My company develops websites for small to medium sized businesses. I wrote a software package which allows site owners to create pages, upload pictures and track conversions on their website. Only minimal technical knowledge is required so it's pretty easy to do. If you can send email, you can manage your website using this system. Additionally, the system was developed to rank well on search engines.

You can create as many pages as you wish and upload as many pictures and files (example: MS Word/PDF) as you wish within hosting limits. I haven't had a company come close to maxing out their hosting limits yet.

The programming is very flexible. Your site can have almost any look you could want. It wouldn't have a 'blog' look, for instance, and you're not boxed inside a frame work.

The issue I'm having is determining how much the thing is worth to a small business. What's your company's budget for a website? Under $1000? $1000 to $5000? Do you even have a budget?

~Aaron
http://www.HighConversions.com

That sounds like a pretty good tool. The only thing that concerns me is that someone with limited technical knowledge is not going to pay a whole lot to build there own website, especially if they can get some software, freeware, or even buy a website dirt cheap. From my experience, a small business would pay a little more ($500 - $2500) for a professinal to build their site rather than opting for expensive software to build their own.

On that note, it does sound pretty interesting and I wouldn't mind looking at it and reviewing it on my site. Let me know what you think.

Chico
www.vital-knowledge.info

Check to find others who offer a similar product then call them about pricing. If you pose as an interested customer, they will give you some information that may help you.

We've seen their stuff and know their pricing. If you want to see a demo of this system you can, visit http://www.HighConversions.com and send us an email or call our office at 724-783-2248.

Chico is right on, about $5000 to $2500 for a well done 5 - 10 page site.

If you figure your pricing based on an hourly unit and you work at approximately $65 per hour (industry standard based on Salary.com) you put about 38 hours into a $2500 site. That's a full week. Of course there is some time you have to eat but as a whole thats fairly standard and as long as you are good a bidding out a price then you will be able to break even or just a little better. Then you can work the customer with additional services and sales after the initial design.

If you look at monetizing a build it yourself site, you have to be careful because people don't put the same value on "professional" that a web designer does. What looks good to them and works isn't necessarily good web design so pricing on your "professional" tools won't attract them. A self-service tool is expected to be relatively inexpensive. There are many real estate web site tools out there that charge a subscription that runs less that $50 per month and they get tons of software and contact management tools that go along with it.

For a static site with a few standard tools built on a template engine CMS you also run into the fact that there are literally thousands of ISPs who provide a similar thing along with their web hosting. Godaddy has one and bluehost has one that lots of people like. Do they build pro sites? Absolutely not. But they do create a site that people like and will run with.

The bottomline is that you can't price a sophisticated site builder anywhere near a custom designed site and expect to do as well as the custom person.

The advantage of having a CMS engine is volume. You don't need the staff to create the sites, and you get many more people worked through.

Also, look at your pricing model. For anything like that subscription is definately the way to go. If it takes you one week to do a $2500 site the most you could realistically do in a year would be 52 sites. That would work out to $130,000 per year gross revenues. Then the next year you'd need to do the same amount of work to generate the same revenues.

By lowering your prices and attracting people who can see the value of a better builder you stand to do much better especially in subsequent years.

To generate the exact same amount of revenue all you have to do is get 100 people to subscribe at $25 per month for one year. If all 100 carry over to the next year your revenues remain unchanged and you have to do virtually nothing to keep it that way.

If you generate an additional 100 subscribers then your margins go way up and you become a sales organization. Now you can add affiliate programs and do some leveraged sales of your service. Let other web hosts/shops sell you service for you. You keep the service up and running and continually improve it and let other people sell it for you.

Actually that's $500 to $2500 not $5000.

Oops.

we can provide web programming support at $17 per hour

You can contact me at (630) 204 0891

I charge $3000 - $5000 on E commerce sites and I have a line out the door for clients waiting on sites

How about getting it free?
For example..u can try this site:
http://www.freecontentsite.tk


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For the holidays I am offering discounts on websites. The reason why I'm doing this is because I have been busy making templates lately from scratch and it would take no time at all to modify some for your needs. Don't misunderstand, these are not cheap cookie cutter templates. I can offer a great 5 page simple website for only $199. Also I am offering a few new services to websites or any type of business that wants to be online. A new year is starting and its time to get a head start. I'm offering the service of creating banners whether they are rotating or not to businesses. They will be created for you, advertised on high traffic sites such as newsweek or businessweek and the traffic stats will be provided to you daily. I will also be providing website consulting, ecommerce consulting and website fix-up. What I mean by website fix up is that if you have a website already and you want better graphics, or javascript or PHP added I will add this to you without having to build you a new website from scratch. This not only makes your site look like a whole new site but also will save you about 80% on website costs. I can provide this service with banner advertising saving you even more money. I can provide a great package deal which includes, new or current website consulting, new website design or website fix-up, website maintainence, banner creation, banner placement on high traffic websites and traffic analysis for a great price.
These services have not yet been added to my website yet so right now is the time to get all these services real cheap. Alot of business people are very interested in these services and once they are added to my site the prices may increase due to demand.
Check out some of my past sample work on my site at www.bizenez.com or email me at contactbizenez@bizenez.com
Sincerely
Andy President