Do NOT pay someone $500.00 to setup Face Book Fan Page
A marketing friend of mine recently found a site that charged $500.00 to setup a Fan Page – No fans mind you, just setup the page! They charge an extra $500.00 to setup a Twitter account, again no followers. Mommy Bloggers with absolutely NO marketing experience setup their own fan pages. If you can’t do it yourself, pay one of them $25 bucks to do it for you.
Do NOT pay over $500.00 for your website, if you are a small business or a blogger
I have people tell me daily that they have been charged over $1000.00 for a website consisting of 6 HTML pages whipped up in Dreamwaver. Hey, we programmers need to make a living, but unnecessary.
Do NOT allow your web programmer to ‘rent you space on his server’
Your programmer doesn’t have his own server, he’s renting space on someone else’s server then reselling (re-renting) it to his clients. If you are renting space from your programmer, you’re paying for ALL his sites which are on the same server at double what he’s paying for that space. Hosting from GoDaddy, HostGator, BlueHost and others are just as good if not better then small private companies and they cost FAR LESS.
Do NOT hire the first programmer you meet
Tell the programmer there is a chick online who will build a WordPress website complete with blog, shopping cart able to sell unlimited items, take credit cards and paypal, and will take a template to build me a fantastic theme all for under $500.00 – And she can find me wholesalers. And she provides references along with links to the sites. Not only will I do all that for under $500.00, I’ll find it hard to charge you over $250.00. (See my page!)
Do NOT pay someone to ‘manage’ your website if it’s nothing more than a digital business card
If your website does nothing more than giving directions to your Brick and Mortar location along with some pretty pictures and a phone number, don’t pay someone $3,500.00 a year to ‘manage it’ Check your website once a day when you get your email, if there is a problem then pay someone to fix it.
Examples of Good Sites for Good People.
Digital Business Card
Heat On Wheels. This website is a web presents and that’s all he needs it to be. It’s a digital business card. When he needs something changed, he calls me up and tells me what to do and I do it.
Brick and Mortar
Maine M.O.G., a brick and mortar business. Their new marketing director is going to post classes, workshops, along with prices for not only the classes and workshops, but for the physical items they sell.
Brick and Mortar with a Blog feel
Southern Maine Tae Kwon Do. Master Esposito needed not only a digital business card to promote his business, a place where prospective students could find class times and pricing, but he also needed a quick way to communicate with his students, to keep them up to date on tournaments and testing. He breaks boards with his bare hands, he didn’t have any web site experience. I gave him a log in and within minutes he had figured it out.
Blogger
The Night Owl Mama, promotes products for just about everyone major manufacture on the planet. Tricia is a stay at home mom who had never used a website before. Today she can post 5 to 10 product reviews a day and is one of the most respected bloggers on the web. She doesn’t pay me to update her site every day, she does it herself, it’s her business.
These are just a few examples of real business websites run by real people who make real money and don‘t want to waste it.