Steve

Thanks for your comments, maybe Jim can pop over and defend himself! LOL

You really should take a look at the Thesis theme. You are exactly right, all the good stuff is in the backend for people like you and me. There is a video that shows what it does and it’s great.

RE: OfflineBiz.com, I agree, when you cut through some of the stuff some gurus say, you can be left with more questions – for example, I don’t usually buy the price increase line – and I try not to use it. But Jim’s site really has worked personally for me so that’s why I promote it. And like I implied in the article, Jim is an honest guy.

I can assure you that I don’t think $1500 is pocket change. Everything is relative, here in California, it’s not an unusual amount for building a site, helping develop a mailing list, and managing the email marketing for that business.

I haven’t gotten a $1500 job yet, but I have walked away with $1200 for a pretty simple law website. That was my best in the offline arena. Otherwise, my prices for a simple WordPress-based site has been around $500 locally. I always get them to host their site through my affiliate link (and I tell them what I’m doing) which brings another $80+ per year when they renew. The Thesis theme is making this even easier.

My best advice would be not to compete on price. I get the cheap-skates too, but I explain that they’ll get what they pay for. No $1 website is going to offer any support. Usually people who are newly online are skittish about not having a real human to talk to for support. So being local and available is a real selling point.

Also, rather than having a direct conversation about selling them your services or a website – ask lots of questions to find out what problems they have. Then tailor your responses to be the solution to those problems. Like I said too – I generally approach people I already do business with, so I have an existing relationship. Usually the question comes up as to what I do for work, and that’s how it starts.

Steve

Re: the interview with Jim/Jed – I’m agog that you guys blithely talk about $1500-2000 fees as if they were pocket change that just anyone will throw out to the first marketer through the door. Over here, I can’t even get people to talk about what their job is, let alone what their business is, nor listen to suggestions. Mind you, for the average small business owner over here, the fees you mention is a year’s gross profits, so there’s no chance they’re going to just hand that over to a complete stranger.

Example, I had a guy contact me to build and implement a copy of one of my osCommerce shopping cart sites – he wanted almost the exact same design with just a few colour tweaks and some graphics changes, then he’d input all his own content and products. A simple enough job that I could have cleared in an afternoon, so I quoted him $60 all-in. He mumbled something about expensive and I never heard from him again.

Another guy wanted WordPress put onto hosting he already had, and a particular theme added from the WP library. 15 minutes work and I quoted him $10. Again I didn’t get the deal and never heard from him again.

Why am I quoting such low prices? Basically because of reverse auction sites like Scriptlance where I’ve seen prices bid down as low as $1 for a customised WordPress set up, or $5 for a custom-written database application.

With that level of competition, you can’t ever win business from anyone who’s ever heard the name “Google”.

So please forgive me if I’m sceptical of what Jim is claiming – particularly when he states he’s raising site fees to several hundred dollars – everyone I know would simply say “if it ain’t free, I ain’t even looking at it” when it comes to a forum site.

Gaz