|
Written by Carl Hruza
|
|
Saturday, 07 July 2007 09:54 |
|
As a small or medium size business owner without a web presence, it's often hard to justify the cost of developing a new website. Will my products/services really sell? - Will I ever be able to get people into the website? - What happens if it takes off and I can't keep up? - How am I going to afford this?
These are all valid questions so at COL we set about creating a viable solution. Using open-source CMS (Joomla / Drupal / Wordpress etc) we've been able to setup entry level websites for many of our customers wanting to test the Internet waters before making a sizable commitment. The beauty of designing on these CMS platforms is the sheer versatility of the software and the modular tools on hand. For example, we have built 3 and 4 page professional websites with basic functionality for under $150.00 When the client is ready, we can add more usability and modular functionality. Adding a blog, a shopping cart, a customer database etc can all be accomplished in affordable steps without disrupting the core design and without the need to scrap the initial web design and start over.
Contact us today and let us talk you through the options and the simple steps to take your business online. |
|
Last Updated on Saturday, 23 January 2010 20:51 |
|
Affiliate Marketing - still viable? |
 |
 |
|
Written by Carl Hruza
|
|
Clearly there are two angles on this, take the viewpoint of the program host and certainly there can be gains. As for the affiliate marketers themselves, it's become a really tough proposition to make money.
Here's why -
As a program host (the merchant, who uses an affiliate program to market his/her website), an affiliate program can be inexpensive to operate and can still be a good source of traffic. Naturally that depends on how you approach it. There are still program providers that can charge you $5,000 or more for setup, and take a hefty percentage of every sale generated by their 'network' of affiliates. But if you find yourself a sensible affiliate program provider, or even choose to go it alone, it can be inexpensive and effective. We offer affiliate program setup and integration for under $1000. For that you get the software (you own it, you'll never pay fees or percentages of your sales revenue), and full integration into your website. We can even manage it for you and help recruit affiliates.
As an affiliate marketer, typically around 99% of people who try it will never make a paycheck. You need to be marketing savvy and you need to work hard at it. I would always recommend joining an affiliate program that has a product which appeals to repeat-order customers and where the software is setup to pay you on all repeat orders. That way you start to make residual income from the program and are paid beyond your first order.
If you're contemplating using an affiliate program to improve your web traffic, check out our services using the navigation on the left - With our new Affiliate Program Integration Service, we're bringing the benefit of our expertise to you at a price you can afford. Other companies, and we've had personal experience of this, lease the software to you, then when you have an established affiliate network, they TRIPLE your monthly fees!
We sell you the software and install it on your web server, you own the software and we'll never ask you for another penny.
|
|
|
Get an idea of costs...... |
|
 |
|
|
Written by Carl Hruza
|
|
Saturday, 07 July 2007 09:54 |
|
Newcomers to any website offering design / promotion / hosting services generally spend half their time looking for the "Pricing" button. Personally, when I'm looking for web software I generally like to see the pricing button prominently displayed, so I can find out before wasting too much time if the price is in the right ballpark or not.
Why should design be that much different? - we know from experience that if you come to us for a quote on a basic 3-page website that it's going to cost somewhere between $100 and $250 That doesn't mean we're going to be using a simple stock template, it just means we have the building blocks and the technical expertise to put your project together quickly.
Here's a few ideas on how we cost various projects -
- Basic website - Home Page / About Us / Product/Service / Contact ($199)
- We would take your logo or design you a simple web logo quickly, create and attractive custom template based on a functional design layout, add your pages and an intuitive navigation system, create email address forwarding and a contact form with anti-spam protection, and host it for you for a full year. The website would be on a Joomla platform allowing us to quickly add more functionality as and when you are ready for it. Shopping carts, customer management, event booking, scheduling, auctions, social media, blogging etc can all be added when you are ready and at minimal cost.
- 5 - 7 Page website with web catalog featuring up to 10 products ($500 approx.)
- Like option 1 above, only with more content and a product catalog. The catalog would function much like a shopping cart program but would not allow order purchasing online. Visitors could scroll through your catalog, see product information and pricing options, then contact you via phone or email to purchase. This style of catalog suits smaller business or business where there's a need for some interaction with the customer before an order is placed. We'd include a customer contact database, newsletter sign-up and guest-book. Future upgrade to online purchasing would be a simple module addition, and would not make any of the catalog work redundant.
- 5 - 8 Page website with web catalog and full eCommerce functionality for up to 10 products ($750 - $1000 approx)
- As option 2 above with a full ordering system and Secured (SSL checkout). We'd integrate with PayPal or your existing merchant account provider and also setup USPS real-time shipping functionality.
- Web copy writing and content - web pages and articles can be written often from less than $25.00 per page or article. More extensive subject research results in a slightly higher cost. We can research and write on all manner of subjects. Finished work is Copyright owned by you and you can utilize the copy in articles, web pages, blogs, eBooks etc. This is a fast and affordable way to build website content and gain higher search engine visibility.
Those are just a few samples of our more popular services, for any other needs please contact us directly and we'd be happy to provide you with a needs assessment and a competitive, no-obligation quote.
|
|
Last Updated on Sunday, 24 January 2010 18:05 |
|
