Making websites for other people vs. making them for yourself
2007 at 9:33am | by Dave
As you may or may not know, I run a web design company as my day job. I’ve been doing it for going on five years now and it can be quite lucrative. It was only last year that Jason and I started dabbling in making sites for ourselves, and got more seriously involved in it during the last half of 2006. I thought it’d be interesting to examine how these two related but separate industries compare to each other. From here on out, I’ll refer to making sites for clients as Web Design and making sites for yourself as Web Publishing.
The Almighty $
Web Design: When you’re making web pages for clients, your money is pretty much guaranteed. As long as you take the proper steps to protect yourself, you know how much you are going to make with each new website and that you will get paid eventually. The element of risk is very low and the income is secured. However, you may run into problems actually getting paid. Sometimes it will take several months after completion for a client to get their act together and pay you. The larger the design projects you are doing, the more this becomes a reality you have to accept.
Web Publishing: The biggest element to understand is the high risk factor involved. You don’t have any guarantees of the income your latest site will generate…if any at all. The whole thing could tank and not earn you a red cent. Also, in many cases you have to risk your own capital and put it on the line to have a site developed and marketed. The payoff for this risk is that when you do develop a winning site, it really pays off. Instead of a one-shot deal, you get an income from the site every month. In the case of wildly popular sites, you may make as much as you would’ve charged to design the site every single month. The other upside is, for the most part, you won’t run into clients dragging their feet on payment. Most ad agencies have a set schedule for paying their publishers and you get money like clockwork every month.
Dealing With The Customer
Web Design: If you design web sites, then you KNOW how much of a pain customers can be. Sure, most of the time your clients are very easy to work with…but every once in a while you get the client from hell who wants to change every little aspect of the design you are making for them until you have butchered their site into a monstrosity you don’t dare place in your portfolio… or they call you 200 times a day to inquire about the status of their project. The simple fact of the matter is that sometimes clients are a pain.
Web Publisher: In the beginning, you are basically the only person you answer to in terms of the site development, so unless you are the absolute perfectionist and never happy with any of your work, you’ll have a pretty easy time here. As your site grows, you will have an audience that essentially becomes the “customer” you have to answer to. However, you have a lot more leeway and tolerance from a site audience than you will from a client paying you to design a website, in most cases. They’ll be a lot more forgiving unless you’re doing stuff that’s really boneheaded on a regular basis.
Getting Started
Web Design: Web design is a really tough industry to break into. Almost everyone and their mother is designing web sites these days, so you have to deal with a lot of competition. In some cases, people in your own area will try to undercut you and there is also the outsourcing to third world counties issue to deal with. Honestly, the only way I was able to establish my web design business was by living rent free in my parents’ basement. I wouldn’t have been able to reach profitability if I had living expenses to pay for.
Web Publishing: This field is pretty saturated too, but the entry costs are much, much lower. You can start web publishing in your spare time as a hobby like we did and let it grow from there. Also, while lots of people are doing it, you have a greater opportunity to come up with a unique idea no one has tried yet - and stand out from the crowd with a new, useful, and unique website.
So concludes my examination of the differences between Web Design and Web Publishing. I hope you found it both interesting and informative! (Man, how cheesy does that sentence sound…!) I should also mention that there are some definite benefits to doing both at the same time. Our development costs are extremely low, because I can often cash in favors with my contractors when we need work done. I’m not going to talk numbers, but I bet your jaw would drop if I told you how much it cost us to develop the Easy By Design site :)
March 30th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Hello
You may wish to read my experience with rentacoder at
http://kamen123.blogspot.com
They are doing all possible to hide these facts
:-)
March 30th, 2007 at 9:43 am
I read it, sounds like you have a bone to pick with Rent-A-Coder.
I’ve done several jobs over $1000 US on Rentacoder for my main business. Used it a lot and haven’t caused any problems or had any problems with coders.
I say give it a rest.
March 30th, 2007 at 10:35 am
I’m no coder but I don’t see how that article involves the kind of freelance talent a buyer would find on Rentacoder.com ? Ok so whoever started the site goofed up.. I don’t agree with Dave’s unnecessary bone picking comment either but I hardly think the problems RAC is having is really related to what we were trying to tell people about freelancing..
March 30th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Well read some of the other articles he’s posted, it becomes apparent that he’s just a disgruntled programmer.
I can see his complaints with the arbitration problems he had, but he didn’t work with the arbitration system at all and therefore they ruled against him.
March 30th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
thanks for opinions, it’s useful to have other points of view
yes I have experience as programmer but I can bring projects as buyer too because there are bigger projects and often help is needed
In general I’m disappointed with mental abilities of rentacoder team. I wish to stay far away from them. Also I do not wish they to blame me for their mistakes
For me there is obvious pattern in their behaviour:
they are proficient to make patches, for bigger projects they make mistakes and they blame some else for their mistakes
I have worked on projects that cost millions. Probably for $1000 you get several forms or good customization. For me this is just bigger patches. Also projects bigger than $1000 are exceptions for RAC
Probably for your projects you have avoided RAC after first several steps in the project, this is the recommended approach
March 30th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
If you work at such a high level, why are you wasting your time caring about RAC, or carrying on this vendetta?
Sorry, but I just don’t buy it.
March 31st, 2007 at 6:09 am
well the slogan of RAC is “how software gets done”
now I see that RAC lied from the beginning to the end during my experience with them
I expected that RAC really are making software and I wanted to test But they make mistakes for bigger projects and even blame me for this
I do not like to be excuse for stupidity
It will be useful to warn other users(like me) in advance
It is fun to give them a lesson, they are living in dreams, someone have to wake them up. There is no vendetta
I do not expect from you to buy anything
I’m just interested to have opinions
:-)
March 31st, 2007 at 6:11 am
That’s fine and entitled to your opinion. However, our opinion is that RAC is helpful for getting projects done.
We’ve used it extensively and had no problems.
March 31st, 2007 at 6:25 am
probably your style is in harmony with RAC and this is why you had no problems
or probably you work on projects that fit to rac proficiency
but if you look at the size of the projects done on rac you will see that I’m right
majority of people use such sites to find partners/affiliates and after that avoid the site
April 1st, 2007 at 12:06 am
hi Dave
thanks for opinions
it was nice to talk with you yesterday
sorry that you thought that I expect you to buy anything
April 1st, 2007 at 8:02 am
I never thought you wanted me to buy something from you, I just don’t agree with your views on RAC at all.
April 2nd, 2007 at 1:04 am
why?
I have obvious evidences:
rac owner even is not capable to read and understand the documentation of ASP/IIS. As result he makes mistakes for years and blames Microsoft
This is just perfect example. Rac are proficient to make patches, for bigger projects their stupidity is endless
rac is excellent source of fun and jokes
:-)
April 2nd, 2007 at 5:40 am
Kamen,
I don’t think you quite understand what we’re talking about when we recommend RAC..
We don’t know how intelligent the owners are all we know is from our own experiences we’ve found good coders from that site who work for a very reasonable wage.. Thats it.. thats all
Obviously you’ve had a bad experience and it happens but in the few occasions that we’ve had to take things to arbitration the staff have always ruled in a way which kept both us and the coder happy and things got done.. thats all I care about..
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:53 am
I see
I understand you completely now
RAC staff are proficient to deal with small tasks(I call them patches), you are working on such tasks and you are happy with RAC
You don’t care that for significantly bigger tasks the stupidity of RAC staff is endless and RAC staff even are not able of understanding the issues
April 3rd, 2007 at 6:28 am
Ok… I think it’s time I retract my statement about you not having an axe to grind :)
Kamen.. As much as we appreciate your comments, the things your saying don’t really make sense.. Even if the RAC staff are total incompetent morons like you claim it doesn’t really matter since you hardly ever deal with them and the owners knowledge of ASP has no impact on the user experience.
We’ve used a number of different freelancer sites and found the talent on RAC to be one of the best, we’re not affiliated with them or anything like that we just use the service and so we endorse it.
If you have something to say about the buyers, sellers or even the arbitration process then we will listen and even report on it, otherwise please move on.
April 4th, 2007 at 4:42 am
well I’m speaking about RAC staff, their slogan and the fact that they promise fair arbitration
For projects significantly bigger than several hundreds their stupidity is endless and they speak unlimited stupid comments
This is obvious from the example
RAC owner was not able to understand recommendations and best practises perfectly described by Microsoft
As result he was fighting for years against his stupidity
This shows that he is too stupid to provide fair arbitration
And he is senior arbitrator, you can imagine mental abilities of junior arbitrators…
Do you understand my way of thinking?
:-)
April 4th, 2007 at 6:27 am
Kamen,
Perhaps you misunderstood Jason. This discussion is closed.