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230 Posts
Has anyone used the www.homestead.com to build a web page? Looks good to me for $20.00 pm.
BPTL
BPTL
Web sit building
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1,254 Posts
I have seen some self-produced/managed websites that cost less than $20 that are great
I'm a very frugal guy, so I appreciate when people save costs and go against the grain in any way they can
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91 Posts
I can only think of a few people that designed their own website that got traffic from the search engines that converted into leads/jobs. I've seen plenty of good looking sites that nobody can find when they search MSN/Google/Yahoo. I've also seen people get lucky with SEO and not convert visitors because of a bad site.
While there is not any connection between the amount of money you spend and the amount of leads that you get.....there is a little proof that a professional looking website with good/great SEO will bring in more leads.
Let's say contractor #1 spends $1000 on his/her website and SEO and gets 50 leads in the first year from the search engines alone, his/her lead cost is $20 each (excluding hosting.......)
Let's say contractor #2 spends $20 on a self design package and donates 50 hours of his/her time in the design. At the end of the first year contractor #2 gets 1 lead from the search engines for a lead cost of $20 (excluding hosting, donated time.....)
Each contractor has the same lead cost but one contractor has 49 other leads to play with to recoup his $980 loss. If you are going to take on the project on your own, start a thread "who designed their own website that gets them a bunch of organic traffic....that converts into leads/jobs". Matt from Contractortalk will one of the few that will answer.
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230 Posts
Could it be that the diy guy just doesn't know about or understand the use of meta tags ,hooking up with search enjines ,ect and just buils a web site and uploads it and waits? :whistling2:
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91 Posts
Yup! That was me a little more than a year ago. If I build it they will come.....my mother came, my brother came, my office manager.......... I discovered black hat SEO and it worked pretty well. When I say discovered, I mean I thought I invented it, people had to slap me around and tell me that it was wrong. Changing my keywords to the background color worked for a few months and Google never punished me.
Side note, I didn't really wait, I changed my content every month hoping that the people who didn't find my site might stumble on the content and new pictures. I could write a book on how to waste 100's of hours on a website.
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566 Posts
I paid Mike at Xencorps... (http://www.xencorps.com/) We went from 'not listed on Google' to being #1 in less than a week.
We got a sales call from WebLease USA (http://www.webleaseusa.com/) a couple of months ago. The evaluate websites and try to sign you up for their service ($180/month for 3 year minimum). We like the guy that came out but just couldn't justify that kind of cost considering that the evaluation of our site was pretty good!
So, I believe that you can certainly save money and STILL have a quality site. However, I think you have to be careful where you save money. The Weblease guys have claimed that metatags don't really work anymore. Google is constantly changing their algorithms and the way it ranks pages. How much time does it take to keep up with that?
We make paint! Mike builds the websites. I wouldn't want to use any paint that Mike made nor would any of you want me to build you a website. I think we all have to REALLY think hard about how we invest (notice I didn't say spend) our time. As business owners, time is our most precious comodity. While I would love to learn all the ins and outs of websites, I know that the amount of my time it would take is FAR more expensive than paying Mike... who would actually get results. Early on in my business I tried to do everything myself. I've learned that sometimes being cheap is pretty expensive!
Wolvie $0.02
PS... Necesity is the mother of all invention. Rich is a pretty smart dude in my opinion. I think the point he is making is that if you automatically discount a cheap alternative you might be missing out.
We got a sales call from WebLease USA (http://www.webleaseusa.com/) a couple of months ago. The evaluate websites and try to sign you up for their service ($180/month for 3 year minimum). We like the guy that came out but just couldn't justify that kind of cost considering that the evaluation of our site was pretty good!
So, I believe that you can certainly save money and STILL have a quality site. However, I think you have to be careful where you save money. The Weblease guys have claimed that metatags don't really work anymore. Google is constantly changing their algorithms and the way it ranks pages. How much time does it take to keep up with that?
We make paint! Mike builds the websites. I wouldn't want to use any paint that Mike made nor would any of you want me to build you a website. I think we all have to REALLY think hard about how we invest (notice I didn't say spend) our time. As business owners, time is our most precious comodity. While I would love to learn all the ins and outs of websites, I know that the amount of my time it would take is FAR more expensive than paying Mike... who would actually get results. Early on in my business I tried to do everything myself. I've learned that sometimes being cheap is pretty expensive!
Wolvie $0.02
PS... Necesity is the mother of all invention. Rich is a pretty smart dude in my opinion. I think the point he is making is that if you automatically discount a cheap alternative you might be missing out.
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91 Posts
Wolverine, Your site was one of my final 3 when I decided to do mine over. I looked around a bunch of the forums and only 3 sites really impressed me enough to make calls to their webmasters. I started my search at 11pm or midnight and your guy called me back at 8am, I can't blame the guy for sleeping but I sgned up with someone else at 1 or 2 am.
This is very interesting, to me.
Hiring good help can be the wisest decision in business.
And without salesmanship, all your efforts to produce are worthless.
Never-the-less, I would like to learn how to produce an effective website.
Keyword here is "learn."
I like to learn.
It benefits me, and those I come in contact with.
Today, I learned more I don't know, and shall try to conquer it tomorrow!
(I had a spectacular failure today! Everything looked great, except...)
I'd like to hear more about meta tags and SEO's...
r
Hiring good help can be the wisest decision in business.
And without salesmanship, all your efforts to produce are worthless.
Never-the-less, I would like to learn how to produce an effective website.
Keyword here is "learn."
I like to learn.
It benefits me, and those I come in contact with.
Today, I learned more I don't know, and shall try to conquer it tomorrow!
(I had a spectacular failure today! Everything looked great, except...)
I'd like to hear more about meta tags and SEO's...
r
Joined
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91 Posts
If it's cool with the mod's I can post a forum that will put you to sleep within 5-10 minutes. Or you could google seo and forum. All of the SEO/SEM forums that I read are funny, nobody agrees on what works.
the site elance.com is a great resource when looking to do things over the web. I have used it to sub out websites, hire virtual assistants, design a logo. It huge resource that truly makes the world flat, when i can hire someone in china to design a logo or hire an assistant in India for $2 an hour to research topics, plan a birthday party or data entry. You can have someone build a quality site for $300 w/ flash.
The right key words and anchor text in the right places on the right pages is something I definitely didn't understand before hiring an SEO firm to design my site. Also knowing how to create one way links using key words and phrases will help your rankings. I think the best and easiest way is to submit your site to submission directories. I've used this one with good results http://www.directorysubmissionsa101.webfirstcreations.com/
This is the same company that built my site, they really know their stuff and its affordable.
This is the same company that built my site, they really know their stuff and its affordable.
Joined
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29 Posts
The Guys here have some great advice, I put together a page a while back, and it looked real bad, I coppied a lot of ideas, and used content.. and the guys here helped set me straight...
The one I have now I made from scratch, still needs serious work, but looks way better than first one, but I'm slowly working on it.. have way more pics to add... lots of work, and if you have the money, have a pro do it... I've no leads from it yet, and it's ranked between 5-17 on Google for my area depending on what you use in the search.. you have to make it look professional to get any leads.
The guys here will guide you well.
scotty
The one I have now I made from scratch, still needs serious work, but looks way better than first one, but I'm slowly working on it.. have way more pics to add... lots of work, and if you have the money, have a pro do it... I've no leads from it yet, and it's ranked between 5-17 on Google for my area depending on what you use in the search.. you have to make it look professional to get any leads.
The guys here will guide you well.
scotty
Joined
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566 Posts
lol... yeah... most of the good web guys are up late smokin' weed and playing some kind of online game... like World of Warcraft or Day of Defeat... Mike is a single parent so I imagine he sleeps at night... IF I had to put a number on it... I'd guess that 90% of web guys are up until at least 3AM...
Post us up a link when you get it done!
Joined
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91 Posts
That's a benefit, if I have a question at midnight I know I can e-mail my web guy and get an answer without having to wait until 9am. Last week I found a new term "SMO" and wanted to learn about it, forget Google a quick e-mail gets me the answer.
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