The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

please evaluate my website

scatterbrain

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
7%
Aug 23, 2012
28
2
42
www.hydroenergyjobs.com

this was my first test run on anything web related.
i had an idea, hired a web designer on odesk ($300 for this one), and now wondering what to do next? I know it could use a lot of work, still.

i became an affiliate with indeed.com.

Should i cold call human resource departments at power companies and try to list their open positions on my site, getting a premium for each job filled through my site?

looking for all criticism, negative and positive.

thanks
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Gold777

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
32%
Nov 3, 2011
294
95
You f*cked up.

No but seriously, the site is ugly and looks like it's half done, it also looks cheaply done (and $300 is cheap for a web design). Half the buttons lead to no where or blank pages...

You should have done a lot more research before wasting your money on this. YES there is a time where you can do too much research, but it's almost as if you have did NONE. Actually you even pretty much admit it, you say you had an idea and went straight to hiring the designer. In this day and age, that isn't going to work anymore. Now you're asking what you should do NEXT?

Jesus... You're also violating the commandment of control.

I would suggest you either do what you think you need to do next, and then fail so you can learn from it.

OR

You go do some real research, look at sites that are similar to yours and successful (if you still want to continue with the idea) and see how you can do something better than them, or improve on what they already have. Then you come back, hire a new designer (a good quality designer, should cost you around $700+), and give it another go.

Before you make your site, you need to know almost EXACTLY what will be on it. You need to have the pages either mapped out in a document, or in your head. Then you need to be on top of the development, when the designer says he's done or asks what he should work on next, you need to be able to quickly analyze everything that has been done and what needs to be fixed/tweaked/added. You will need to hire a programmer if you plan on doing anything that will require advanced functionality (admin panel, login/registration, in-site job search, profiles, etc).

This was a bad test run for ya man.

If you need a new designer, I'll hook you up with mine. The designer you just paid just made an easy $300 for half-assed work, probably one the easiest and sloppiest $300 he ever made. Either he barely knew English, or he just plain took advantage of you and knew how inexperienced you were.

Can I ask, why you decided to act on this idea anyway? Was it random? Or do you have a goal in mind?
 

LightHouse

Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
163%
Aug 13, 2007
4,297
6,995
Northern VA
Yeah I am going to have to concur... This looks half done. You could have done better yourself with wordpress and a premium template. It looks like you are half assing. Read around the internet part of this forum, go back in time with the threads and you will come up with a lot of good info. Good luck, let us see the re-do when you get it done.
 

hlopez22

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
45%
Jan 3, 2012
64
29
This is a terrible website. Looks like someone installed Joomla and added a menu bar. For $300 I would've done a better job but then again I'm in it to help people not make a quick buck. Either way $300 for a professional coder is too low for what you want. Also remember you need at least two people a programmer (makes the website work) and a designer (makes the website look good). A good looking website can't work without proper code and a crappy looking website turns off users and questions your credibilitiy. Next time make sure to protect yourself in case you receive bad work like saying you will not pay until you are happy with the final product. Yet for $300 not many will want to work with you and actually give you what you want. You are better off learning how to do stuff yourself if your budget is that low.

Your execution of your idea is quite dumb to be honest. You just pasted an Indeed job search onto your website so what people will do on your website can easily be done on Indeed. There is no real value in your website. You need to first realize how you will create value for your users and research if the value is really wanted by your demographic. You just went from idea to website really fast. Don't worry though that's happened to me as well and I own a few domains because of it. Yet I also do have websites that work and generate revenue and that's because I didn't jump the gun and I did research.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

johnp

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Aug 29, 2011
1,707
2,675
Philly
people not make a quick buck. Either way $300 for a professional coder is too low for what you want. Also remember you need at least two people a programmer (makes the website work) and a designer (makes the website look good).

While this is good advice, you do have to be-careful here. Some designers will get you too hung up on designs and you can lose time. In a lot of cases lost time = money. They don't mind if you ask them to redo a design 3-4 times, because that is just adding to the price. My biggest mistake that I ever made when I first started (other than outsourcing to India) was that I spent about 4 months on designs. I feel sick thinking about it now. I would tell my designers exactly what to do. I couldn't have made it more clear. Yet they would still screw up. It got to the point where I began to wonder if they were messing up on purpose. They got fired and I changed my ways.

Anyway, if you want to be realistic about it, you can get it coded with decent designs and then enhanced with good designs in under a week. Think of the development and design of your site as an ongoing and never ending process.
 

aptohosting

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
21%
Aug 16, 2007
360
76
North Carolina

TK1

Silver Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
110%
Mar 31, 2011
626
686
Thanks for the referral TK!

OP we can definitely improve your site and get help you find the best way to monetize it. Shoot me an email at tom at aptohq.com

You're welcome, I refer any site to you I see - and it's incredible how many need your help.

Hope your business is doing very well?
 

Bruce

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
43%
Feb 1, 2012
111
48
Canada
Not to discourage you OP but next time you should have a expectation of quality from freelancers.

I really think people who hire freelancers should have an idea of what good quality of work is. Seriously the guy who created this site seems to be a HUGE noob. I'd pay a lot less for this kind of work.

Favourite part of the source code in the jobs section was this part:
Code:
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="clear"></div> etc.
 

scatterbrain

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
7%
Aug 23, 2012
28
2
42
Can I ask, why you decided to act on this idea anyway? Was it random? Or do you have a goal in mind?

thank you everyone for the advice. You are right on all points. I half assed an idea straight to website, with no plan or knowledge of what to do.

yes it was completely random, but i wanted it to be useful. I had noticed that it would serve a need. People from all over are looking for jobs online. It was serve as a niche specialty career center trying to be different than the same search engines, but i decided to go with the indeed.com affiliate redirect for the time being, before i knew what i wanted to do. I really had no direction in the way I wanted it to work. But i know i needed a website and idea and I could build on that along the way.

and if you think that website is bad, i have others that are even worse. my first test run was a complete disaster on all accounts. but i have tons of ideas, just wish i knew a way of capitalizing on the right ones
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Guest682

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
53%
Jul 29, 2012
76
40
I'm sorry about your site bro, I feel like you could have gotten a little more out of the contractor for $300.00 especially being from oDesk, they are like your employees and the last thing they want is a bad rating.
 

Yussef

Knowledge Recycler
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
76%
Jan 30, 2012
655
497
I have been learning a lot lately about SEO from a course called BringTheFresh. Even if your not going to build the site yourself it helps to know some good SEO techniques so that once your site is built you can optimize it with the right plug ins and keywords and keep your page ranking good without paying someone else to do it.

It doesn't matter how nice your site looks if no one sees it. A member on this forum blasted me about not knowing about SEO and he was absolutely right for doing so and I thank him for that. Learn that before anything else. It is your key to success online.
 
D

Deleted13247

Guest
wow some people can be harsh...yea you dropped the ball on this one but it doesn’t mean they should kick you while your down.
Just some things I noticed after 30 sec on the site:

1) no Logo- looks like i would stumble on by accident when i misspell a domain name.
2) top right corner of the page has a box- what’s that for...?
3)What would a user "search" for?
4) Why wouldn’t a user just go to indeed directly?
5)No content on the homepage and the "sky" is a bit over the top taking up valuable space
6) Log in- is this is supposed to be an intermediary for potential employees and potential employers why not make it an exclusive club by requiring username/pw. I wouldn’t want to look for a job from there. Indeed.com is very helpful and helped me land my first job out of college.

Your one step ahead of most people by actually doing so congrats on that. Good idea just not executed the best way. Keep on tinkering with it and best of luck
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

Latest Posts

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top