I design website for a living, and I have really strong opinions about the subject. It\u2019s true, it\u2019s a fact, and I\u2019m not ashamed to admit it. I think that we\u2019ve made some of the best websites around, particularly for Portland businesses. And I\u2019m really proud of that.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time \u2013 three or four years ago, actually \u2013 we didn\u2019t have a portfolio. We didn\u2019t even have a business. And of course, getting started is tough. We were lucky to have built some really nice websites at first, and even though those clients got them for a song, the effort was well worth it on our part. Those sites led to more and more work, and got us to where we are now.<\/p>\n
Back then, I did some \u201ccold calling.\u201d Not door-to-door, exactly, but that\u2019s what it felt like. I can recall dressing up in a suit to pitch a website, something I haven\u2019t done since. I was once paid in a bar, with twenty dollar bills. What can I say\u2026 times were tough. What was amazing was that it was so much harder<\/strong> to get paid back then, even though most websites we made were about $300! We are not<\/strong> that cheap anymore. I suspect that the less you charge, the less your clients will value your services.<\/p>\n I really hated having to sell our services. That period only lasted six months at the most, for which I am eternally grateful. We don\u2019t pitch ourselves to strangers, and we don\u2019t advertise; we rely on our past work and word of mouth, and it works well for us. But it still breaks my heart to see new businesses opening up in Portland, every bit as stylish as a Stumptown<\/a> or a Masu<\/a>, who are willing to pay the Yellow Pages people<\/a> $150 per month or more for a \u201ccustom designed website.\u201d I don\u2019t want to name names, but\u2026 okay, here\u2019s an example<\/a>. Sorry guys, but yuuuuuck. It just doesn\u2019t convey how nice that place is, and that\u2019s important.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s try a little experiment. Let\u2019s say that a website that we build is useful for three years. It\u2019s probably useful for much longer than that \u2013 several of our $300 projects still serve folks well \u2013 but let\u2019s assume that. Hosting a website will probably cost you at most $400 for three years. At $150 per month, times 36 months, \u201cDex\u201d is charging you $5400. We do a bit of work with search engines, and we make our sites updateable just like Dex does. So what does $5000 get you from Needmore Designs?<\/p>\n Quite a few of the projects in our portfolio at this time, frankly!<\/strong> Every project is certainly different, and I prefer to think of websites as evolving<\/em> over time, rather than being built and then neglected. I suspect people are suckered into offerings like Dex because it looks cheaper up front, and I\u2019m not going to argue with that. But the budgets are similar. Why not hire local, passionate professionals to do the work? And what if you decide you want to host the site yourself, and pay $10 instead of $150 a month? Who do you think keeps the website\u2026 you, or the \u201cYellow Pages people?\u201d<\/p>\n Too bad I\u2019m not doing cold-calling anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I design website for a living, and I have really strong opinions about the subject. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/0-9\/36100813_80e2e8b29d_o.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}