Free Websites, Advice Required

[TestAPlug]

Hi, Im KEV from Test A Plug. I have an idea, a concept I suppose. I want to contact existing businesses and offer them free websites! Sounds mad. The idea behind it is that all that they pay is the hosting costs so it will be the cheapest professionally built site they will ever have. This will attract customers and as they are already trading they already have adverts (google, local papers and the like), all the business would have to do is add the www address into the advert. This creates instant (near enough) hits, as they are a known business. Its the hits I am after as I want to use the affiliate marketing scheme to have an income from the sites. The Affiliates win, the business owner wins and I win. Its a win win situation.

I would like any thoughts on this matter, and if anyone would use the service.

I would also make it clear to the website owner that this is what I was doing! Also a links page would be added to create a local community of common, area specific websites.

What do you think?

Cheers KEV

[liams7]

Its an idea but There are 3 reasons i dont think it would work.

1) You would never be able to create "Proffesional Websites" For free hoping you get enough from affiliate programmes.

2) Anyone who has any sense would ask why they were having a website built for free and would then use the affiliate scheme them selves and there fore you make no money.

3) If i was having a proffesional website built i wouldnt want links and adverts all over it.

[TestAPlug]

Thanks for the rapid reply, I only posted minutes ago! I am focusing on the smaller business, such as a DJ or photographer who may not be able to afford a website and as for them using affiliates they collectivly want at least 100 visits per week across the websites that they are advertising on to even consider it. With my 3 websites I have that alone (104 this week on one) so the chances of them being able to use another service is slim. I would also limit the sites capability such as a 4 page basic site would be a starting point. This means that I have time to tend to all of my potential customers as the more sites I create, the more money I can recover through the adverts by reaching a larger more diverse amount of people. Thanks for the reply. KEV

[liams7]

100 visits a week? Is that individual or not. And even so thats not alot to be getting and if thats all they are getting there doing something wrong. Or do you mean clicks through which to be honest makes sense as that is alot your probably looking at 1% click on an advert so 10,000 visitors a week. I dont understand how this really works. sorry if im being a little thick.

And what soprt of level of website are you offering when you say professional. Do you have any examples?

[TestAPlug]

Sorry, bad wording. I meant clicks. I havea good steady stream of visitors and the beuty of it is that I can see if they are unique or first time viewers or returning viewers. This helps from a marketing point of view. KEV

[davidshaw89]

I dont want to be the one who says "it can't be done", but if you look at the breakdown below you will see why it wont be very profitable as you explained it:

1. professional websites take a long time to design - so i assume you would be spending a lot of your time designing, with little/no effort for the affiliate bits and pieces. not to mention promotion

2. if 10,000 (to be generous) people glance over a newspaper where an advert is, you can bet that the amount of people who look at that advert and act on it will be less than 1000.

3. if 1000 people visit the website, your probably going to experience a click-through rate of about 10 people on your affiliate adverts.

4. before we forget, you dont get paid unless they actually sign up to the affiliate program (which i assume will cost them money)

5. so at the end of the chain, you might have 1 signup in every few thousand visitors to the website.

It isn't a bad idea, so what i suggest is that to cover your time for website design you subsidise the website heavily (based on the assumption that they will be profitable in the long run) and charge the customer say £20 (minimum) for a complete website!

This means that you have funding for at least 3 hours of your time, and the rest will be made over the longer term!

[TestAPlug]

Thanks, another really honest reply. I appreciate it will be a long term skills investment that will yeild profits later on, not right now. But as the saying goes Rome wasn't built in a day, at the moment i'm still looking for the bricks! Thanks for the message advice taken onboard. KEV

[Esther]

So my husband has his own plastering company and gets most of his work through recommendations and exisiting contacts but we've often thought that a website might build a more diverse customer base. If we used you TestAPlug would you create a site for free?

I assume it would be a few non fancy pages, a contact us form maybe?

This would be fine and I'm sure would work for many other self employed / sole trader types like builders or DJs etc but I just don't understand what would earn you the money.

Are you suggested adverts on the site to other sites you've made? Or a links page? Would these be links to relevant sites or the competition?

I don't think it sounds like a bad idea, I just don't understand it properly!

[TestAPlug]

Hi, thanks for the reply. The self employed plasterer would be the ideal person I would be looking for! The idea is in the conception stage at the momenat and I have had strong opinions from other sites that it would work well. Got to test the water! As for free websites.... you dont get anything for free! I would provide the build service for free, you would have to pay the domain name costs and web hosting costs (usually £30) but other than that I would not make a profit from building the site. I am still ooking into the cheaper website hosting packages for specific prices. There would be space left in the design of the page that I would utalise with adverts from other companies. I would not use a competitor as that would not be ethical and I'd imagine you would be pretty anoyed! Every time one of your visitors clicks on the advert, it would link them to another site in another window. This ensures your website remains open. I then measure (electronically) how many times that link has been clicked and get paid accordingly by the person who owns the advert. As for the links page: If I had developed pages for 25 businesses in my home town of Derby, I would create a links page at the end of the sight called something like USEFUL LINKS and place all of the other local businesses I have developed for on there. This way they are like a small community of businesses and as all of the websites would have the same page, everybody advertises everybody elses sites! It would probably be a simple 4 page site. All sounds complicated, if I get a page up and running i'll drop you a line on here and it should be self explanatory. Thanks KEV Test A Plug, and if I need any plastering, I know where to come!!

[liams7]

I think for something like this you would be spending money on SEO on PPC and things. It is a good idea. And maybe away to lower your costs but i dont know if you can do it for free.

Maybe if you did templated sites that were 5 pages that would be the quickest and easiest way to do this.

If you are offering real free proffesional sites this would take a month - 2 months to create and even if you charged £20 thats not 3 hours work for pro thats about 30 mins work.

This is a hard one cause it could be good with the right plan behind it.

[new2bus]

As I read it, you are looking for established businesses that are currently spending on advertising to further spend on buying hosting and domain name, they then contact you to create the site for them.

As the site will normally require a logo, are you prepared to create 4 or 5 logos then correspond with quite a few emails until you arrive at a solution.

Then the site itself has to be created, so again you have to correspond back and forth until the site and page layouts are agreed.

Then the content has to be decided upon. (may not be in the above order)

This will take a bit of time on your part. (remember you are marketing a professional site and your interpretation of said word in relation to the site and a customers interpretation can differ tremendously).

You could go free template based sites, but their lies the problem, in that hosts are now offering that as part of the normal service (we do) and do not put any adverts on site.

So if you are going to offer professional sites that are better than existing free templates on offer, expect to put in quite a bit of time.

I am assuming you are going to be monitoring the sites and doing the SEO required to get qualified visitors onto the site.

Your terms and conditions need to be tight otherwise customers will just take what you have done and remove your adverts if the SEO you are doing is not working to get them new business..

As a business model, I think it fails in that the reward returned for the effort applied is very low.

For instance how many customers would you require to give you an adequate monthly income? Times the answer by how many hours needed to create an acceptable site for each customer. Then do the math on how much time you will spend doing SEO on an ongoing basis.

If you are not going to do anything once the site is up and running and you are relying on the customer to get qualified visitors, then why should they not just use a part of that budget on getting a site design.
I am sorry if this seems a bit negative because it is not meant as such, I just feel your energies may give you a better return elsewhere

[TestAPlug]

Thankyou all for your advice, much appreciated. I am going to put a banner add on one of my sites which has a lot of traffic. I can then identify the trends for return. I would not use SEO for the customers but would encourage them to do it as the hosting package I have been looking at gives a voucher for google,yahoo and MSN. A template site would be good and a links page from on every site would generate a "local network" feel. And hopefully generate its own traffic to the other sites. If I could print and portfolio the available templates then I could get a reasonable understanding of the customers needs in one visit and do any alterations "live" over the phone this would cut down time and expenses. The 5 page option is good.

NEW2BUS could you please email me some info on your free sites that you have mentioned or on any packages that you may be able to offer us. I cant add my email address but its kev and im AT test a plug and thats dot co dot uk if you get my gist! Thanks

KEV
Test A Plug

[new2bus]

I have sent you a PM because to list all the freebise we give out or sending a link would be blatent advertising. You can find on our fantastico page though (hint)

I do wish you luck with your venture.

[PointandStare]

If you are very lucky a banner ad will bring in around $30 a month.
Please, do not base your profit on advertising as you'll be lucky to break the $100 a month mark for at least 3 years.
And, yes, that's dollars so it'll be even less for GB pounds.

[TestAPlug]

Thanks new2bus, got the mail. Will look into it. Thanks all for the advice, when I have made some firmer decisions I will let you all know, if you dont have a website then................... Cheers KEV Test A Plug

[esp]

I'm not sure how valuable the offer of a free website will be to customers who are already spending money on other advertising, and who will have to pay £30 pcm for web hosting. I would guess a lot of businesses would prefer to spend a little more for a better design job on the website. As previous posters have noted, a simple template site often comes free with hosting from other companies.