Recession Winners: Web Designers, SEO
The customer is an architect or interior designer. He wants a new Web site so his customers can find his shop -- online and off -- and can see the construction companies and contractors he likes to work with. "Pictures are nice, but not necessary," he says. The two guys at the table with him are local Web designers.
After the customer leaves, I ask one of the designers how's business, since, you know, everything blew up.
"Actually it's very good," he tells me. But I'm skeptical. How could it be? Everyone's hurting.
"Well, people are looking for cost-effective ways to market themselves and redesigning their Web site is a relatively cheap alternative," says the designer.
It's true: I think I heard them offer to do the job for the architect for something like $1,300.
"Also it's its a one-time charge. Advertising only lasts for a certain amount of time and then you have to pay more."
The designer says another good business right now is search engine optimization (SEO), which is the polite way of describing the business of tweaking Web sites so they'll appear higher in natural search results.
This makes sense to me. Paying a one-time fee for a SEO re-vamp is probably a lot cheaper than paying for clicks each month. Maybe when cash is easier again, you'll do both.
Anyway, this news is from just one source and I overheard most of the details, so take it for what it is -- a little bit of murky, anecdotal good news, at a time when the bad news is painfully obvious.
See Also:
Google: Here's How To Game Us (GOOG)
Photo: joeltelling
As soon as you know the answers, Google seems to change the formula!
Either the "redesign" is extremely trivial (nothing wrong with that -- it's smart), or our heroic web designers better have dozens of these lined up this month (and next month, the month after that, etc).
This is actually anecdotal proof that tech workers are going to have to change their future expectations. These are plumber fees -- again, nothing wrong with that, as plumbers make decent livings.
It sounds like this fellow should simply be using a free blog service for his site -- maybe that's what these folks are charging him for? Slick.
Not a fortune, but not bad for ten or fifteen hours of technical work a week, scheduled when and where you want it, plus whatever other work you do on client relations and other marketing activities, which is going to be a big chunk of their time.
[link=http://seo.greenlogicindia.com]SEO technology[/link]
No, we're not making millions, but we have good people and we are paying them well and not working them to death. We see business from individuals launching new businesses online and SMBs. We were able to help a non-profit see an increase in donations of 23% over last year, despite the economy.
Let's hope it lasts.
Social Investing is starting to play a big role in how people manage their money and Market Guru are best at that.
www.marketguru.com/blacktuna
And your design before that was doing the same, and so on and so forth. What exactly have you ever designed and/or coded yourself?
As a director of a rather large ad agency, we have seen robust growth in the demand for SEO services and expect it to continue for the forseeable future.
What you have to look out for are spammers (SEE ABOVE) and offshore companies that might not understand your true business needs.