OK so I'm doing some more research before putting my foot down and risking my savings. I was hoping you guys that have hired or dealt with having someone else create and manage a site. A quick summary of what I'm getting myself into.

I'm going to be starting my own company (myself and one other, and basically just a $50 business license), I'll be publishing 99% of my product and free open source (not redistributable). I plan on having the majority of the income coming from donations and advertisement. So I don't expect to make much profit the first year if any.

Now on the topic of the site, I'm not the best at web development. I know only the basics of HTML, and very little about CSS and JAVA. I've used Dreamweaver in the past and really liked that because of it wysiwyg ide. but I'm not confident that Id be able to create a decent website and still be able to work on my products at the same time. But I'm not rich and I don't want to put my self too far in the hole without a guarantee that I'll be able to start coming out by the end of the first year.

So for those that have dealt with employing someone to create and run a business website, what is your perspective on the service. For a very small indie group is it worth hiring them, would they really provide something far beyond that an amateur could do on his own?

I have one more option of letting someone else in on the group, but this person has no coding experience. They have made they're own site's using online editors, but they're design abilities aren't what I desire so once again I have to way whether Time or money is more important.

You are facing a much bigger question than just whether to outsource a website or not. I'll get to that issue a little later. First, let me take a moment to address the bigger issue: Should you start this business?

Since you are talking about a need to be profitable by the end of the first year, I assume that you plan on this project becoming your primary source of income in the near future. If that is the case, you desperately need to figure out if that is reasonable. Who are your potential clients? Are there channels through which you can contact or sell to many of them at once, without wasting breath on people who aren't interested? How many potential clients are there for your product, and how much might they be willing to pay for it? Will they pay for support if the product itself is free, and if so, how much? And how often?

How much will it cost to run your business? Include living expenses for yourself and your partner. Is there a reasonable path to arriving at sufficient revenue to more than cover all of those expenses before you run out of capital?

Is this the kind of business that could turn into a large revenue stream, or a valuable acquisition? If so, have you considered seeking outside capital to fund the company? Investors allow you to immediately leave all other employment and work on this full-time, hire great people around you, and just generally move much faster. The cost is a substantial loss of ownership, possible loss of control (depending on if you get evil investors), and new people to whom you have a responsibility.

I'm in the middle of this whole process right now (see sig), and I will tell you from personal experience that the road from concept to profit is very long, very discouraging, and very demanding of your time and energy. Getting the first paying customer is tough, getting to a hundred is tougher, and getting to ten thousand and profitability is something few accomplish.

One small part of this whole plan is how to manage your website. Is the website itself integral to your business (is it part of the product?), or just a portal to attract customers and provide your product for download? Think hard about that--if you provide support for a fee, how and where will you provide that support?

If you will provide support through your site, and support is your primary source of revenue, you must maintain total internal control over its development and distribution. If it's just a marketing tool, you can probably find a hundred qualified groups to build and maintain it for you, for a price. These groups typically bid on a job and then put it together as quickly as possible in order to remain profitable. This works well for many businesses; just consider carefully if it makes sense for yours.

One small part of this whole plan is how to manage your website. Is the website itself integral to your business (is it part of the product?), or just a portal to attract customers and provide your product for download? Think hard about that--if you provide support for a fee, how and where will you provide that support?

If you will provide support through your site, and support is your primary source of revenue, you must maintain total internal control over its development and distribution. If it's just a marketing tool, you can probably find a hundred qualified groups to build and maintain it for you, for a price. These groups typically bid on a job and then put it together as quickly as possible in order to remain profitable. This works well for many businesses; just consider carefully if it makes sense for yours.

I'll focus on your main question. And above is the important part. If it really core part of your business, it need to be done well. If it not, a simple wordpress blog is enough for now (just look for a nice simple template).

See this guy here?

http://kuzey3d.blogspot.com/

The product is more important than the presentation, although accessible is key. Note the Metal Node Library pack on the top menu, and purchase button both on the main page (top right) and product page (bottom).

Why wouldnt you hire someone to do the website for you? If you needed a new office, would you build it yourself, or hire a builder to do it? A builder is always going to do a FAR better job than you could yourself (unless you hire a cowboy builder!)

Why are people so reluctant to pay for a good website? Simply having a website isnt enough, it needs to be optomised so that search engines pick it up, and it needs to be visually appealing so that users trust your business. Numerous times when shopping online I have came across websites that have clearly been built by an amature - as soon as I see them I hit the back button, and I know many others that do likewise. Your website projects an image of what your company is like, a cheap, poorly designed website suggests a cheap poorly run company.

A decent website will set you back between £500-£1000, and once built, is online forever. How much would a similar advertising campain in a magazine cost? Probably about that PER MONTH!

A website these days is your primary form of advertising, and is the first impression many people get of your company. Make sure you get it right!

Although being a freelance web developer, i'm maybe slightly biased

In a startup, the owner often is to be seen putting furniture together, painting walls and so on. The question is if you can spare the time, and if you can do an adequate job. If the answer to either is no, you kind of answered your question.
For instance my site is self-made and frankly is not very good but I wanted to force myself to work on it since I didn't have any funding and it was really being made just so a site of some sort existed... plus as a developer some hands-on re-acquaintance with HTML/CSS was valuable to me.

Why are people so reluctant to pay for a good website? Simply having a website isnt enough, it needs to be optomised so that search engines pick it up, and it needs to be visually appealing so that users trust your business. Numerous times when shopping online I have came across websites that have clearly been built by an amature - as soon as I see them I hit the back button, and I know many others that do likewise. Your website projects an image of what your company is like, a cheap, poorly designed website suggests a cheap poorly run company.

You misunderstand me. I'm saying that if a website is a key part of his business, he should spend substantially more resources creating it, by doing it in-house. It will take an incredible amount of time, energy, and effort, and possibly a full-time hire. But if the website is the business, then you can't afford to cheapen the experience by having someone who's not invested in the business producing its primary product.

A decent website will set you back between £500-£1000, and once built, is online forever.

Indeed - see geocities, although that one is no longer available. Doesn't seem like a good investment anymore.

How much would a similar advertising campain in a magazine cost? Probably about that PER MONTH![/quote]

1. Pay 1000
2. ???
3. Profit


This said, price range quoted above will cover technical execution. It's possibly to get a bit lower than that as well. Technical execution means just that - site will work. On that note, digging into joomla or wordpress, then choosing a suitable template can accomplish the same for almost free.


But if the site should double as marketing effort, then multiply the above with 10.

Paying for execution of site makes sense if you need presence now and are technically illiterate. For anyone with basic skills, buying a site theme and ordering some shared hosting isn't that much of a problem.


Warnings and gotchas, rarely if ever included in 1000 package deal:
1. Registrars and domain names. Who owns them, how will you transfer ownerships, how will you set up renewals, who will provide the credit card
2. "one other" - who will own the site? How will you protect yourself from potential abuse. Since this will be registered on business, there could be legal implications and costs
3. Again, site will be done for business - how will you handle IP. Will you get the author to sign a waiver? What if there is copyright violation, who will take care of it? Again, legal. And yes, it happens. Surprisingly a lot. In very unexpected ways.
4. Ongoing costs - how will it be hosted? Who will pay for it and how?
5. Security. Not the biggest deal directly to you, but who will be responsible for it?
6. In relation to above - site health. Who will be monitoring it? Who will be notified if it goes down? Who will repair it?
7. 5 and 6 matter because of SEO. Slow sites, random unavailability and you're off Google. Probably not the biggest loss, but still something to consider, it takes months to establish the rank.
8. Where are the backups stored? Who performs them? Who tests them?
X. So you will have a textbox through which you will be updating the content. Then some image will break your main page layout. Who you gonna call? Hack it yourself - you don't know CSS. What about that IE bug that happens with new version release 2 months from now? Who will add the paypal button?

And more...

Your 1000 site is "free puppy". It's not where the costs lie. Remember, you're talking about a business here. "We dun goofed" doesn't really work there anymore.

But how will you know what to pay attention to, unless you hire a big brand name company with $100/hour price tag that brings 500 page cover-of-liability document and high profile references. And if hiring just random Web Designer, how will they provide ongoing support and how will you evaluate if they provide the important features? HTML and CSS have surprisingly little to do with sites these days and those skills can be had for free. So how far will your 1000 investment go?

A website these days is your primary form of advertising, and is the first impression many people get of your company. Make sure you get it right![/quote]
In which case don't outsource it.

Who will set up metrics? Who will do A/B testing? Check for leads and referrals? Which services, if any, will you use to do so.

Marketing *is not* "I have a web page". Marketing is about evaluating impact of your products, services and everything else with relation to one and one goal only - sale. The only reason to have a web page is to check who comes to your page and what makes them buy. Conversion ratio. Otherwise, printing flyers and throwing them out at the mall probably works just as well. Web sites are about metrics.



Otherwise, just have a good product, open free blogger/wordpress/whatever account and post your email there. it'll accomplish the goal, but it will be the goods that sell themselves. Obviously, this may be harder to do. Just don't be fooled by thinking that "if you build it they will come". A good web page may help, but just having one means precisely nothing and is highly unlikely to be worth the 1000 investment.

One important thing to note is that every minute you spend developing the website is a minute you aren't spending developing your product. There are tons of people who will even make a joomla site for you for pretty cheap. Joomla is easy to use and set up, but again it is time that you won't be spending developing your product, and at the end of the day if you have an awesome site with a shit product you won't make any sales; that goes both ways, but at the end of the day the company's success depends directly on the product's success and indirectly on the website's, so the product should get priority from your in house team.

As long as you cover your ass legally, which you'd have to do anyway, outsourcing is fine for website development.

Well I guess my idea is the site would basically be a portal to provide my product. I don't want it to look like trash, ie I don't want people going to my site and thinking I'm a ten year old kid. I want decent forum and membership (free ofcourse) support, those two are the ones I'm most worried about. I'm whole hardily set on accomplishing my dreams, I just know from experience that I shouldn't jump in head first though. Hiring a company to design and manage this side of the business is sounding better and better.

But then again I don't need anything spectacular, like the gamedev forums, A simple blog style of letting people respond to specific topics would work aswell. But I'd like to establish a following that can give feedback that would influence updates and or new ideas.

I would like to maintain access and rights to everything on the site though. ie If I decided to not renew a contract with a company that manages the site, Id like to keep everything about the site with me. I don't want them to, leave with the rights to the site. making me have to restart from the beginning.

I've been doing some shopping, looking into people that can do this for me. The design and creation of the site seems feasible and justifiable for my situation. But I'm not 100% sure on how the hours work. Do these companies work 8 hour days and charge for that... or do they allow you to choose the hours per day they provide support and management for the site. Such as can I specify that from monday to friday, There should be 2 hours per day spent on maintaining the site, fixing bugs, uploaded my specified updates and so forth. Or is there a standard of hours provided.

Also is it normal to just have them manage a specific portion, ie the forums. And I would handle uploading files and updating basic content?

reading your original post again, just use a simple wordpress and a free, professional looking theme. and use some simple, free forum. it you use paid hosting, you get one click install for both. once you done, you can focus on creating your product. why am i saying this? know your user. i don't know what specifically your product is, but knowing the word "open source", i think they can understand if you use popular, open source cms or forum