From the monthly archives:
Oh my goodness.
This crap is currently making news.
I thought the obsession with celebrities was incredibly boring, but this tops that.
It’s currently one of the lead stories on News.com.au.
I’m sure I speak on behalf of us all when I say Who Cares?!
Brendon
Cheers,
A couple of people have asked me for the downside of a SitePoint contest for getting a web site designed – that’s easy.
I’m running a contest there at the moment and am getting some brilliant designs.
The worst bit about it is rejecting great designs and feeling guilty because these guys and gals have put so much effort in.
Cheers
Brendon
P.S: The biggest hassle I’ve had with a contest was where someone used a copyrighted image in the design and the owner came after us for payment for use of the image. That was a pain.
Cheers,
As regular readers get bored by know, I often occasionally mention my kids.
Here’s the latest:
Laura is going for School Captain. Gets announced tomorrow.
She did a 1 minute 34 sec speech at her school assembly in front of 1,200 kids and teachers last week.
She worked on the speech for 6 hours.
Laura is also running the 10 km run leg in the Noosa Triathlon next weekend. She’s never run 10 km before.
She’s part of the brilliant Team Sinclair – I’m doing the 1.5 km swim and Jack is doing the 40 km bike leg.
(That’s Jack on the right finishing off the 10 km run in last year’s Noosa Triathlon.)
I haven’t swum for about a month. If I don’t blog next Monday it’s because I drowned during the swim.
That last line won’t be so funny if I do.
Cheers
Brendon
Cheers,
If you’re an Australian Uni or TAFE student you can get Microsoft Office Ultimate for just $75. Yep, 75 bucks.
Full retail is $1,150.
It’s a promotion being run by Microsoft until May 15, 2008.
It needs Vista to run – check out other FAQs here.
Cheers
Cheers,
This is our most common question.
I’ll give you some hard figures below, but before I do that I’ll explain a bit.
I saw a client today for whom we’re looking at redesigning his existing site. We did the current site about 3 years ago.
It’s Not About The Design
Web design is only a small part of getting an operational web site.
Basically how it works is:
That’s just the design.
Of course there is plenty of backwards and forwards with the client to get the right balance between looking good and being functional.
It’s Not About The Design (cont)
But, like I said, it’s not about the design.
You can have the most beautiful site in the world but if it doesn’t get found by the target market, then it’s a waste of money.
We get sites found.
Aside from search engine rankings, there are numerous ways a site can be found:
Your site needs to be developed with these aspects in mind.
Convert Visitors To Buyers
Once the site is found you want to be sure that the site converts visitors to buyers – that’s where quality copy writing comes in.
Good copy writing is a time-intensive art. Prepare to pay good money for a quality copywriter.
What I’m Saying Is This
What I’m saying is this: anyone can design a web site. But to get a professional, well coded web site that works, well, that costs a little more.
What A Web Design Costs
Monster Template – a site where you find a site design you like and buy it for about $60 US. The sites are sometimes quite nice.
Remember, you need to get the site coded (they do come coded, but the code isn’t usually very good), pages replicated, content added, optimised for search engines, etc.
SitePoint Contests – another place to get a nice design, with the added bonus that you’ll have a number of designers competing for your work.
You give the brief and the guys and gals do some great work.
It will cost about $500 for an uncoded site and about $1,000 for a coded site.
A Design Firm
The huge advantage about using a design firm is that the designer will get your brief and provide a tremendous amount of added value to it.
Instead of, like with Monster Template and SitePoint, having to provide the full brief – even if you really don’t know what you’re talking about – when you engage a design pro, you get the advantage of having the opportunity to provide goals, needs, wants and then have a chat about the range of aspects that influence the design.
You’ll pay $2,000 for a quality coded site.
(Sure, you’ll find someone to do a full site for $200, but it will lack lots of the essential ingredients to make it successful.)
But remember, that’s just the design.
Then you still have all that other stuff to consider. Depending on what you want and need, the price, naturally enough, goes up.
Stand Out From The Crowd – Most Sites Fail
Make the commitment to be different.
And when I say different I mean ‘successful’.
Hope that helps.
Brendon
Cheers,
I spent the weekend at the brilliant Heart of Gold International Film Festival.
1. The festival was started by award-winning director Toni Powell.
2. The festival is hugely popular.
But here are 2 other things you might like to know:
1. Toni’s award-winning short film was the first film she ever made.
2. The festival is only in its 2nd year. It’s run by Toni and her husband Philip, and an army of fantastic volunteers.
Last year they knew nothing about running a film festival. This year they know a little more.
Sometimes you don’t know you’re good at something until you give it a go.
Click here for a wonderful story (a TV show) about Toni and her festival.
Cheers
Cheers,
Google has apparently just tweaked the way they rank blogs (like this one) – devaluing many blogs in the process.
The assumption (Google never says) is that it’s Google’s way of reducing the value of links from sites that sell links.
It’s one way for Google to try and reduce the number of link sellers – a practice they don’t like as web owners use buying links as a way to get (by deception in Google’s eyes) higher search engine rankings.
Google’s been warning web masters for many weeks that it is going to do something about sites that buy or sell links – and now they have.
And it’s hurting a ton of sites who took the risk – as Matt Cutts (in the video below) from Google says, “It’s your site. You can do whatever you want.”
This site hasn’t been affected because we neither buy or sell links.
Cheers
Brendon
Cheers,
As you probably know, The Web Design Business Kit 2.0 is the greatest book ever written.
(The 2nd greatest book ever written is the first version of the kit!)
And its author is (apparently) the best looking dude ever.
“Brendon, you’re, like, so totally hot! I’m dumping this geeky little freak I’m with…… Call me.” – Angelina Jolie
What The Cools Kids Are Saying About The Kit
“This is an amazing kit for the aspiring freelancer or small business owner……”
Gabrielle Fitzgerald
“This is a fantastic resource, and I am beginning to put it into practice……”
Miriam Richardson
Read more comments here (including the bad ones).
Cheers
Brendon
Cheers,
Web Design Business Kit
by Brendon Sinclair
