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Website for Business Idea?
Totally Boner
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So yesterday I had this idea for a website that I think could make some money and eventually become popular. The only thing is I have 0 experience in building a website. I've seen people do it all the time, mostly for WoW sites where have an idea for a small something that will help the community in some way. So they build a little site and pay for it by ad revenue.
Does anyone know of a company or person that will help me make a website and deal with all of the technicalities?
Does anyone know of a company or person that will help me make a website and deal with all of the technicalities?
Totally Boner on
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Idk, I absolutely know 0 about what this sort of thing costs. It would help if explained what I wanted to a web designer and they told me my options. The point of the post is just to get names or links to businesses that do this.
If you can take a stab at budget, it would be extremely helpful. Obviously you don't necessarily know the going rates for webdesign (and even if you did, you might not have any idea how long the project is going to take and so couldn't accurately estimate a budget anyway) but what you can do is look at it from your perspective. How much is this website likely to be worth to you? How much spare money do you have to invest in it? How much are you prepared to blow on the project before it is outside the scope of your afford-ability or simply isn't worth doing anymore?
This helps the designer to explain your options to you. They can do so without it, but it definitely helps even if it's a vague estimate on your part.
From there you have several options. Depending on where in the world you are and what your estimated budget is we could recommend web designers who might be in your price range as well as geographic range, or you can take the RFP to design forums and freelance design sites and place an open request for proposals therein. A realistic budget helps a great deal here, because these sites are typically rife with bullshit design request where the client is offering junk like flash drives as payment or exploitative 'design competitions' where they expect loads of people to submit full designs and the 'winner' gets their design used 'in exchange for exposure of their work'.
A realistic budget when requesting proposals in this instance is going to get you more attention from the serious (good) designers.
Have a think over it and post your RFP and budget here for us to review it if you like. I'll see if I can find any resources for help with writing an RFP in the meantime.
edit: haven't read these in detail yet, but at a glance they look like they might be handy guides
http://www.collaborint.com/resources/website_planning/how_to_rfp.asp
http://www.netdynasty.com/articles/business/rfp/how_to_write_an_rfp/
If any of the sections they discuss seem overly complicated for your project, skip 'em. There might be some sections that just aren't applicable.
Getting an idea for an awesome website is like getting an idea for a great novel: even if you think it's better than 99% of the stuff out there, there is a huge gap between having the idea and making it happen. The first problem is, most ideas really aren't that original at all. There are an awful lot of monkeys sitting at an awful lot of computers across the world these days, hammering randomly away at an awful lot of keyboards. It's entirely possible that there's already a site like yours out there.
But let's say, for the sake of argument, that you do have something neat - maybe not the next Facebook, but still a unique little concept. The next issue is that you don't have the skills to flesh out the idea yourself. You need to rely on other people, which will most likely mean a significant chunk of change up front. How much are you willing to gamble on your idea? How will you find an honest designer who won't just steal your idea for his own use, if it's that revolutionary? It's just about impossible to get any sort of copyright on broad concepts - look at how many YouTube clones there are these days, and how many variants we already have on the Facebook/MySpace social networking theme.
If you do manage to find someone trustworthy who creates a nice site for you then goes on your way, your next problem is promoting it. There's an entire industry built around search engine optimization, and that sort of thing usually isn't included in the cost of the actual design of a page. How are people going to find your site in the first place? Are you going to pay for advertising? Relying on worth of mouth isn't enough anymore.
This is all very depressing, I'm sure, but... it's reality, these days. It's one thing for someone with a bit of HTML knowledge to create a simple page about an existing subject that fills a need for an established fanbase, and make a few bucks selling ad space on it, but it's quite another to start from scratch with nothing but an idea, and start talking about bringing in freelancers to transform your idea into a physical product. It's like... coming up with an idea for a new kind of candy, then posting a job ad outside the Wonka factory asking for someone to create and market it for you.
All that said, it's still possible for you to do something with your idea. Got any friends who know anything about web design? Could your Warcraft buddies help? It's hard to say without having any notion of what the idea is, but would it be possible for you to start small, then gradually expand? I mean, if your idea is along the lines of "wouldn't it be awesome if there was a website that automatically tracked every major webcomic, and supported a user registration system that allowed people to sign up, pick all of the webcomics they wanted to read from a dropdown list, then had the webcomics emailed to them as a high-resolution .pdf every time they were updated?", then yeah, you don't have a *chance*. But if it's more along the lines of some particular service you can provide, some neat concept that doesn't require much coding, maybe you could have a friend talk you through it. There are free scripts out there that let you do a lot of stuff online without needing much programming - phpBB for forums, WordPress for news updates, Drupal for content management.
tl;dr: before you worry about trying to find a freelance web designer to charge you $500, sit down with a friend who knows something about the field and get their input on your idea. They'll be able to help you figure out what you need, and how difficult it will be to do.
I want to make one important point here. A non-disclosure agreement says, "I will not tell anybody any trade secrets that you have shared over the course of this project". It doesn't protect ideas, just company secrets. If you have a cool idea, you protect that with a non-competition agreement, which says, "I will not compete with you in the field of ________ for __ years".
Beyond that, pretty much everything Kate said. Web development is a full-contact sport, and I'd add that if you don't have much experience in the field, hiring a freelancer can get you in a world of trouble. Will you be able to tell if they're trying to give you a pre-made template design instead of original work? Will you be able to check their php/asp/ruby for security holes? Will you trust them not to reuse the source code for your website for another client? How do you know if they're even doing the work themselves and not just posting it on a freelance job board looking for an even lower bidder?
If you really do feel like you have a cool idea, and you're willing to invest some money in it, your best bet is to find a brick-and-mortar design company (ideally locally) with a good reputation, or to sit down for some consulting with an experienced web developer who WON'T be working on your project. I'd love to make some recommendations as to who to talk to, but I have a conflict of interest here, as I *am* a freelance developer. In either case, a good approach is to email the webmasters of a few sites which are doing exactly what you described -- offering some neat little service and running some ads to support it -- and ask them who did their site. You can also find some amazingly talented folks on sites like SmashingMagazine.com by browsing through their showcase articles.
Your advice is odd, to say the least. A brick and mortar design company is just as likely to be shit as a freelancer. Whichever route you go, you still need to find a good one. And there are plenty of excellent freelancers out there.
The issues you raise are variously irrelevant, absurd, solvable or simply nonissues. The idea that any design buyer should be able to check code for security holes themself is ludicrous. The concern of the designer just using templates is avoidable by researching their previous work in advance. Concerns over them subcontracting the work isn't something to worry about - so what if they subcontract so long as the job is done to the standard required. Freelancers and agencies subcontract all the time if they have to much work for existing staff or if the project requires expertise outside of the abilities of the agency or freelancer (ie copy writing, database building, market research etc.)
However, you are dead on the money about seeking recomendations from people who's sites you admire and researching portfolios thoroughly when selecting candidates.
I think you deliberately took me out of context with this. Reusing a database wrapper is one thing. What about reusing a gdLib handler written specifically for your client's online game? What about changing some images, moving around a few divs, and reselling a client's entire video sharing website?
I think it's a given that if you have an application developed specifically for you, you want to own the source. If you were Tom, I doubt MySpace's ownership would be too happy if you just reused the source code on a new social network.
Likewise, could a car buyer being able to check for a damaged fuel tank? My point wasn't that a buyer should be able to inspect and debug the product, it was that buying from a fly-by-night outfit is a huge gamble, and that's what the vast majority of internet freelancers are -- shady used car salesmen. We're not all crooks, but there are a lot of shady 15 year olds, third-world con-artists, and unemployed hacks who just aren't going to take the time to check for injection issues. I'll continue this point below.
Would a buyer who's never worked with websites before know what to look for, though?
You don't think winning a job and then immediately outsourcing it to another company without telling the provider what you've done is a liiiittle bit unethical? If i walk into a restaurant and order a hamburger, would it be cool for them to just send someone over to McDonalds to buy me a quarter-pounder and pocket the difference?
And lastly, to continue the above point:
A brick-and-mortar company is inherently more stable than a freelancer. If they have a building, it means they're earning enough revenue to support their overhead, that they've been in business for a meaningful length of time and have already paid their dues (or if they're a startup, you know they were able to convince a bank manager that their credentials and plan were sound enough to deserve a small business loan), and that you will have a door to beat down if you have a problem. More importantly, though, it's a lot harder for a brick-and-mortar company to misrepresent who they are, where they are located, and whether or not they're operating legally and responsibly as far as licenses, taxes, etc.
So I don't think anything I said was especially "odd". :P
Edit: Aaaand I just defended my advice for nothing. Sorry, OP.
If you're serious about wanting to make your idea happen, I'd strongly recommend that you spend some time learning about web design yourself while you save money to hire someone. I still think finding a friend you can bounce ideas off of is the best plan, but you should still educate yourself as much as possible. Read over the Elance forums, check out those two links Szech posted, familiarize yourself with some of the terminology used in the business. Figure out what, exactly, you need other people to do for you, and what you can do for yourself. Will your site need to be updated on a regular basis? Then you'll either need to know a bit of HTML yourself, or you'll be paying whatever designer you end up with to include a content management system. How much server space will you need? How much bandwidth? Is 99.99% uptime crucial, or could you get by with something like Dreamhost to get started?
It's tempting to think of your site as being the next Penny Arcade or Something Awful or YouTube, but the idea isn't enough: if you want to make money with it, you need to think of it as a business, and you need to do as much as possible to understand it yourself. You can't pay someone else to do all the grunt work for you if you want to be successful. (Well, you can if you're a venture capitalist, but then we're talking millions of dollars of investments, not a $500 website).
It depends on how they market that quarter pounder. A lot of restaurants will serve pre-packaged food or at least sauces. Unethical? No, not really (although they're not the sort of places I'd want to eat, but that's a personal preference). As I said before, design companies outsource all the time, some tell their clients, some don't. It isn't necessarily an issue. For example, one of our clients is a design agency who aren't that hot at multimedia work, so when their clients or a project requires a multimedia component they outsource it to us. They're getting the job done, it isn't cost effective for them to have permanent multimedia designers so it makes perfect sense to outsource those elements when they arise. Being a 100% middleman who outsources everything might be a bit crazy, but if the works good, the price is right and the design is a success, who's to loosing out?
Stable, sure. To a degree. Inherently better because of it? Nu-uh. Not so extreme example - lots of printing presses also have a design department. They aren't usually very good. Most of them I wouldn't trust with designing badges for a local scout group. But the press is a whole lot of brick-and-mortar. Doesn't make them a brilliant design agency.
Look, the key point I think we all agree on here is that the best way to find a designer (and the best way for a designer to find client, incidentally) is through referrals. If the freelancer is good, his referrals will be good. Likewise for a brick-and-mortar. The reason I suggested freelancers from the get go was because they have fewer overheads and so are usually cheaper.
The trick to referrals is to know what to ask. Simply calling up previous clients of a designer and asking them what they think of the designer will give you a good idea of how they are to work with and the client might also say they really liked the designs they got. The important point though is whether or not the design fulfilled a purpose. In the case of web design you want to try and find out if, after the site went live, the client noticed an increase in the average time visitors spent at the site, if there was an increase in the percentage of visitors who were converted into buyers, stuff like that. This helps differentiate between the designers who merely make great looking designs and the designers who can provide designs that improved the client's business, which after all is really the whole point in a client commissioning design; they want to see financially measurable results.
If you're looking at freelancers, also make sure that they are actually professional freelancers - ie that this is their full-time profession and not something they are doing in the evenings while they work another job or are at school. I think this corroborates wasted's view - an established freelancer is as good as an establish brick-and-mortar.