Selling Web Design »

After over two years writing this blog at Sitepoint, it is time to move on. First, I think I’ve covered most of what I can say in blog format in past entries. It is time for some “new blood” to provide new ideas for you. Second, my own professional practice is evolving, and I’m focused on some [...]

Results of your Marketing Survey are here!
http://www.sitepoint.com/examples/downtobusiness/SmallBusinessSurvey06.pdf The above URL will let you download the Sitepoint Small Business Survey of 2006. Thanks to Sitepoint again for setting this up with me. Let me know your interpretation of the results, and here are some of my observations: 1. The survey respondents are 86% men. Let’s get more women into this field! 2. Respondents are all [...]

This is the kind of website every web designer should design
I just signed up with www.carbonite.com, a web-based backup solution. The process meets almost every criteria I can think of for a positive web-based ecommerce service: – First, I heard about the service from a respected colleague, so I was already predisposed to buy. – The home page is simple yet glorious. In a single sentence it [...]

Please participate in a benchmarking survey of web design/developer marketing practices
The good people at SitePoint have been kind enough to indulge my request to conduct a marketing benchmarking survey of SitePoint readers. It is not scientific, it is a bit biased, and it may not even be comprehensive—but it does have lots of great questions for your to compare yourself to others, and should be [...]

Don t read your prospect s mind
Here is an interesting observation: Many times, prospects call me and ask me if my programs do X or Y (i.e., in the case of my Boxing Fitness site, do I provide Continuing Education Units? Or, is my Certification accepted in gyms in Great Britain). Usually the answer is “no,” so when I get these questions, [...]

How s your retirement looking?
My understanding is that there are lots of young people who visit Sitepoint, people in their teens and twenties. I hope that you save 20-50% of every dollar you earn. It may seem hard with rent and food—but it only gets harder later on. If you start saving now and investing wisely, you may be able to [...]

A client tells me about why he has rejected a bunch of web designers/developers
An enterpreneur contacted me by phone today. He has a terrific, proprietary and exclusive product with lots of market potential that he wants to sell via the Internet. He explained that he had talked to a bunch of web designers—at all price ranges—and refused to work with any of them. None of them could provide a [...]

Okay, let s see if anyone s been reading this blog: Reader challenge
We’ve been interacting for about 2 years or more now. Some of you are newcomers to this blog and some of you have been here from the start. So at this point, it is my expectation that if I ask you to answer a business challenge, you should be able to answer it for me. Here [...]

So is third-party web design a dead business?
Many of your comments to the last blog were quite depressing. Most of you made one of two points: 1. Web design for clients doesn’t pay well. The only way to make money in this business is by designing your own sites and making money that way. 2. Most clients want a lot but won’t pay. If that’s [...]

The beauty of re-purposing
You may have noticed a transition in my advice over the past 2 and 1/2 years. The shift has been from talking about selling services to selling repeatable programs and products in addition to services. That way, you are building something of sustainable value, and making something once to sell it thousands of times. In my [...]