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dfalk · June 1st, 2007

I have been recently speaking with multiple website designers at established graphic design studios to get a professional website done. A website similar to Johnny Cupcakes Clothing — Home or even Seibei's website at SEIBEI - Put A Monster In Your Closet! and I have been quoted anywhere from $5,000 - $12,000. What I kind of want to know is, is it cheaper and safe to hire a graphic designer that freelances or should I stick to interviewing people that work at firms? I actually was working with the guy that did Johnny Cupcakes site and he is very good but he is very busy. What do you guys think. Thanks.

Rodney · June 1st, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by dfalk


	I have been recently speaking with multiple website designers at established graphic design studios to get a professional website done. A website similar to Johnny Cupcakes Clothing — Home or even Seibei's website at SEIBEI - Put A Monster In Your Closet! and I have been quoted anywhere from $5,000 - $12,000. What I kind of want to know is, is it cheaper and safe to hire a graphic designer that freelances or should I stick to interviewing people that work at firms? I actually was working with the guy that did Johnny Cupcakes site and he is very good but he is very busy. What do you guys think. Thanks.

Yes, it can generally be cheaper to higher a freelance designer.

You could probably get the same functionality and similar "feel" by paying much less through sites like guru.com, elance.com, rentacoder.com, designoutpost.com

theratt · June 1st, 2007

YEOWWWW!!! I've been a Graphic Artist for 20 some odd years...and i have never seen a price tag like that for a Web Site;.....where are you getting these quotes from.."Beverly Hills?" there are plenty of very good designers out there that will do a very good job for you at minimal cost. Freelancers are definitely the way to go!

farennikov · June 1st, 2007

Company is expensive. Freelancer is hard to control and communicate with. Better hire an offshore company who have full time designers and programmers, they are much more reliable then freelancers, and price tag is very very competitive. That's what I always do these days, because I had not so good experience with individuals or small firms. I go to Eastern Europe and hire a company. Very good rates and great quality.

andromat · June 1st, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by theratt


	i have never seen a price tag like that for a Web Site

That's, most likely, for a complete web site: design and all included. Kinda stiff, but not anywhere near the top of the price list, I would think.

How much are you willing to pay for this and how fast do you need to have it done, Derek? I am onto a good freelance resource and could put out a word on your behalf.

Rodney · June 1st, 2007

Since many of our members are designers (or have "friends") who are designers, please refrain from specific designer recommendations or requests for Private Messages that could be mistaken as self promotion.

Remember, you can always send more information via Private Message by clicking on the member's username instead of posting a message asking for a PM

dfalk · June 1st, 2007

I think I will check out guru.com and some of the others Rodney recommended. Maybe the price is higher because I know nothing about websites and I need someone to put the whole thing together. Main thing is quality. It has to be a site that could stand up next to Johnnycupcakes.com, Seibei. com or oddica. Even though I am a smaller line, you have to make yourself kind of look like a giant.

Titere · June 1st, 2007

I would recommend to do it yourself. Yeah, I know, it is hard to be the t-shirt artist, the printer, the seller, the secretary and also over that the web designer, but it is not impossible. I do it myself. Get yourself a web designing program. learn the basics and do it yourself. There will be no cost, and you can have as many customizations as you wish. Web designing is not that hard. Mine aint great, but I sell trough it and I did it myself. Good luck!

farennikov · June 1st, 2007

Very bad idea. It will take a few months only to master HTML and CSS. Then for a an e-commerce you're talking about a dynamic website which involves programming, i.e. PHP, .NET etc. It will take six more months to get well familiar with that. And making a website without programming experience is a really bad idea too. It will at least be very vulnerable to hacks. And I am not even talking about code quality. It will be a mess. Even for $5k you can make a decent e-commerce website. Not a great one. A custom e-commerce website even if you outsource it will cost you about $10k or more. And it's just the cost of design and coding. Plus, it's not that easy to manage outsourced work or a freelancer. The idea to do it yourself is doomed. Find an individual or a company who can manage it from A to Z and give you result - it will be worth the money. And let professionals do the work. I didn't have money for my website so I did it myself - but when I was making it I already had almost 2 years experience in HTML/CSS and PHP/MySQL. Now if the topicstarter wants a qiality result, I recommend spending as much as it takes to make a good, not crappy, website. It might cost over $10k but it will be worth it and will spare you some headache.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Titere Wear


	I would recommend to do it yourself. Yeah, I know, it is hard to be the t-shirt artist, the printer, the seller, the secretary and also over that the web designer, but it is not impossible. I do it myself. Get yourself a web designing program. learn the basics and do it yourself. There will be no cost, and you can have as many customizations as you wish. Web designing is not that hard. Mine aint great, but I sell trough it and I did it myself. Good luck!

Titere · June 2nd, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by farennikov


	Very bad idea. It will take a few months only to master HTML and CSS. Then for a an e-commerce you're talking about a dynamic website which involves programming, i.e. PHP, .NET etc. It will take six more months to get well familiar with that. And making a website without programming experience is a really bad idea too. It will at least be very vulnerable to hacks. And I am not even talking about code quality. It will be a mess. Even for $5k you can make a decent e-commerce website. Not a great one. A custom e-commerce website even if you outsource it will cost you about $10k or more. And it's just the cost of design and coding. Plus, it's not that easy to manage outsourced work or a freelancer. The idea to do it yourself is doomed. Find an individual or a company who can manage it from A to Z and give you result - it will be worth the money. And let professionals do the work. I didn't have money for my website so I did it myself - but when I was making it I already had almost 2 years experience in HTML/CSS and PHP/MySQL. Now if the topicstarter wants a qiality result, I recommend spending as much as it takes to make a good, not crappy, website. It might cost over $10k but it will be worth it and will spare you some headache.

In order to pay that much you have to be sure you are going to be greater than Billabong and Volcom, $10K just for the website! Thats big league! It just took me a 3 month class to learn dreamweaver and flash, it can be done.
I can buy at least 6,711 white hanes t-shirts for the price of that website!!! There are also carts that you can add, so you dont have to make it hacker free yourself, the cart companies will do that. Well Good luck.

dfalk · June 2nd, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Titere Wear


	In order to pay that much you have to be sure you are going to be greater than Billabong and Volcom, $10K just for the website! Thats big league! It just took me a 3 month class to learn dreamweaver and flash, it can be done. I can buy at least 6,711 white hanes t-shirts for the price of that website!!! There are also carts that you can add, so you dont have to make it hacker free yourself, the cart companies will do that. Well Good luck.

Personally I wouldn't mind spending the money on a great looking website. When I go onto a site especially to purchase something, I get an immediate feeling if I am going to purchase or not based just on how the website looks. If Oddica Threadless, Johnny Cupcakes, Life is Good or any of these other companies had poor looking websites, would they be doing as many sales? Sure market demographics, marketing and products play a huge part as well but if you went on their site and it looked home made, I don't know if I would feel so comfortable dealing with them online. I have heard of restaurants that are supposed to have great food but I will not step foot in the place just because of how it looks, and not being up to date on my tetnus. A website is our storefront and I believe it needs to look great. $10,000 for a storefront that you own outright isn't bad. I could open a brick and mortar and pay out $10,000 just fixing up the place, not including everything else that goes into opening up a brick and mortar, ie. lease, utilities, etc.. Since I am in this to establish myself as a reputable business, a professionally done website is a relativily small investment.

farennikov · June 2nd, 2007

You have to realize that making a website is not just knowing Dreamweaver. If you want to make a webiste on your own, here's an incomplete set of skills and knowledge you have to have:
1) Web site navigation and usability
2) Site and data architecture
3) Design skills incl. Photoshop and possibly Illustrator / CorelDraw
4) HTML/CSS (not just Dreamweaver)
5) PHP/MySQL or ASP/MS SQL or Coldfusion or whatever other programming language and database
6) Programming skills (not just knowing programming language but being able to use it most effectively)
7) Security issues (your site data security, credit card processing security) etc.
8) Basics of SEO so you can optimize your site for search engines from the very beginning
3 months? You're joking.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Titere Wear


	In order to pay that much you have to be sure you are going to be greater than Billabong and Volcom, $10K just for the website! Thats big league! It just took me a 3 month class to learn dreamweaver and flash, it can be done. I can buy at least 6,711 white hanes t-shirts for the price of that website!!! There are also carts that you can add, so you dont have to make it hacker free yourself, the cart companies will do that. Well Good luck.

Rodney · June 2nd, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by farennikov


	Very bad idea. It will take a few months only to master HTML and CSS. Then for a an e-commerce you're talking about a dynamic website which involves programming, i.e. PHP, .NET etc. It will take six more months to get well familiar with that. And making a website without programming experience is a really bad idea too. It will at least be very vulnerable to hacks. And I am not even talking about code quality. It will be a mess. Even for $5k you can make a decent e-commerce website. Not a great one. A custom e-commerce website even if you outsource it will cost you about $10k or more. And it's just the cost of design and coding. Plus, it's not that easy to manage outsourced work or a freelancer. The idea to do it yourself is doomed. Find an individual or a company who can manage it from A to Z and give you result - it will be worth the money. And let professionals do the work. I didn't have money for my website so I did it myself - but when I was making it I already had almost 2 years experience in HTML/CSS and PHP/MySQL. Now if the topicstarter wants a qiality result, I recommend spending as much as it takes to make a good, not crappy, website. It might cost over $10k but it will be worth it and will spare you some headache.

You can get a GREAT website for much less than $5000

If you take the time to learn HTML and design yourself, it can be a great savings in the cost to setup your site.

It doesn't have to be insecure or a mess at all. If you have the drive and a knack for learning, you CAN do it yourself. After all, the people you hire learned it themselves. It's just a matter if you have the time and technical knowledge to pick up HTML and design skills.

You don't have to have programming knowledge at ALL to build a quality site. There are people who have already done the programming and put up their scripts for free (cubecart, zencart, oscommerce, etc).

It's not doomed at all to do it yourself or hiring a freelancer. You can go to designoutpost.com and get the design done for about $300. You can go to rentacoder.com or the cubecart/zencart forums and get the install done for about $200. You can get someone to customize your skin for about $200 and it's easy to manage your shop after it's all installed and looking the way you want. Adding products is just point and click.

I'm not a programming expert at all, but I'm resourceful and I had a desire to learn how to do things right. HTML is not complicated stuff. The hardest part is learning "design" which makes your site useable and easy to navigate. Learning what "not" to put in your website.

I'm all for doing it yourself if you have the time. But if you don't have time, desire or ability to learn how to do it right, I highly suggest outsourcing to a freelancer. Let them focus on their expertise (building websites) while you focus on yours (designing t-shirts and selling).

A website doesn't *have* to cost $5k or $10k to get it looking like Johnny Cupcakes or bustedtees. The companies that pay that much have the money to spend to hire a full time team (design firm) to work on their site.

If you are just starting out, you have to learn out to be resourceful and get the same tasks done, but only cheaper. Outsourcing sites like eLance, rentacoder.com are a great way to get big work done on a smaller budget.

Check out how Digg and other companies started out using elance:
Kevin Rose Diggs Elance | Elance
Handyman On Demand | Elance
Elancer | Elance

dfalk · June 2nd, 2007

Thanks Rodney for your advice once again. I wish I had the time and drive to learn how to develop a website but unfortunately I don't. I will be posting on guru.com and I am eager to see how that goes. Being a start up company, I am always counting my pennies and trying to figure out the best way to utilize every one of those pennies. That led me to starting this thread, to see how to best utilize my money in developing a website. Thanks for your help.

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