Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $15, I make them a web design

designfor15bucks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 188 posts

Re: Yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $15, I make them a web design

#141

Post by anon-e-moose »

prawn wrote: post #139
acangiano wrote: post #90

Somebody delivering the same service, but including HTML/CSS, could easily charge $150 and have more customers than they could possibly handle.

Somebody could offer it sans HTML/CSS, charge $150 and still stay busy IMO. My basic mate's rates fee for that sort of job is $1000-1500 for a PSD. That said, $15-20 is comfortably in that "If it doesn't work out, who cares" bracket. The problem will be that for many people, time is far more crucial than the cost. If I need a turnaround of 3-4 days, and the queue is 7+ days, it won't matter if it's $15 or 15 cents.

Really? Where do they get clients? I'll start tonight!

Re: Yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $15, I make them a web design

#142

Post by dstorrs »

anigbrowl wrote: post #130
tlrobinson wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather do something I enjoy for slightly less money than get an office job or flip burgers.

You must have very cheap rent. If you don't ask for money for what you do, then you are saying that what you do is worthless. You probably don't actually believe that, and the only reason to sell your work for less than the most basic labor is because you don't know how to get paid properly. But customers see your pricing and conclude that designers do not need to be paid even the normal minimum for other kinds of wo…

> If you don't ask for money for what you do, then you are saying that what you do is worthless.

"Um, what?" --Every open source developer, ever.

Re: Yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $15, I make them a web design

#145

Post by ericd »

DavidBishop wrote: post #119
swombat wrote: post #3

Assuming it takes you at least 1-2 hours per design (and even with mad photoshop skillz it's unlikely it'd be much shorter than that), you're probably better off getting an office job somewhere, or even maybe a burger-flipping job. Given all the additional expenses of running your own business, this is probably not a viable business model (i.e. you will lose money on the whole). The only way this would be justified i…

I like the idea, and I believe you have a market, but your prices are too low. More importantly it won't scale with inflation. In 10 years, that $15 will be worth around $10 but you will have all SEO links pointing to a domain that is most likely in need of change (You are stuck with a particular price with the domain name you have now). $15 is way too low. I don't know where you are located, but you need to do some…

He can always do a 301 redirect to another page and send the google juice that way. He's getting a lot of advertising from this outlandishly low price.

Re: Yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $15, I make them a web design

#146

Post by prawn »

anon-e-moose wrote: post #141
prawn wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody could offer it sans HTML/CSS, charge $150 and still stay busy IMO. My basic mate's rates fee for that sort of job is $1000-1500 for a PSD. That said, $15-20 is comfortably in that "If it doesn't work out, who cares" bracket. The problem will be that for many people, time is far more crucial than the cost. If I need a turnaround of 3-4 days, and the queue is 7+ days, it won't matter if it's $15 or 15 cents.

Really? Where do they get clients? I'll start tonight!

Have a good portfolio and gradually build up awareness. If you offer this service, link to a portfolio in your profile.

Don't compete on the same turf as elance types. I've used PSD2XHTML type services for $150-250 before and the main reasons I stopped was that the product wasn't really done to our house style and they couldn't hit deadlines. (Now I have staff that do these jobs for me.)

Re: Yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $15, I make them a web design

#147

Post by anigbrowl »

dstorrs wrote: post #142
anigbrowl wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have very cheap rent. If you don't ask for money for what you do, then you are saying that what you do is worthless. You probably don't actually believe that, and the only reason to sell your work for less than the most basic labor is because you don't know how to get paid properly. But customers see your pricing and conclude that designers do not need to be paid even the normal minimum for other kinds of wo…

> If you don't ask for money for what you do, then you are saying that what you do is worthless. "Um, what?" --Every open source developer, ever.

Not charging for everything differs from never charging for anything. The latter is impossible unless you are independently wealthy; and even then, most open source developers take credit for their work rather than doing it anonymously. But more to the point, open source software is something you choose to provide to the general public, rather than at the request of a client.

Outside of the development community, commercial software is still profitable because most non-technical buyers assume that free-as-in-beer software is less good. Same thing with graphic design or video production. Working for free/cheap signals interest to industry peers very effectively, but people outside the peer group just see it as a price signal.

Re: Yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $15, I make them a web design

#148

Post by jedbrown »

Staydecent wrote: post #103
corin_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, definitely. If you offer it, I'll take you up on it once he's open for design applications again.

Cool! I'll setup a page for the service now. Edit: http://staydecent.ca/markup

Might want to check you spelling (intergration) and validate ("5 Errors, 1 warning(s)", http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://staydecent.ca/marku...) before claiming standards compliance.

Re: Yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $15, I make them a web design

#149

Post by Staydecent »

jedbrown wrote: post #148
Staydecent wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool! I'll setup a page for the service now. Edit: http://staydecent.ca/markup

Might want to check you spelling (intergration) and validate ("5 Errors, 1 warning(s)", http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://staydecent.ca/marku... ) before claiming standards compliance.

Thanks for spell checking! As for the errors. Oh well. The main site structure is valid and works on the 3 major browsers I tested(Chrome,FF,IE8).

The first error is too beneficial to give up, and the rest are for a shitty form code (but this keeps my hosting cost at ~0/month which allows this stupidly cheap service).

But, you are right. And, I shall no longer advertise standards compliance. =D

Re: Yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $15, I make them a web design

#150

Post by petercooper »

greyhat wrote: post #105
acangiano wrote: post #90

Somebody delivering the same service, but including HTML/CSS, could easily charge $150 and have more customers than they could possibly handle.

I find this extremely hard to believe. Have you visited freelancing sites to check this assumption?

There's a class of customer that won't even hit the "rent a coder" type sites for work, but will instead pay significantly more to someone with a full, proper site and a reputation.
Post reply on HN