12
Dec
06

I want a million dollar website. I have $1,500.

By Joshua Steimle 14 Comments Categories: MWI

I began working in this industry at the end of 1999, and this is one of the slightly more interesting requests for proposal I have received during the past seven years. I don’t mean to post this to make fun of the guy, who I believe is serious (although I’m not 100% sure), but I hope it serves as a lesson to others who are in the dark when it comes to the costs involved with web development.


I need a website designed. This website is a first person shooter website. I would like it to use lots of pictures and background images. The site must look professional like a million dollar company owns it. My budget is $1500.

Here is an example of a website that I really like the look of, I think that it would do well for my application. http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/ Notice the blood splatters in the background and the use of images. However, for my site I would like to use even more images such as bullet hole marks, bullets, guns, crosshairs, crates, and whatever else you can think of.

I’m looking for creative high-end website with lots of imagery that blends with the goal of my website. The mission of the website is; “It is Playerstart.com’s dedication to be the most comprehensive and relevant first person shooter gaming news site on the net.” We would like to offer weekly reviews, mod coverage, multiple daily updates, developer interviews, skilled players tips, interesting articles, trustworthy reviews, upcoming screenshots, hardware guides, interactive community, video trailers, and more.

—————————

What did I find so entertaining about this request? Sure, it’s interesting in that the guy wants a hyper-violent website with all sorts of blood and gore, but what really cracks me up is this line “The site must look professional like a million dollar company owns it. My budget is $1500.”

Is there any other industry that has to deal with this lack of reasonable thought? Think about how ridiculous the following statements would be:

“I would like a house on a five acre lot in Manhattan, and I want it to be just like a 5-million dollar house. I want to pay $10,000 for this property and house.”

“I would like to buy a new BMW from your dealership. I have $5.”

“I need the best lawyer in town to represent me in a lawsuit that could determine the next 30 years of my life. I have $100.”

And yet somehow in the web development industry people think things are cheap. People think they can get “weekly reviews, mod coverage, multiple daily updates, developer interviews, skilled players tips, interesting articles, trustworthy reviews, upcoming screenshots, hardware guides, interactive community, video trailers, and more” for $1,500. Heck, we charge $15,000 just for designing a standard corporate site, let alone a more complex site like a gaming site. Add in all the interactivity this guy wants and we’re talking about a multi-hundred thousand dollar website, and if it were Sony building it they’d probably spend over a million to build the thing. But this guy expects it all for $1,500.

Then again, this might all be a joke. It’s just that ridiculous of a request that I’m not sure.

Related posts:

  1. MWI’s Website Ripped Off Yet Again, for the Last Time
  2. Someone Ripped Off MWI’s Website Design
  3. Quick MB Rips off MWI’s Website
  • Scott Schlegel

    I get this all the time. “Can you make a site like myspace, but with video sharing like youtube? … And I need it up by the end of the month. … And I am on a budget $600 total but I am looking to do it for $500″

  • http://crowelladv.com Jeremy Votaw

    Sounds like a letter from “Letters From A Nut.” The books written by Jerry Seinfled err… Ted Nancy.

  • http://voxpopdesign.com/bloomburst/ Matthew Reinbold

    While the request is indeed ridiculous, some of the comparisons you draw share a common feature – they all have decades of user education behind them. We don’t expect a BMW for $5 because generations of consumers have grown up being educated at the relative costs of automobiles. Karl Benz got a patent for his vehicle in 1896 – I’m guessing that only 10 years later, in 1906, the automakers of that time still had to deal with unrealistic expectations on the part of the users; the kind of expectations that we think are absurd today.

    For web development we’re still at the stage where the process, pricing, and expectations are not part of the cultural lexicon. It will happen, however. Give it time.

  • http://www.mwi.com Joshua Steimle

    True, I guess I didn’t address the question of why I thought this happens, and I do indeed believe it has to do with the relative novelty of the industry. Not to mention the variety of options. If I’m a newby and I’m hearing commercials from Register.com telling me I can have a professional website in 20 minutes for $20 then what am I being led to expect for $1,500?

    This isn’t unlike another person we had call in a few weeks ago. The conversation went something like this:

    “I’m looking for a new website. I want it to be the best real estate website in Utah, and I’m willing to drop a lot of money for it. Probably up to $4,000. I might even be willing to go to $5,000, but man, if that’s the case then it’s gotta be a $5,000 website.”

    “Well, you’re not going to like what we have to say about that, because our prices start at $15,000 for a basic website.”

    “Sweet fancy Moses! Oh…good heavens…[sigh]”

  • http://voxpopdesign.com/bloomburst Matthew Reinbold

    You make an excellent point about those ‘website builder’ packages that confuse those unfamiliar with the process. $15,000 seems like a lot because they’ve had their expectations set with other information – like a template reseller – without understanding the differences between the two.

    I often draw the parallel to art – sure, I can go down to Wally World and get some poster prints for $10. Or I can buy an original piece by an accomplished artist for 100 (or 1000) times that amount.

    Yes, it does cost more. But it is not an expense – it’s an investment. People pay extra all the time because of the image it conveys; contractors make it a point to have a big, expensive, and powerful looking truck – because it reflects well on the business (a Honda Element would be more cost effective for shuttling them from job site to job site but have you ever seen Big D in one?).

    Five years from now the print will be worthless. The original piece will have increased in value. One piece is made for the mass reproduction and to be a cheap as possible. The other is uniquely focused an un-compromised vision. I always ask which one does the customer want representing their business?

  • http://www.chrisknudsen.biz Chris

    Would a Web development company ever be so bold as to take the risk of building something free of charge for a revenue share? Call is “Affiliate Web Development”.

    If I had a profitable Web development company I might think of doing this on a limited basis with the right idea or partner, which would lower taxable net income. The money goes to a potentially profitable idea instead of the government’s coffers.

    Maybe call it venture Web development?

    No, I wouldn’t call it a write off :)

    Just an idea I’d like to get your take on. I have thick skin so tell me if it’s a dumb idea.

  • http://www.mwi.com Joshua Steimle

    I’m going to write up a post right now on this topic, since I’ve been meaning to anyway. Partnerships vs pay.

  • Nick

    Speaking of venture web development, I used to work for a company that did very high end websites (Visa, Post, etc) that purchased a large number of similar companies that went bankrupt in the dot-com era. Puchasing those assets out of bankrupcy meant the company ended up with this exact situation – the earlier companies had traded web design work for stakes in the companies they designed sites for. Most turned out to be a bust, but I think they made some money on a few of the deals.

  • http://www.smoothharold.com Blake Snow

    Last year, a guy called me up and asked me to build him a ecommerce site to sell byu shirts and that it needed to be up before the first game that conveniently started in under two weeks. He said he had $500. I politely declined, and amazingly, his site never materialized.

  • http://www.elikirk.com JR Peterson

    I have been baffled at the kind of responses we (Eli Kirk) get from some companies when they go over pricing with us. I think that a large part of it has to do with the unfortunate Utah County mentality of “nothing should cost more than what I think it’s worth,” and the many other similar ones that go along with it. What I’m curious to know is if the same beliefs apply to web work no matter where business is, or if it’s just a local thing? If it’s about time and educating people then so be it. If not, well, then that’s a different issue.

  • http://www.eransworld.com/blogger.htm Eran

    These stories all kill me. I experience clients like these all the time. I have been lucky in my career to work on some great website projects professionally. However I am a local coffee house musician type of a web designer meaning I am not a great designer but I know the game of branding, marketing and web and I am skilled at search engine work but I will never do this full time and become a famous pop singer. I have also been blessed with working with what my partner and I call the Sunday School Joes. Sunday school Joe is that obnoxious know-it-all, penny-pinching cheap ward member (yes I am active LDS. You know who I speak of every ward has them) who think like these folks and who at the end of the day will drop a line on you like, “Well I think I will go with my Brother-in-Law’s cousin because well he said he could do it faster better and cheaper” and its always shortly after seeing my price quote which is substantially less than what’s been quoted here. I do a lot of web development for fun and this money is just extra at the end of the day and often is done while at my day job since my day job has a lot of down time. (yes this is all well and good with my employer) A lot of my clientele come from word of mouth or from my partners Small Business Networking clients who pay top dollar for networking but skimp on their websites. It astonishes me quite frankly. Why do these people who understand business fail to understand the power or potential of their business website?

  • http://www.cubed.ro Marian Oancea

    Hi…
    you say you find it “entertaining”… but in Romania, if you don’t have the BEST portfolio you can’t get more than 2000 bucks per site regardless of the complexity ;)

    i wish i was borne somewhere else… here the business isn’t that great… i wish i would have only projects worth 1500-2000 bucks…

  • http://www.verangomedia.com eran

    sidenote – Yes, there appears to be another web designer in Utah named (Eran)

    I am just going to send this article to all the people I get calling me daily to do the same type of thing. I say, “oh, you mean $100,000, and not $1,000.00, right?”

    A lot of them end up getting it done overseas and I have never seen one get done right, or take off (reach business goals); so they end up getting it done a second, and third time, finally paying $10,000 for a $2,000 site. This is NOT a solely Utah phenomenon, however I have noticed out of state sales to be a bit easier (hey, income and cost of living in CA is 2 times that of UT’s).

    p.s. Some key myths to avoid as you hunt for a web designer:

    1. A website is not like a Word document as some out there may believe.

    2. There are no magic Etch-and-Sketch, so-easy-a-kid-could-do-it, professional web-design tools. Even professional webdesign tools are severely limiting, which is why many of us hand code.

    3. It is always harder that it looks. Don’t ever say to a designer/developer “just changing the that little thing should take you a second, right?”

    4. Just because you bought a copy of FrontPage does not make you a professional web designer–no matter how great your website built in 1998 looks.

    5. Don’t design your own website if you want another company to build it for you; especially if you are not a web designer yourself. Trust experienced web-designers to build you something modern, useful, and maybe even marketable. If you hired a great artist to paint a large cathedral, would you tell him how to do it? (of course general suggestions, goals and such are welcome.)

    6. Conversely, a beautiful site does not automatically equal sales–in fact, some ugly sites do pretty well–either way, you better have a solid marketing plan, time, dedication, and a marketing budget if you want to succeed–and if you want me to build your website for you with passion.

    7. You can go to the opposite extreme and pay too much for a website. Go to some big, over-advertised, fat, flouted and touted company, and they will charge you 2 to 10 times too much.

    eran

  • http://www.budget-computer.com Kulle

    I do appreciate your work webmasters. But often those dumb price requests come from unawareness how much work it takes to build a website. I was once one of them.
    By a friend’s suggestion of using Free CMS (Joomla!, PHP-Nuke, WordPress ……) I tried out building a site for myself. And it made me clear that this work is not easy even with help of those CMSs.
    Let these “low budget ones” try themselves those free CMSs. Soon they will find that they can use their valuable time right and it is better to come to you and pay fair price for a website building.

    With best,
    Beginner in website building,
    Budget-Computer