Startup Idea.. Looking for web designer to partner with

[tafy]

Idea: Rent a website idea for small business (not new idea but has potential imo)

Current Players:

http://www.rent-a-website.biz (£10 - £20 a month)
http://www.ukrentawebsite.co.uk (£69 - £149 a month)
http://www.rentawebsite123.co.uk (£10 a month)
http://www.webdesign-4u.net (£25 a month)
http://www.payasugowebsite.co.uk (£30 - £275 a month)
http://www.renttheweb.com (£27 - £38 a month)

There are probably a few more, these are uk ones only..

Now I know I could hire a web designer from elancer/odesk etc but I would like to find a partner ideally. Someone with skin in the game, someone who will design great websites and give support.

If you take a look at the portfolio of these guys even I could make a better website aslong as I had a premium theme...

the business would use professional wordpress themes ideally, the website creation should take a couple of hours, professional hours.

Problem: The business is established with an out of date website
Solution: Rent from us for £20 a month, no contract, fees, setup costs. Rebuild after 1-2 years if req

Problem: Startup Company needs a website from scratch
Solution: Charge a set-up fee, and charge £20 a month same as normal plan

Problem: Business requires slightly more upscale website
Solution: Premuim option £35 a month with extra benefits

I need a website designer to go into this with me, who is up for it? Lets say we get 10 businesses under our belt, that would mean an income of £200 a month for the business, but the hosting charge will be around $10-20 dollars depending on the traffic. The ultimate goal would be reaching enough customers that you the original web designer will outsource the jobs and check the quality of work.

Goal: 100 customers, £2000 a month. Fastlane? Yes as we can scale, and the value is there. I have had plenty of quotes for website design and they are £1000 + and without hosting and maintenance...

You will have to set up the business website first, I will get the leads, rent servers, domain.

DM me if you are interested. thx

 

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[AndrewNC]

If you're asking to find a partner on this who will put in the bulk of the technical work, it would benefit you to list what you bring to the table that they couldn't do on their own.

What do you bring to the table?

 

[tafy]

Thats true! they could do all this on their own...

Alternatively I could outsource the design and buy professional themes.. I just thought a partnership would be better, it could lead to conflict if one is doing more than the other i guess.

I may start this solo but I was worried about getting good web designers, maybe I should just go for it!

Your right about what I can bring. I will do everything except build websites.

Support, simple modifications, hosting, management, domain purchase, theme purchase, cold calling, invoicing setup.

 

[AndrewNC]

Your right about what I can bring. I will do everything except build websites.

cold calling.

If you want my opinion on this: Be able to get the sales. Once you start making the sales - then start worrying about everything else. Don't dance around the idea and waste months until you know you can turn this into a business.

I know how to program websites and I personally wouldn't jump on board with you. I could make sales by calling people myself and then build the sites and run it for 100% of the profit instead of 50%.

On the other hand if you came to me saying you have 100 people waiting for sites to be built at $2,000 a month recurring.... I would be enticed to jump on board. but at that point, you may be able to afford another solution and keep 100 of your company

Get the sales and the rest will follow.

 

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[tafy]

I know how to program websites and I personally wouldn't jump on board with you

The more I think about it, you are right ofcourse

I need to get some sales myself before setting up anything else. Once I get some sales I need to get them the website which means I will pay someone for it. Then I will have started my journey.

Ok how much will a website cost to outsource, I can create myself with a good theme but should I pay for a even better quality? the return for me would be £240 a year (Ifthey dont cancel) so I wouldnt want to spend more than £100 on any one website including theme cost.

 

[AndrewNC]

Ok how much will a website cost to outsource

There are many variables to that question. My friend spent $20,000 to get his website developed, or you can put a free wordpress theme on a $10 domain name and $6/month hosting. It depends on the needs of your customer.

 

[mentalic]

I am currently building something similar but targeted to B2B customers mostly. I don't post the URL since it is in semi-beta for now and we don't want to go public yet.

 

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[tafy]

I am currently building something similar but targeted to B2B customers mostly. I don't post the URL since it is in semi-beta for now and we don't want to go public yet.

Plenty of room for all of us mate! So many businesses need websites

 

[Tom.V]

Personally, I just don't see the need for a service like this. Why would anyone want to rent a website? Sounds like a terrible idea, IMO.

Now if you made websites for local businesses, ranked them in the search engines, then SOLD them to local businesses that would be a bit closer to the fastlane. Given you scaled it, of course.

 

[tafy]

Why would anyone want to rent a website?

Why would businesses want to lease a car? Instead of buying and maintaining it themselves?
Why would you rent a building? Why would you outsource certain parts of your business when its cheaper to keep in house?

We don't need every business to rent a website, but a certain small percentage will be enough. Business men have enough to do without messing around self hosting, or paying a large chunk of money on a website that will be out of date and EOL in 2-3 years.

The question should be why wouldn't you rent a website? No money upfront, leasing costs tax deductable, free website rebuilds, fully managed, secure etc all for what? £20 a month? lol why would you pay £1000 for a website and then pay £60 a year on hosting? then do it all again in 2-3 years...

 

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[TOS]

Test it. Set up a basic lead site with 2-3 renting plans. Then buy some traffic to see if there are anyone intrested (converts).

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

 

[Bercha]

I got into web design charging 200$ for simple 2 hour work wordpress websites, cold calling to get prospects and turning them into clients.

You can find easy money in web design, but its not a fastline long term business.

Trust me, its not easy to manage website creation. When you cold call, some people will want that 1,000+ pound solution. You will have to turn down clients or deliver 1,000 pound websites (huge headache project management vise).

Also, don't expect clients to write content. Ofcourse, you can leave the sites empty (thats what I did, I found a client, customized the WordPress twenty twelve theme to fit a design, got paid, gave instructions on adding content), but your portfolio will look so very poor. I actually started to get turned down after showing websites with no content on them.

Some clients will want you to customize the design, and you will end up working 30+ hours for a 200$ gig. Happened to me few times.

Even if you figure out how to deal with content, expect to get a call from your clients randomly few month after with some questions about something and requesting some more work.

I would say, out of the 20 pounds that you want to charge them, in reality, with writing content, sales reps, hosting, customer support, etc, etc, you will make maybe 2 pounds after taxes.

IMO its very hard to create a long term, profitable and fastline business with web design. If you can handle it and make it, imo you can make way more money running a SEO agency.

 

[tafy]

Thanks for the advice!

When I thought about it, £20 - £30 sounded reasonable. I actually thought it was a bit expensive? But then they have no upfront costs (on me) and to someone who wants a managed solution it is very reasonable.

I am in the process of making the home page and pricing structure, will see what leads I get in. I may also get some flyers made to go around my small town. Plenty of shitty looking websites in my town even for some half decent businesses.

I think what I need to be careful about is what you mentioned, not to get caught up with customers wanting the $1000 dollar websites and the headache that goes with it, I need to get the small business where its like 5 pages, looks good and they dont change much info or need much management. 80/20 rule here so any people creating hassle I will have to cut them off unless they behave or pay extra...

Im not in it to make big money sales but rather lots of customers where they are all paying me a small fee every month, ideally they already have a website where I can just copy their content over. If they have no trading history then I may have to charge 6 months in advance payment.

I will answer some of your points about the profit margin

Monthly rental $30
Web design - Either do it myself or outsource depending on what they are after (with theme it will come to around $100+)

Content - Hopefully they have content already if not I may need a copywriter which I will have to charge for (Customer pays + commission)

Sales Reps - Wont need any of these unless I am too busy which means I am already making money (I havent thought about this yet tbh)

Support - Maybe I am naive but I hope there wont be much support needed (Customers wont be allowed to mess with their websites, all fully managed and secured in amazon cloud server) There will be requests to update/change text etc on their websites which is kinda support right? depends on how often they want to change their stuff I guess. (Needs more thought)

Hosting - The cloud server is cheap I to host websites, especially simple wordpress websites with caching, I guess hosting will be like $2 a site.

I am not being defensive here btw I love talking business So anything I havent thought about or any flaws in my thinking I would love to hear it.

Business Idea
Advantages:
1. Regular income every month (cashflow)
2. Barrier to leave (customer will lose their website)
3. Easy entry (no upfront costs)

Disadvantages
1. Customer can leave after few months
2. Customer can leave to a similar service easily
3. Customer can be pain in the a$$ for just $30 a month
4. Build a site and customer doesnt go for it

 

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[pbl24]

There's good advice in this thread, but don't let it discourage you if you think there is potential in this idea. I'm a developer who has been approached by numerous 'idea guys' with some sort of super-disruptive-web3.0-facebook-killing-stealth idea, but they have no evidence to back up such claim. If this idea has merit, and you want to bring someone on board, you're going to need to convince them to commit their time. Go out and get 10-20 people committed to pay. That speaks volumes over a concept. Best of luck. Let us know how it goes.

 

[AndrewNC]

Go out and get 10-20 people committed to pay.

Go out and get ONE person to pay before you do ANYTHING ELSE. Come back to us when you do that.

 

[eqttrdr]

Personally, I just don't see the need for a service like this. Why would anyone want to rent a website? Sounds like a terrible idea, IMO..

I 100% agree.. makes no sense to me as a website aint a car.. If I am a small business owner or just some random individual I can make a super easy fast site using wix, one and one, wordpress, facebook page, etc

except dont listen to me because I know now I have no clue what I am talking about because I still cant believe for the life of me anyone needs a paint brush cover... either way you have to wash your freakin brush...

seems the ideas that will never work are the ones that actually do

 

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[Gale4rc]

I've built this exact thing (way better then those links you posted)


What I found:

People literally paid me $500+ upfront rather then pay $20/mo (no joke) doesn't make sense but, it is what it is.


Also I got a dozen people on the $20/mo plan and they canceled in less then 3 months

 

[tafy]

Ah someone who has actually done it! great. I guess you have quit this idea? all 12 people cancelled within a few months? did they say why?

Maybe it is a good idea to offer a pay upfront option for website also $500 and they do what you want with it kinda thing (better than losing them)

Did you let them manage their own website or was it managed by you?

 

[stranger]

If I want a website, i order one from a webmaster. I wouldn't rent a website just because i can't keep 100% control on a rent site.

Rent a website is just a good idea for scammers and other illegal stuff.

 

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[Gale4rc]

Ah someone who has actually done it! great. I guess you have quit this idea? all 12 people cancelled within a few months? did they say why?

Maybe it is a good idea to offer a pay upfront option for website also $500 and they do what you want with it kinda thing (better than losing them)

Did you let them manage their own website or was it managed by you?

Webdesign can be fast lane business, my friend made over $2million selling one template.

I didn't ask why, I should've but, was just fed up with the business. - BTW the site I used was http://builtforall.com

I managed their websites and updated it at any request they had - Eventually I would limit this was the goal but, in the start I wanted to see if it was a viable business and proved not to be.

 

[tafy]

I like your little video there, pretty cool! Well I will give it a go also, maybe it will work or maybe not. Wont cost much to find out either way. thx for the advice dude

 

[Bandy]

Any updates on this since I´m thinking about something similar.
Would love to hear about some of your experiences.

 

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[tafy]

Haha I forgot about this..

It could be a business but its not for me, I have moved on. If you can create websites well it may be worth a try but I cant and would have to pay someone to develop and copywrite for me.

 

[GuestUser152]

Been there done that. Not renting, just doing small business web design with wordpress templates. Free design, charge for hosting. $30/month. Essentially the same business. I had contracts locking them in for 2 years with a $300 cancellation early cancellation fee.

If anyone pursues this just send me a PM I think I've still got the contract I can share.

WPMUDEV Is a godsend when it comes to this type of business. You can run your business all from a multisite network. Wpmudev has a plugin called whmcs provisioning that integrates your network with whmcs billing service. They cancel service it will automatically take their site down, they miss a payment it takes it down, they pay it puts it back up. Completely automated for you.

It really allows you to focus just on selling more sites.

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