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Posted by adam.dada on June 12th, 2006
I found a link over at Darren the ProBlogger’s site to talks about the costs of web design. After reading the comments on both sites, I realized that most wannabe entrepreneurs are absolutely clueless in money issues, and it scares me to see people trying to earn money without understanding what it is they’re trying to do.
In business, costs are irrelevant. There is no “too expensive” or “too cheap” price to a product or service, since every product and every service is unique every time it is sold or bartered for. Web design is a huge business today, but not in the number of quality designers — there are hundreds of thousands of terrible web designers trying to sell their services. Does this mean these terrible ones are too expensive, no matter what? Not at all — “too expensive” doesn’t exist.
When you are in business (or even just a consumer), you have to look at every bit of money or time spent and see if the spending is efficient in your business (or life). Will buying a certain product or service be cheaper in the long run than making it yourself? Is the product that you can make yourself going to be as good as the one you’ll hire out? Unless you’re a great graphic designer, the answer is yes — it is often times better to hire a professional than to try to attempt it yourself.
I’m amazed that someone can look at a great web design for US$3000 and think it is too expensive. A great web design involves years of experience in knowing what code works, but also requires years of experience in knowing what graphics design is useful for. Understanding fonts, placements, layouts, colors and overall look-and-feel is not something that comes naturally to 90% of people out there. They know when something looks wrong or right, but they have no idea how to change things. This is where a pro comes in.
A good entrepreneur should have no problem earning US$80-US$150 per hour on a contract basis. Can you make a great website in 20-40 hours? I doubt it (many of my friends who think they could have shown me that they couldn’t do it in 50 hours or 100 hours, too). I’m no web designer (as you can tell), but as soon as I am ready to promote my sites more, I’ll be hiring someone to create something new and interesting and unqiue — this is what a good designer does for you.
In all my businesses I’ve owned, I never cleaned my facilities myself. I hired it out. A cleaning crew could do in 2 hours (and for under US$100) what took me a week and hundreds more in cleaning products and trash collection. I hired it out because they were cheaper and more efficient than myself. I never bothered to have my own answering machine or voice mail — I hired out answering services that took great notes, prioritized my messages and even paged me in emergencies. It was cheaper and more efficient to have someone else do the work!
Don’t automatically look at certain business expenses as “too expensive” or “worthless” until you realize how much time you’re saving, how much money you might save in the long run, and how useful the item or service will be to your income. People don’t charge more than they’re worth — if they did, they’d be out of business very quickly. Don’t mock or criticize others without understanding what is involved in their work, and if paying them to do something for you saves you time and money, be happy that you found someone able to make your life easier.
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