coding advice...

[sk24iam]

Hey guys, I need some advice on a startup I have been planning for a few years.

I have an online business idea I plan on starting in the next few months. Throughout college, I wrote the business plan for this startup. The website will require extensive php programming which I have no knowledge of up until 3 months ago. I bought a book and started studying php. I am 3 months in and realize that to build the site I desire, I am a long way off. Here is my plan... I will start to write the code for the site and learn everyday, adding the features neccessary. I think this will take minimum a year to complete. My concern is that the final product won't be as functional as I had planned. In addition, this idea will take credit cards through a merchant account so I am a little bit concerned with security.

My other option is to hire a coder on elance to build the site for me. It would cost somewhere around $5000 but I assume they would build it to my needs. I know eventually, if this project becomes successful I woudl have to hire a php engineer. Does anyone have any advice on the best route to take?

 

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[ZDS]

You spent 3 months learning PHP? If you desire to learn it thats all fine and dandy, but if you are doing it for the website then hire out! Think about this, instead of spending 1 year or the 3 months you've already spent, just bite the bullet and work extra. You'll make 5k ALOT faster than it'll take you to design it and it will be professionally done!

-Zach

 

[ScottHardy]

Are you SURE an existing technology like Joomla or Drupal won't support what you're looking to do? You could start the site in either one of those CMS engines and add the PHP functionality you're looking for later. This way you can add articles over the course of the next few months - year building your SEO strength.
Drupal and Joomla are so flexible I would be surprised if they don't have a flexible, shopping cart type module which accepts credit cards already built for one or both that fits your needs. They have everything from simple shopping carts to advanced auction and subscription based modules. You may still have to buy the module but it would likely be in the $500 range or less.
If you need a Tech Guy to implement it, it will save you alot of money if you already have the solution paid for and the website up. I'll bet an eLancer would do it for less than $1K, probably closer to $500.

I hope that helps! Bootstrapping is hard but essential for every entrepreneur!

Scott

 

[ZDS]

Scott... I can't give you rep again, I must spread around Maybe hold off the good advice?

 

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[sk24iam]

You spent 3 months learning PHP? If you desire to learn it thats all fine and dandy, but if you are doing it for the website then hire out! Think about this, instead of spending 1 year or the 3 months you've already spent, just bite the bullet and work extra. You'll make 5k ALOT faster than it'll take you to design it and it will be professionally done!

-Zach

My reasoning for learning it is because what I need done is expensive and also if something goes wrong I woud like to be able to fix it on my own. Of course the plan would be to rake in enough money to hire a full time php programmer but that is a long way off. The slowdown with php has been balancing my full time job with reading. Also, it has proven to be a lot more difficult thatn I expected.

Are you SURE an existing technology like Joomla or Drupal won't support what you're looking to do? You could start the site in either one of those CMS engines and add the PHP functionality you're looking for later. This way you can add articles over the course of the next few months - year building your SEO strength.
Drupal and Joomla are so flexible I would be surprised if they don't have a flexible, shopping cart type module which accepts credit cards already built for one or both that fits your needs. They have everything from simple shopping carts to advanced auction and subscription based modules. You may still have to buy the module but it would likely be in the $500 range or less.
If you need a Tech Guy to implement it, it will save you alot of money if you already have the solution paid for and the website up. I'll bet an eLancer would do it for less than $1K, probably closer to $500.

I hope that helps! Bootstrapping is hard but essential for every entrepreneur!

Scott

I wish one of the CMS's would be compaitble but my idea is completly far off from the purpose those serve. I made a mock auction on what I needed done and it was very expensive. $5,000 and up. I might have to bite the bullet and take that route but I will have to do some saving first.

 

[EastWind]

Hey guys, I need some advice on a startup I have been planning for a few years.

I have an online business idea I plan on starting in the next few months. Throughout college, I wrote the business plan for this startup. The website will require extensive php programming which I have no knowledge of up until 3 months ago. I bought a book and started studying php. I am 3 months in and realize that to build the site I desire, I am a long way off. Here is my plan... I will start to write the code for the site and learn everyday, adding the features neccessary. I think this will take minimum a year to complete. My concern is that the final product won't be as functional as I had planned. In addition, this idea will take credit cards through a merchant account so I am a little bit concerned with security.

My other option is to hire a coder on elance to build the site for me. It would cost somewhere around $5000 but I assume they would build it to my needs. I know eventually, if this project becomes successful I woudl have to hire a php engineer. Does anyone have any advice on the best route to take?

Best advice? Save your money. Do it yourself. Stop worrying about getting it perfect. Just get to doing it and writing code. Don't try to perfect it. Try to get it to market faster. 1yr is a very very long time. Shoot for 3 months. I never wrote PHP code until Jan. I bought a book too, started learning, started writing. It's coming together. At first slow, then it builds up. Then the interface will be ugly, then with time, you learn to polish it up. In the next 3 months, I will be on par with people who have been writing PHP codes for 5yrs. It all comes from the doing. DO IT. START NOW!

 

[Icy]

Best advice? Save your money. Do it yourself. Stop worrying about getting it perfect. Just get to doing it and writing code. Don't try to perfect it. Try to get it to market faster. 1yr is a very very long time. Shoot for 3 months. I never wrote PHP code until Jan. I bought a book too, started learning, started writing. It's coming together. At first slow, then it builds up. Then the interface will be ugly, then with time, you learn to polish it up. In the next 3 months, I will be on par with people who have been writing PHP codes for 5yrs. It all comes from the doing. DO IT. START NOW!

Sorry dude, but this is a VERY ignorant statement. Being able to just make the same thing appear on the screen doesn't equate to being on par. You'll learn soon enough if your web app becomes popular.

 

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[EastWind]

Sorry dude, but this is a VERY ignorant statement. Being able to just make the same thing appear on the screen doesn't equate to being on par. You'll learn soon enough if your web app becomes popular.

No, you are the one that is ignorant. Don't tell me that my statement is ignorant.

You don't know me or my abilities. You don't know what I can or can't do. So don't tell me I can't do it until you have interviewed me.

I give a F if my app grows to support a billion people. It will scale.

It's not rocket science. it's basic simple coding. Thanks!

 

[Icy]

I'll send ya a PM later to elaborate on this. Please just don't think I'm talking out my a$$ though. I've been programming since 9 or 10, but not a "real" language until 12. When you first learn to program (especially an OOP language in my experience) it feels like you know all there could be to know within the first few months. Later on though different concepts really start to make sense, like polymorphism, inheritance, etc and it opens up many new realms.

 

[NoMoneyDown]

Just my 2 cents ...

If this is extensive (and it sure sounds like it with that price tag) and you are just learning PHP, I would opt for the others who suggest outsourcing the work. The real question is do you want to be a coder or do you want to run a business? Sure, there are many who do both, but usually after they have already mastered the skill. Believe me, trying to get something up (quickly) while learning it at the same time will only lead to wasted resources (mainly time) that you could be spending elsewhere. I'm not saying you shouldn't learn it, but not to learn and code and run a business at the same time. Learn it so you will understand when it comes time for the maintenance part of the development cycle.

If you do opt to do it yourself, you'll need to not only learn PHP, but more-than-likely need to understand and implement many other things at the same time in order to make your code easier to maintain. IOW, what modules will you need? What framework will you be using (e.g., CodeIgnitor, ZendFramework)? What about scalibility and extensibility?

 

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[LightHouse]

I'll send ya a PM later to elaborate on this. Please just don't think I'm talking out my a$$ though. I've been programming since 9 or 10, but not a "real" language until 12. When you first learn to program (especially an OOP language in my experience) it feels like you know all there could be to know within the first few months. Later on though different concepts really start to make sense, like polymorphism, inheritance, etc and it opens up many new realms.

I agree with this wholeheartly as I have seen it many times( not necc in direction to EastWind though). You might be able to make something show up on a screen right but it doesnt mean much in the end. My needs have shifted from making the website show up, to make a website do magic and a rapid pace. Learning and experience gtes you there through trial and testing for each end goal.

Best advice? Save your money. Do it yourself. Stop worrying about getting it perfect. Just get to doing it and writing code. Don't try to perfect it. Try to get it to market faster. 1yr is a very very long time. Shoot for 3 months. I never wrote PHP code until Jan. I bought a book too, started learning, started writing. It's coming together. At first slow, then it builds up. Then the interface will be ugly, then with time, you learn to polish it up. In the next 3 months, I will be on par with people who have been writing PHP codes for 5yrs. It all comes from the doing. DO IT. START NOW!

I do not agree with this however. Especially if the goal is to make it direct site sales i would advice going with a CMS and hiring not only a experienced programmer but also a server and code security provider to lock the thing down. Learning all the faucets of what it takes to provide a scalable app that can handle high security needs is going to take far too much coding for someone new to do it correctly. The time is better spent getting the money, having it built and having a dev copy of the site to continue to learn from and build out features.

At least that would be the route i would take if I were in this position.

 

[EastWind]

I think a lot of you miss the essence of a startup. When you are a startup. You bootstrap yourself. You learn and do damn near everything yourself. You don't throw money at problems, because you don't have it. Your lack of money becomes your motivation to figure out ingenious solutions. You try to get to market fast, and to start making profit fast. Now once you are making profit, no matter how small it is. You start throwing that profit back into the business, and as you see more profit, you keep repeating. Then one day, throwing that profit back in, might mean hiring a much more competent admin/engineer.

Think google, yahoo, ebay, facebook myspace,twitter, youtube. All the guys that started it, pretty much started doing the initial coding themselves, then they hired better engineers down the line. Now if all you want to do is sales and something pretty much common. Then, you can hire a programmer to customize an existing software framework that meets your demand. But if your site is very unique/different and has to be custom developed from the ground up. Do it yourself.

The only people who are allowed to throw money at problems are those who have demonstrated at least a rough implementation, and get funding. Or those who are very well off (semi-retired) who got an idea, don't feel like doing the grunt work and wanna hire an engineer. My opinion of course. The rest of you, are better of taking the learning curve and learning. You understand the system better, how it can grow, the limitations, etc.

You get ready for that 3am call. If you get called at 3am because something went wrong with your site. Who do you call? Can you get it up? If you build it yourself, you almost always can bring it up fast if you are not dealing with data corruption. But if you didn't build it yourself, and your programmer is not reachable, and you have to hire a new programmer. That might be the death of your business. Your programmer has no loyalty to you. After you pay them, they are on to the next project. Most programmers hate to maintain, chase bugs, or document. However, you can do this if you built it yourself OR have a partner who is a programmer.

Another way to explain it is like this. If you wanted to get into real estate, fixing up houses and you don't have a lot of money. The best way is to learn to do alot of things yourselves. Learn to paint, learn to sand down an old hardwood floor and polish it and have it look like new, learn to sweat copper, learn to change a door and window. Learn to clean, Learn to do landscaping. Just by doing a lot of these, you can save money. As you get richer, then you will get to the point where you can start hiring others, delegating tasks.

START UP. BOOTSTRAP. DIY.

If anyone on here pulls off a fastlane concept

a) without getting involved in the grunt work
b) or without having a partner that will do the grunt work.
c) or by just hiring someone for a limited amount of time to get you up and running and not keeping them full time.
I do love to know!

 

[LightHouse]

I think a lot of you miss the essence of a startup. When you are a startup. You bootstrap yourself. You learn and do damn near everything yourself. You don't throw money at problems, because you don't have it. Your lack of money becomes your motivation to figure out ingenious solutions. You try to get to market fast, and to start making profit fast. Now once you are making profit, no matter how small it is. You start throwing that profit back into the business, and as you see more profit, you keep repeating. Then one day, throwing that profit back in, might mean hiring a much more competent admin/engineer.

Think google, yahoo, ebay, facebook myspace,twitter, youtube. All the guys that started it, pretty much started doing the initial coding themselves, then they hired better engineers down the line. Now if all you want to do is sales and something pretty much common. Then, you can hire a programmer to customize an existing software framework that meets your demand. But if your site is very unique/different and has to be custom developed from the ground up. Do it yourself.

The only people who are allowed to throw money at problems are those who have demonstrated at least a rough implementation, and get funding. Or those who are very well off (semi-retired) who got an idea, don't feel like doing the grunt work and wanna hire an engineer. My opinion of course. The rest of you, are better of taking the learning curve and learning. You understand the system better, how it can grow, the limitations, etc.

You get ready for that 3am call. If you get called at 3am because something went wrong with your site. Who do you call? Can you get it up? If you build it yourself, you almost always can bring it up fast if you are not dealing with data corruption. But if you didn't build it yourself, and your programmer is not reachable, and you have to hire a new programmer. That might be the death of your business. Your programmer has no loyalty to you. After you pay them, they are on to the next project. Most programmers hate to maintain, chase bugs, or document. However, you can do this if you built it yourself OR have a partner who is a programmer.

Another way to explain it is like this. If you wanted to get into real estate, fixing up houses and you don't have a lot of money. The best way is to learn to do alot of things yourselves. Learn to paint, learn to sand down an old hardwood floor and polish it and have it look like new, learn to sweat copper, learn to change a door and window. Learn to clean, Learn to do landscaping. Just by doing a lot of these, you can save money. As you get richer, then you will get to the point where you can start hiring others, delegating tasks.

START UP. BOOTSTRAP. DIY.

If anyone on here pulls off a fastlane concept

a) without getting involved in the grunt work
b) or without having a partner that will do the grunt work.
c) or by just hiring someone for a limited amount of time to get you up and running and not keeping them full time.
I do love to know!

I started from $0, worked my way up. Didn't develop a thing. I am only now learning programming to understand my needs better. I was a 'bootstrap' if you want to call it that. Starting with nothing does not mean you need to do everything yourself. Sometimes that will land you in a worse position then when you started if you have loopholes in your CC processing and hackers get in. Maybe if you want to create your own job that's great, i know that wasn't my plans.

You sound as though you have been through it all, what's your background with creating your own sites/apps? I would love to see some of your successes where you drew all this knowledge. (Don't take this offensivly, it's not meant that way)

 

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[Icy]

In addition to what Lighthouse said, do some research on the people who started all those companies you mentioned. Just about every single one of them (minus Ebay) had people with years and years of computer\web experience before embarking on it.

On that note, many of those could "afford" to have flaws in their security. Sure, in the beginning Yahoo could have had something like their database hacked (i.e. deleted), but this poses very little risk to the consumer in comparison to vulnerability in a database with CC's.

You can afford to make everything yourself in the beginning if the information is not so important and having it stolen would not screw your customers.

You get ready for that 3am call. If you get called at 3am because something went wrong with your site. Who do you call? Can you get it up? If you build it yourself, you almost always can bring it up fast if you are not dealing with data corruption. But if you didn't build it yourself, and your programmer is not reachable, and you have to hire a new programmer. That might be the death of your business. Your programmer has no loyalty to you. After you pay them, they are on to the next project. Most programmers hate to maintain, chase bugs, or document. However, you can do this if you built it yourself OR have a partner who is a programmer.

Thinking most problems you'll experience can fixed "fast" barring data corruption, yourself is really demonstrating your inexperence. I really don't mean this in an offensive way, but I couldn't figure out a "polite" way to put it. You'll be experience problems that aren't going to be just change a few lines of code in a method and everything is all better.

Where do you get the idea that programmers hate to maintain code? It's certainly not as exciting as the "first draft", but maintenance\bug fixes is the most time consuming part when programming

 

[EastWind]

I started from $0, worked my way up. Didn't develop a thing. I am only now learning programming to understand my needs better. I was a 'bootstrap' if you want to call it that. Starting with nothing does not mean you need to do everything yourself. Sometimes that will land you in a worse position then when you started if you have loopholes in your CC processing and hackers get in. Maybe if you want to create your own job that's great, i know that wasn't my plans.

You sound as though you have been through it all, what's your background with creating your own sites/apps? I would love to see some of your successes where you drew all this knowledge. (Don't take this offensivly, it's not meant that way)

if you started from $0, and didn't develop a thing, then you had someone else develop it. and that person most likely was a partner and not a one time contract programmer. else, how did you "develop" the tech behind your site/ecommerce business?

 

[wildambitions]

Are you SURE that the existing CMS mentioned (and my personal favorite, WordPress) cannot at least get you started? They are all PHP. You may then only need to have the plugin written.

 

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[Bond]

I too decided to do it on my own.
I didn't know about php until january when i told to my self that i would learn and put together a web app.
After talking to some guys in the health industry about my idea, i chose Codeigniter and started on Feb 7 to get the feeling of it.
Now almost 2 months later the first version of my online appointment for doctors is ready. Did it all myself, learned php, mysql, jquery...
Next phase is to go out and show it to potential doctors and get some contracts signed, that will happen starting tuesday next week...

When hiring someone please make sure you know how to handle it.
My brother hired some guys to do him a site where he could sell his designer suits Eduardo Xavier - Exclusive Luxury Men's Suits and several months away it's still not finished and he's starting to have orders and this situation is driving him nuts...
Things that are granted to have in a site like that they say it's an extra feature and you know how that ends...

 

[EastWind]

First of all, I do like to reiterate that I'm saying this for those who want to make custom e-commerce sites. Something revolutionary. Not those who just want to setup an online store, blog or basic web forum.

If you want to be the first myspace, facebook, google, youtube, ebay, you got an idea that is revolutionary in nature and you have to custom code it. Then what I'm saying applies to you. You just want a basic website for your local business, want to sell items, simple referrer services, blog, a forum like this site, then this doesn't apply to you.

In addition to what Lighthouse said, do some research on the people who started all those companies you mentioned. Just about every single one of them (minus Ebay) had people with years and years of computerweb experience before embarking on it.

come on now, google guys (larry & page) did it themselves, they implemented google page rank. facebook guy mark did so himself, twitter guy too, yahoo guys too, they only got additional people after their sites took off. This is what I'm saying. do as much as you can, if you are sitting on a good idea, your site will take off fast, then once it takes off, get some professional help. however, it will be a waste to really spend $5000 on an idea that never takes off and you end up with 100users. However, if you are certain that your idea is so great and will definitely take off fast and you got the money, hey, don't let me slow you down. Hire a programmer if that is what suits you and get to market asap hopefully he delivers on time with no excuses.

On that note, many of those could "afford" to have flaws in their security. Sure, in the beginning Yahoo could have had something like their database hacked (i.e. deleted), but this poses very little risk to the consumer in comparison to vulnerability in a database with CC's.

Not all e-commerce sites start dealing with CC issues, sometimes you need to build a marketplace first and grow, so as the market place is growing, then you can tackle that issue of security. Don't think that any cracker wouldn't hack your site just because you used a "professional" programmer. a lot of those online programmers for hire ain't worth ish! there is more to a programmer than you getting hacked. There are other issues that is beyond the programmer such as the security level of your OS, keeping up to date with your web server, DB server, ssh, making sure your users are using strong password, etc. that is sysadmin issue. what are you going to do? hire a fulltime sys admin to keep your box secure while you are just starting out? or learn basic unix admin?

Where do you get the idea that programmers hate to maintain code? It's certainly not as exciting as the "first draft", but maintenancebug fixes is the most time consuming part when programming

most programmers hate to maintain code, i didn't say all. did i? most hate to maintain code, hate to debug, will always choose to rewrite, and end up with new and improved with new bugs. why do you think software systems are so buggy?

But we are getting off topic from the original topic. I offered my opinion. It is my opinion. Everyone is not technically oriented, even tho I believe anyone can become whatever they want to be, if they really want to be. If you don't want to be, then there's no point in being so. Hire someone, or partner with someone.

 

[EastWind]

I too decided to do it on my own.
I didn't know about php until january when i told to my self that i would learn and put together a web app.
After talking to some guys in the health industry about my idea, i chose Codeigniter and started on Feb 7 to get the feeling of it.
Now almost 2 months later the first version of my online appointment for doctors is ready. Did it all myself, learned php, mysql, jquery...
Next phase is to go out and show it to potential doctors and get some contracts signed, that will happen starting tuesday next week...

When hiring someone please make sure you know how to handle it.
My brother hired some guys to do him a site where he could sell his designer suits Eduardo Xavier - Exclusive Luxury Men's Suits and several months away it's still not finished and he's starting to have orders and this situation is driving him nuts...
Things that are granted to have in a site like that they say it's an extra feature and you know how that ends...

thank you!

and when you go show it to your potential customers. they might say,
"we wish it had this or that, or we wish it did this differently"
and, you may be able to get it to do all of those in a day or less.

however, IF you had gone with an outside programmer, you will have to track em down and hope they don't have another project. pay them, schedule another appointment with your clients, go back, get feedback, repeat. and this is assuming the programmer is available. what could take a day, starts to take a week.

if the programmer has another major project, yours get lower priority, and his "few days" can turn into "weeks". if he is not available, you have to get a new developer, who will have to spend time understanding the new code base, if he is smart, he wouldn't screw it up. if he is not. he will end up making something good worse, or even worse, deciding that the old programmer didn't implement things write and start rewriting/rebuilding everything from scratch.

 

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[Icy]

come on now, google guys (larry & page) did it themselves, they implemented google page rank. facebook guy mark did so himself, twitter guy too, yahoo guys too, they only got additional people after their sites took off. This is what I'm saying. do as much as you can, if you are sitting on a good idea, your site will take off fast, then once it takes off, get some professional help. however, it will be a waste to really spend $5000 on an idea that never takes off and you end up with 100users. However, if you are certain that your idea is so great and will definitely take off fast and you got the money, hey, don't let me slow you down. Hire a programmer if that is what suits you and get to market asap hopefully he delivers on time with no excuses.

I agree, they started it by themselves, but these guys didn't just start learning to program and in a few months make it. These guys had years of background learning on their own simply because they loved to do it. Not a few months as they made it.

Not all e-commerce sites start dealing with CC issues, sometimes you need to build a marketplace first and grow, so as the market place is growing, then you can tackle that issue of security. Don't think that any cracker wouldn't hack your site just because you used a "professional" programmer. a lot of those online programmers for hire ain't worth ish! there is more to a programmer than you getting hacked. There are other issues that is beyond the programmer such as the security level of your OS, keeping up to date with your web server, DB server, ssh, making sure your users are using strong password, etc. that is sysadmin issue. what are you going to do? hire a fulltime sys admin to keep your box secure while you are just starting out? or learn basic unix admin?

Yes, there are issues that would be outside of a web programmers element. This does not mean you can disregard other security measures. It'd be much easier to take advantage of a website created by someone who doesn't truly understand (I don't
mean just having things work between user\server) what they're doing than some of the other issues you stated.

Just because you wouldn't be dealing with CC issues from the start why are you going to put your customers information in harms way when you know you're doing it?

most programmers hate to maintain code, i didn't say all. did i? most hate to maintain code, hate to debug, will always choose to rewrite, and end up with new and improved with new bugs. why do you think software systems are so buggy?

I'll respond to just how you state it works... There are bugs because they are complex programs created by a team. Get to this point and you'll see it's not so easy to have a bug free program.

But we are getting off topic from the original topic. I offered my opinion. It is my opinion. Everyone is not technically oriented, even tho I believe anyone can become whatever they want to be, if they really want to be. If you don't want to be, then there's no point in being so. Hire someone, or partner with someone.

Yeah, it's not 100% topic, but I feel it gives the OP more to think about than just having someone tell him to do one or the other. I do agree with you though that anyone can become what ever they want (or better yet, "need") to become.

 

[sk24iam]

Does anyone know of any successful startups that began with hiring a freelancer to write the original code?

 

[Jonleehacker]

Does anyone know of any successful startups that began with hiring a freelancer to write the original code?

Digg, it's a famouse eLance case study where Kevin Rose hired some guy for $300 bucks to start Digg.com

 

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[Bond]

Digg, it's a famouse eLance case study where Kevin Rose hired some guy for $300 bucks to start Digg.com

Actually was for several thousand dollars and some equity, less than 10%...

 

[EastWind]

Actually was for several thousand dollars and some equity, less than 10%...

yeah you are right, the programmer Owen? joined them. that's what I'm saying. if you can't code, be prepared to keep the programmer on board, full time. if you pay them too little, then you will have to offer them some % of the game., if you pay them too much, they may still want some percentage and might try to sabotage your project or compete against you since they already have the code.

another way i can put it is this, imagine you are an aspiring film writer and movie director. you come up with an idea for a movie, but you don't put in the grunt work. so you hire some guy to develop the script, then this same guy has the camera and get's to shoot and direct it. what you get to do is produce, promote it. well it's so easy for this guy to run away with the script and films, unless you keep him close by and happy. if the guy does leave, and you find a flaw in your script, you wouldn't be able to rewrite because you haven't learned how to write script, and if a scene needs to be shoot all over due to a mistake, you don't know how to work the cameras either and can't even reshoot or do editing. you are putting too much in one person's hand. there are always exceptions, but the norm is that people tend to come out losing. check this forum, a lot of people who have hired programmers have had bad experiences. being delivered late, etc.

anywayz, i'm done preaching this. people will do what they want to. if you got the money go for it, if you dare not to scared, get your hands dirty a lil bit and do some work yourself.

 

[NoMoneyDown]

The big trade-off here is the old "time vs. money" aspect (although, knowledge plays a huge part as well). Do you want to spend time learning a new programming language and all its intricacies and at the same time learning to run a business, or is your time very limited? You can definitely throw something up in a few days or a week (I have), but how reliable is it? How scalable is it? How extensible is it? (Or, does it even need to be any of those?)

Another aspect that hasn't gotten much attention in this thread is beginning to think like a business owner. Sure, you can handle the programming, and the calling, and the maintenance, and accounting, and the taxes, and so on and so on. But in order to climb the ladder of wealth you have got to start understanding the power of a network, and how your network will not only provide you with expertise in specific areas you THINK you may know, but will free your time so you can actually concentrate on your BUSINESS.

 

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[sk24iam]

Thank you everyone for your advice. Here is my plan. It will cost at least $5,000 to hire an elance programmer. I will start to save to make that investment. In the meantime, I will spend time designing the front end as well as learning php. I also have a friend who is a computer science engineer. Although he doesn't do work with webdesign, maybe he can help me out if I need it.

My business idea is not anything revolutionary. It is taking something that is already out there and simplifying it. Unfortunatly, simplifying this for users requires a complex backend to funciton correctly. The key is to make everything simpler than what is currently offered to the market, which is why the design is such a key part of this project.

 

[sk24iam]

Anyone know of any other successful startups that utilized freelancers to create their site?

Also, I noticed many bids on elance state that it is just a preliminary estimate and a final price would be adjusted for upon plan details. This makes me think that most coders will jack up the price. The one time I used elance, anything I needed done that wasn't clearly described in the bid project cost me more money.

 

[EastWind]

Anyone know of any other successful startups that utilized freelancers to create their site?

Also, I noticed many bids on elance state that it is just a preliminary estimate and a final price would be adjusted for upon plan details. This makes me think that most coders will jack up the price. The one time I used elance, anything I needed done that wasn't clearly described in the bid project cost me more money.

there is no definite IF's in life. but there are a bunch of mosts. I look at numbers, from a statistic and probability point of view. Sure, there may be one, two or a few startups who have utilized freelancers to create their site. But in majority of the case, successful startups don't utilize freelancer, the owner's created it themselves OR partnered with some who could create it. It's this simple. This is my main reason for encouraging you all to get involved in part of the creation process and pick up a little bit of coding.

 

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[Bond]

Pick up a copy of Codeigniter(i found it the most easy php framework to work with, others choose CakePhp or Symfony, etc) and build a skeleton and improve it. It's easy to get started, you have a good community to help you out and since they have many libraries already done, it's easy to build an app relatively fast. Use a Auth library to do the login and registrations, Validation to get the forms validated, build forms, etc, etc... Once you begin you'll see that you can do it :smxB:

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Auth library

Can you explain this? Is that a website? A tool in the software?