Month: May 2016

How to Create a Website in Under a Day and Sell it for 1K

Posted on by Sankar

How to Create a Website in Under a Day and Sell it for 1K

Starting a web design business can be incredibly easy if you know how.

This is a fantastic model and one that’s more scalable and more profitable than you probably imagine.

Right now, you might be wondering what I’m talking about.

After all, web design is a service and if you work alone or in a small team; then a service is famously un-scalable.

You can only complete as much work as you can complete.

And if the demand is greater than your ability to output, then you’re going to have to start turning down customers or just working more slowly.

Or at least that used to be the case.

Today you can create a fully functional website in under a day and sell it for a grand. Seriously! Or alternatively, you can outsource it and not do any of the work yourself.

Read on and I’ll show you how…

Creating a Website in WordPress

If you were to look at the accounts of many big businesses, you might be appalled at how much they spend on web design.

They hire design teams that charge them thousands of dollars to create unnecessarily complicated websites that end up not looking all that modern either.

You and I know that you can actually create a fully functional, highly modern and completely responsive website in WordPress and it takes a few minutes and costs $40-$80.

So here’s what you do: you buy some hosting for the year ($100), you install WordPress in a single click and then you install a theme from Theme Forest ($50).

Make a few tweaks, upload the logo and there’s your website.

The only problem is that CEOs don’t know this!

But you do.

So what you can do is to do all that for them in one day and that way you can charge $1k for an amazing website.

This will be cheaper than they’d have paid another agency and the end result is better – but you’re earning all that money for very little work.

This was actually the entire concept that Matt Mullenweng had when he invented WordPress – his idea was to turn the service into a product.

And I think we can all agree he succeeded!

Outsourcing web design

The other option is to outsource elements.

Because sometimes a company will understandably need an entirely custom and unique web design.

Or maybe they won’t want to use WordPress for whatever reason.

Or maybe they just have an advanced feature they need.

You can do very little work for this – all you need to do is to find a white label services company like ColorWhistle.

We work behind the scenes for no credit and we charge incredibly low rates.

That means you can hire us to do any job no matter how big or small and then you can sell it to your own clients as your own.

When you do this, it again means you can scale the amount of work you take on and keep your profits and revenue sky high – while only working for a day in a lot of cases!

When to Outsource Web Design and When to Keep it In-House

Posted on by Sankar

Why we need to think when to outsource web design and when to keep it In-house?

Graphic design is one of those corners that you just can’t cut as a business with an online presence. While you can of course decide to create your own design, you’ll quickly find that this leads to elements of your site and your brand not looking as good as they could do. With the best will in the world, a professional design agency is always going to have a better chance of making a professional logo because it’s their ‘main job’. This means they’ll all be highly experienced in design, they’ll have access to the very best tools and they’ll have 100% of their time to dedicate to your design work.

Conversely, if you try and create your own design, then you’ll be making do with basic tools and trying to squeeze it in around other things. That and you’ll often find that it’s hard to be objective about your own brand and your own website.

The only issue? Getting design work is expensive. That and outsourcing necessarily means relinquishing some of your control and putting your trust in a third party to come up with a design that you’ll like. Some people actually enjoy designing themselves and see this as a useful skill to learn.

The same issues are true for design companies themselves. Many design agencies will outsource their work to white label services (like ours!) and this allows them to take on more clients. But of course they still need to put their ‘stamp’ on what’s being done and they still need to be able to communicate closely with the client. Sometimes it’s easier to do it themselves.

The point is: sometimes you need to outsource and sometimes you need to keep it in-house. Here’s to know when do each…

When to Outsource Web Design

  • When the job requires greater expertise than you’re capable of – If this is a piece of design work that’s going on your home page or a flier, then it needs to be the best quality possible. Put your ego aside and know when to get help.
  • When the job is slow – Your time is precious and if you outsource slow jobs, then you can put yourself to better use and likely increase your revenue as a result.
  • When you hate the work – No matter how much you love your job, there will be small bits that you probably hate. Why not just outsource those elements rather than forcing yourself to do work that you really don’t enjoy? Quality of life should really be the number one goal!

When to Keep it In-House

  • When the cost is too high – If the cost of outsourcing a particular job is very high and you can do it yourself quickly, then you may want to keep the job in-house.
  • When you love it – If you love this aspect of your job then of course you should never outsource it to someone else!

When it requires a personal touch – If you want to maintain complete control, or if you need to go back and forth with a client; creating a design yourself becomes a more compelling option.

How to Start Finding Clients for New Web Design Companies

Posted on by Sankar

From Zero to Hero: How to Start Finding Clients for New Web Design Companies

If you run a new web design company, then your biggest challenge is going to be finding clients. Creating websites for a living is a pretty sweet deal after all; you get paid to be creative and to do something you probably would have enjoyed anyway!

The problem is that this is a very competitive market and finding opportunities is going to be hard work to begin with. So what do you do? Sure, you could try and do some SEO for your own website but that’s not going to start paying off for a while and you’re going to be going up against much bigger competitors with much greater marketing budgets.

The smarter move then is to go around those big fish and look where they’re not looking. From there, you’ll be able to start building up a reputation, generating some contacts and finding some repeat business. Here are some suggestions as to where you can begin looking…

Should You Use Freelance Sites?

One common place to start is with freelance sites which are specifically designed to help professionals find clients online. Some of the best options are:

You can even try Fiverr.com, which is a site where you can sell any service for $5 but then charge more for extended versions of that service. For example, you could charge $5 to design a logo but then charge $500 to design a full website.

Using these freelancing sites, you can then try to find work and potentially even outsource that work to companies offering white label services. Note though that you shouldn’t rely entirely on these types of sites: the value of work on offer here tends to be fairly low and the amount of work you have to put in to find a high quality client to work with.

This is why larger companies tend to shy away from freelancer sites and instead use their own in-house sales teams. But as a starting point as you’re initially growing, it’s a great place to build up some contacts and start making a name for yourself!

Webmaster and Marketing Forums

Similar to freelance sites is to try a webmaster or marketing forum like Digital Point Forums or Warrior Forum. These are sites where online businesses discuss their trade and also buy and sell services, providing a great place for you to advertise your web design.

Thinking Outside the Box

Then again though, you can also get more creative and start thinking outside the box. One less obvious place to look is Reddit over at reddit.com/r/web_design. Not only will you find other web designers here (who often share their markets) but you’ll also find people looking for web design, or people who need a little help. The same is true of many online communities on Google+ for example, or Facebook.

LinkedIn also has some relevant groups you can join and you should definitely sign up over at CrunchBase to list your organization. These are particularly good for finding high quality B2B clients.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, be sure to try contacting businesses in person. Take a stroll down your local high-street and look for small stores, restaurants and businesses that might need online representation.

Growing Rapidly

The danger when growing from a small independent web designer to a big business is that you might risk taking on more than you can chew. To make sure this doesn’t happen, you should always have a contingency plan for dealing with large volumes of work. One option? Let ColorWhistle handle some of the brunt work for you in the background. We provide a wide range of design services and have low rates that ensure you won’t eat into your profit margins!

Advanced PHP Frameworks Comparison

Posted on by Sankar

Advanced PHP frameworks are tools designed to help with content management and web design. This makes them very similar to something like WordPress, except that they allow you far more flexibility and enable you to create interactive, web 2.0 designs.

Among the most well-known are:

  • Symfony Framework
  • CodeIgniter Framework
  • Lavarel Framework
  • CakePHP Framework
  • Seagull Framework

To explain this a little better, bear in mind that WordPress itself is created with PHP. This is a programming language that runs ‘server side’. That means it does various calculations and reads various files before deciding what kind of content to show the user, or what options to show you when you log-in to edit a page.

You can use WordPress to design a site, or you could try and create your ‘own’ WordPress by using PHP. Choosing a PHP framework though can be thought of as a kind of compromise between those two options. In this case, you’ll be building something like WordPress (or perhaps a social network like Facebook!) but you’ll be using a set of tools to make that a little easier. The PHP framework provides you with APIs, classes and libraries that basically ensure that PHP is as suitable as possible for doing this.

But just as there are multiple CMS options and multiple programming languages, there are also multiple options for your PHP framework. So many decisions!

Let’s take a look at some of the most popular PHP frameworks comparision and see which are most popular.

Symfony Framework

Symfony is a PHP framework that is aimed at the more advanced developer. This gives you a lot more control over the deeper level code, allowing you to create something truly unique to your own business and letting you use advanced features. This is perhaps the best option for professional developers/big businesses looking to build enterprise-level applications. However, it is not particularly user friendly!

Lavarel Framework

Lavarel is another PHP framework that is a little better suited to beginners. Its main focus is on practical and rapid development but the initial bare bones set of tools has developed over time to include some of the more advanced features from Symfony.

CodeIgniter Framework

CodeIgniter is a well-known and popular PHP framework that is very user friendly and has a large amount of support. It will take a small learning curve to begin with but if you’re a fast learner and you hit up some YouTube tutorials, then anyone can realistically expect to give this a go and be successful!

 

CakePHP Framework

Like Lavarel, CakePHP was built around speed and ease of use. That said though, it also offers a lot of more advanced features. Ultimately, the choice between Lavarel and CakePHP is likely to come down simply to personal preference.

Zend Framework

This one belongs a little more at the advanced end of the spectrum. It is particularly suitable for web 2.0 applications – so if you want to build a tool or a network rather than a ‘website’, then it might be a good choice!

Other PHP Framworks include Kohana, Aura, Phalcon and Seagull! If you’re not sure where to begin, then get in touch and we will happily recommend the best tool for the job. And if you like, we can build your site for you as well!

If you are still thinking about Framework or CMS, take a look at Compare PHP Frameworks and CMS and make a decision.

Web Design Germany- German Web Design Ideas and Outsourcing Opportunities

Posted on by Sankar

No matter where you are in the world, Web design is big news.

This is true in the US, in Asia and all throughout Europe.

And what’s interesting about this is that there is relatively small variation in the design sensibilities.

While décor, cuisine and fashion all vary significantly from country to country (hence why it’s so easy to spot tourists!), the nature of the website design doesn’t change all that much in most cases.

This is because the sites are aimed at the same global audiences and very often use the same tools.

In fact, many of the top web sites are the same in every country.

Take a look at the most popular sites in Germany on Alexa and you’ll find most of them are familiar names: Google, Amazon and Blogspot! (That last one is a little interesting though, seeing as Blogspot is less popular these days in the US!).

As for the web design Germany?

German Web Design Inspirations :

In this case, you have websites such as Spiegel.de which covers news and looks very much like a newspaper in the US or UK (perhaps a little closer to the latter, as you would probably expect).

‘Xing.com’ is a business network in German-speaking Europe that can help students to find jobs (might be one worth checking out, German web designers!).

If you want to see some stunning examples of web designs in Germany, then check out Designmodo which has a great list of German sites with stunning looks.

Web Design Germany Vs Web Design in the US: An Experiment

As a fun experiment, let’s take a look at an example of a German website that can be directly compared with a US website.

Specifically, let’s look at Amazon.de vs Amazon.com.

How are these two sites different?

On the whole, the two are almost exactly identical.

They both have the same menu along the top, the same logo and the same options.

They also both feature their main items presented below with large images.

But whereas the German website shows rows of items underneath a slider, the US site has columns and more emphasis on categories.

An insight into differences between US and web design Germany?

Or just a random difference between the two sites?

Germany Web Design Agencies :

As in most of Europe, there is no shortage of entrepreneurial design talent in Germany.

If you’re looking for a designer based in the country, then some great options include SocialRise.de, Relax and Daro.

These are great choices if you’re based in Germany and you’re looking for a designer that you can meet with to discuss your options in person.

Likewise though, you will likely find that any of these agencies has clients based all around the world.

If you like the looks of what they do, then get in touch!

If you run a Germany-based website design company meanwhile then we’d love to hear from you! We provide white label services and can help you to better serve your clients; no matter where they are in the world!

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