’t switch off if they see the same thing over and over, even if the images are different.
Websites are not just a directory of business, but are also an experience, that invoke emotional reactions. They are more like television advertising than, say, the Yellow Pages…and people wholly expect to pay for TV Advertising because it brings results. I guess if I can use an analogy with Yellow Pages listings, its like the difference between having the standard 2 line Yellow pages listing, versus the display advertising with your custom graphics and your look and feel. The display ads will always cost more (often a lot more than you think you can afford), but you get more, and the majority of the time, you get better results.
You ultimately get what you pay for with web design. And when someone next tells a photographer that they can go to istockphoto.com and get a great photo for much less, hopefully that photographer will know how web designers feel about template sites.
There have been so many times that I have been tempted to quit this little web design caper.
For those that don’t already know, I am not just a web designer, but I also had a previous life in the drudgerous grey cubefarm known as the public service. I thought that that was what I wanted to do, until I realised very early on in my career that it wasn’t for me. Policy was a passion, it still is in varying degrees, and the temptation to quit has hit me on at least… I dunno 70,000 occasions in the 3.5 years I have been working as a designer.
I have been going through a bit of a rut lately, working through things, pondering the direction of the business so that I don’t suddenly hit 40, realise that I am still working 14 hour days, and realise that I have wasted my life…
So, browsing today, I found this. It applies to production, but it still resonates:
“It takes a while, its going to take you a while, and that’s normal… you just have to fight your your way through it…"
“It takes a while, its going to take you a while, and that’s normal… you just have to fight your your way through it… "
And again, just for posterity:
“It takes a while, its going to take you a while, and that’s normal… you just have to fight your your way through it… "
It is always so tempting to quit when things get hard. But I watched this video, and I have to admit that I got choked up hearing those words… at just the right time.
Nothing worth doing is going to be easy. It is a series of lessons, practise, constant mistakes and errors in judgement that get us to the point where we feel like an artist, rather than a Policy Officer pretending to be a designer… or a Mum with a hobby that earns her some cash "on the side" (that’s my favourite, given that I am the main income earner :)).
But, knowing that I am not alone, when there are SO many times when it feels that way, gives me comfort.
And hopefully, it helps to inspire me to keep going with this "little web design thing", and get better at it, so that when I am 40, I look back with pride and accomplishment.
I spend Christmas week sick with tonsillitis. It was so bad that I didn’t manage to eat anything for 5 day and missed out on the best thing of Christmas, the food! Finally, just before 7PM on Boxing Day I let Téa take me to an after hours GP, 20 minutes from our house.
The service at the after hours GP was great! We didn’t need an appointment and there was only 3 people waiting ahead of us. We waited about 40 minutes to been seen and the quality of the Doctor was amazing. She actually cared about me and the rest of the family. She checked everybody out to make sure they weren’t as sick as me and then she gave me a booster injection of antibiotics for no extra charge because the pills she prescribed wouldn’t take effect for a day or two! The visit cost more then my regular GP but I’m sure I would have paid double for it!
Compare that to my regular GP.
Téa, feeling sick herself, tried to make an appointment at our regular Doctors the day after. Firstly she was told that she would have to wait three days (She never went to the Dr’s because by the time the 3 days were up she felt good enough to not go!). Secondly if she had gone she would have been met with a challenge like this.
Our local GP has about 12 Dr’s names on the front of the building but there are only ever 2 or 3 there. Even though you have an appointment that you have been waiting for for days you are still made to wait for upwards of an hour! It’s easy to sit down in the waiting room and think that even though there are 30 people waiting there are so many Dr’s that you wont be waiting to long. It’s not till you notice that only 3 Dr’s ever come out, calling patients names, that you realize that everybody is there to see the same Dr as you!
Finally you get to see your Dr and he has exactly 2 minutes with you which he spends thinking about something or someone else! Its rushed beyond belief.
At the end you pay almost as much as if you went to the after hours GP but you have this feeling that something was lacking. Service and consideration maybe?
I remember when I was talking to the after hours GP she said that she would send her report to my regular GP. Well I don’t think I want my regular GP! I want the after hours GP as my regular GP!
Téa played through Bioshock a few weeks ago on the advice of a client, a reason that sounds pretty flimsy to me but those in glass houses. Anyway, trust Halloween to bring out the resourcefulness in Americans. Here is a video of dad and daughter dressed up in their favourite Bioshock characters. It’s the daughter that makes it priceless.
