Digital agencies from India?

[Amazin]

Anyone used any of them before, if so are they any good? e.g. Web design and SEO services?

I asked one of the my friend about it and he thinks its a bad idea.

 

[rodroc]

I really do not trust the SEO teams and companies from India. They usually have very bad grammar and do mostly black hat SEO.

Regards
Rod
www theadvisorcenter com

 

[zigojacko]

Approach with extreme caution. And if you don't know anything about web design or SEO, I'd get someone who does to do the approaching otherwise you won't be able to tell the clueless from anyone else.

Generally though, I'd avoid at all costs.

 

[Faevilangel]

Having been involved in a large project recently with an Indian company (I was bought into manage the work) I found the following:

- they need lots of hand holding
- they require a lot of feedback on what they are doing, they will build to the brief but won't ask questions if they don't understand something
- they are motivated by time, they will only work the XX time on the job e.g. you pay for 5 hours, you get exactly 5 hours.
- they cannot design, the designs they come up with are what we saw in the early 90's

Put it this way, I wouldn't pass a job to them if it was less than £10k and I had someone technical enough to be my project manager. I would get all design work done by someone else.

For projects under £10k, it's just not worth the risk to get the job done in India, you will get a poor job unless you really want to spend a lot of time back and forth with them to get it right.

From your previous posts you want to get a website built but don't / can't spend the prices of a UK pro. If you really want to outsource it then head to Poland / Bulgaria as they are more UK like in their thinking but do come in cheaper.

 

[fisicx]

To add to the above:

They can create a standard site using prebuilt scripts and plugins. They are hopeless at doing anything bespoke.

They haven't got a clue about SEO. They still plug away at the old blog comments, social bookmarking, directory submissions and other pointless methods. They try to do guest blogging but it's just spun junk.

 

[Lou P]

I used a guy once for an infographic: it was bad. Was just copy and paste text from my website surrounded by 90's graphic images which appear in any 'SEO' search on Google Images. Only cost £5, but it was still a waste as I binned it!

They are also *generally* terrible at SEO. I had a client in the Summer who wanted me to do some work on his site. Long story short, we couldn't agree on a fee and he went off, paid cheap, and now his website has been banished to Google Hell! Moral of the story: Cheap work. Cheap results!

So to answer your question; no they are not (generally)!

 

[Amazin]

thank god I made this thread and asked. Deep down I know what you pay for is what you get and I certainly don't want to save money in areas where its important to spend the money. I also got contacted by this American company and had skype call with them. They offered to do the job for $450 and $200 per month for SEO. sounds good to me but I'm still bit skeptical.

 

[Core List]

I have used them for a few different things SEO, Graphic Design, Website design.

I have had good and bad experiences. I definitely wouldn't use them for SEO, unless you know exactly what to do yourself and just want to outsource the mundane tasks. I got a website penalised by Google and it cost me more to recover from it and lost 6 months of ranking because of poor SEO practises (and some negative SEO from a competitor).

I have had mostly good experiences with Graphic design. Most of my logos and designs were from India and Philippines.
Web design can be half half, but you will not get follow up service, which is fine if you know what you are doing and have it hosted yourself. Just watch the don't put other crap sites on your server if they have FTP access.

Regards
John

 

[Core List]

On another note, what exactly do you need done. Website or SEO and for what product or service, is it cleaning?

John

 

[zigojacko]

sounds good to me but I'm still bit skeptical.

What makes it sound good?

 

[fisicx]

I also got contacted by this American company and had skype call with them. They offered to do the job for $450 and $200 per month for SEO. sounds good to me but I'm still bit skeptical.

Do what for the money? You are an East london cleaner, getting your site to rank well (and more importantly convert) will not need a monthy spend. Sign up as a full member here, get your site reviewed and you will problably find your problems will be solved.

 

[Amazin]

Do what for the money? You are an East london cleaner

the site will have nothing to do with cleaning and it will be a membership based site.

this is what they said:

On the other hand, as for your SEO request. If you decide to work my team and I on this project ...we will dedicate some time to writing really great content for your site. The saying goes that you should write for people first and search engines second. This basically means we will be willing to create really quality pieces that are useful and engaging for membership prospects because the search engines will recognize our efforts.

Your future members will share your site generating additional backlinks, not to mention extra traffic, and search engines will recognize your quality piece because it will flow naturally.

In terms of pricing, around $200 monthly I can guarantee :
(1) 5 Campaigns
(2) 300 Keywords
(3) 50k Crawled Pages: (Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web, typically for the purpose of Web indexing.)
(4) 15 Social Accounts to promote your company's name and website

or

In terms of pricing, around $315 monthly I can guarantee :
(1) 5 Campaigns
(2) 450 Keywords
(3) 50K Crawled Pages: (which is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web, typically for the purpose of Web indexing.)
(4) Includes Reports
(5) 15 Social Accounts to promote your company's name and website

what do you think?

Sign up as a full member here, get your site reviewed and you will problably find your problems will be solved.

is it worth it?

 

[zigojacko]

It sounds like low quality junk and they don't know what they're talking about.

One of those that are still talking like it is 90's SEO but trying to adapt by inserting the words 'quality' to modernise it.

It's meaningless.

X Campaigns? What does that entail?

X Keywords? What does that mean? They'll rank you for X keywords? 95% of which will probably not even be searched for...

X Crawled pages? Huh, what does that matter? A web crawler will naturally crawl any well built site as many pages as is allowed by the site's directives. This is just a meaningless guarantee and pointless even saying it.

Includes reports? Reports of what?

Just what are they going to do for your business?
What have they researched?
How are they going to solve the problem for your target audience?
What sort of content are they going to write?
Where will it be published?
Who's going to find it?
What metrics are going to be measured?
If it's a membership site, what are the plans to monetise it?

This is so poor if this the final proposal and I'd bet my bottom dollar that you'd see no improvement from anything going with this...

 

[fisicx]

^^^What he says.

It's meaningless drivel. Avoid at all costs

 

[a1exn1987]

All sounds a bit ropey to me. It probably won't help your site very much.

Although digital marketing proposals can be a little bit on the slim side, in order to stop companies simply taking the ideas and doing them themselves, that's just empty.

There's no original thoughts on your brand or current site, they haven't even said anything specific to your business. I echo the thoughts of others here...

5 Campaigns - What are they? How will they work? Is one a social media campaign? Another a content marketing campaign?

300 Keywords - Way too many for that sort of budget, even if you managed to get a good deal. Bottom line, they will probably target 300 keywords poorly as opposed to 3 well - meaning it won't benefit your sites rankings.

50k Crawled Pages - No point in crawling any more pages than the ones on your website. I think this might mean generating backlinks on other sites though - and if you're creating 50,000 of them you can bet they're not all going to be on authoritative and relevant domains.

15 Social Accounts - Again, unnecessary. There's much more benefit to 1 social account that effectively targets your audience and engages with them. There's no advantage to having a higher number of accounts - in all likelihood it will just clutter your web presence and be ineffective.

Reports - Well, it's good to receive reports on your marketing campaign with things like rankings for target keywords, referral traffic from backlinks created and other insights like organic search traffic - but they haven't specified any of that. Bizarre, as they should know that's what a client would want to see - they need to demonstrate the value they add so they should be making an effort to say exactly what they will report on.

I'm sure there are legitimate and effective marketing companies in India, but that doesn't sound like 1 of them.

 

[Amazin]

It sounds like low quality junk and they don't know what they're talking about.

One of those that are still talking like it is 90's SEO but trying to adapt by inserting the words 'quality' to modernise it.

It's meaningless.

lol, you certainly don't sound impressed. If I know what you know about SEO then I probably feel the same.

X Campaigns? What does that entail?

X Keywords? What does that mean? They'll rank you for X keywords? 95% of which will probably not even be searched for...

X Crawled pages? Huh, what does that matter? A web crawler will naturally crawl any well built site as many pages as is allowed by the site's directives. This is just a meaningless guarantee and pointless even saying it.

Thanks for that, I will certainly question them further. Btw, thats from an American digital agency.

Includes reports? Reports of what?

Just what are they going to do for your business?
What have they researched?
How are they going to solve the problem for your target audience?
What sort of content are they going to write?
Where will it be published?
Who's going to find it?
What metrics are going to be measured?
If it's a membership site, what are the plans to monetise it?

Some very useful questions there and thank you so much for proposing them. The site I'm trying to create will be targeting London only for young professionals.

I'm sure there are legitimate and effective marketing companies in India, but that doesn't sound like 1 of them.

Its an American company if that would change your opinion?

 

[zigojacko]

lol, you certainly don't sound impressed. If I know what you know about SEO then I probably feel the same.

Thanks for that, I will certainly question them further. Btw, thats from an American digital agency.

Some very useful questions there and thank you so much for proposing them. The site I'm trying to create will be targeting London only for young professionals.

No far from impressed, personally, I wouldn't even bother continuing the discussion further with them. I can practically guarantee you that they aren't the 'agency' to help your business.

Why are you using an American company to target a niche in London anyway? I'm not saying it's not possible but wouldn't it make sense to work with a company in the UK that will be more familiar with the country and location?

If you go to them with those questions, they'll just spew out some blurb about 'high quality', 'authoritative', 'high pr', 'quality backlinks', 'quality this', 'quality that'. Yes, quality is what is needed but they wouldn't know quality if it smacked them on the forehead. It's just a word to them to win your business, nothing they do will be quality to a search engine or humans.

 

[Faevilangel]

The average hourly rate for a decent seo freelancer in America is $60-$120 an hour, so you're potentially only getting less than 3 hours "work".

You will probably find, they say they are american but are actually in India (or farm the work out to India).

Most Indian companies now have american and english telephone numbers to seem local.

I get emails / calls every week from "British SEO's" but digging down the website is hosted in India, the phone number redirects to an Indian number and the person speaking (on the phone) has a really poor grasp of the english language.

 

[fisicx]

Its an American company if that would change your opinion?

Are you 100% sure?

Most of these companies outsource the work to India, Vietnam or the Philippines.

 

[zigojacko]

Fair points, the quote provided from them by the OP shows gaps in free-flowing English language. Quite likely, not written by an American at all.

 

[Amazin]

again thanks for the useful info.

Are you 100% sure?

Most of these companies outsource the work to India, Vietnam or the Philippines.

It is not easy to tell I have to admitt. I spoke to them over skype, the guy was Afro American, its basically more of a family business. run by 3 brothers and 2 friends.

thats their site:

http://www.nwiremarketinggroupinc.com/about-us/

Why are you using an American company to target a niche in London anyway? I'm not saying it's not possible but wouldn't it make sense to work with a company in the UK that will be more familiar with the country and location?

I just saw them and emailed them to get a quote but I do have a friend who's best friends with Owner of web design company based in Essex. They quoted me £750 for the web design (they told me they gived me 50% discount because of my friend's friendship with the owner) and £250 per month for SEO.

Is it important to use a UK company? I don't know

 

[zigojacko]

again thanks for the useful info.

It is not easy to tell I have to admitt. I spoke to them over skype, the guy was Afro American, its basically more of a family business. run by 3 brothers and 2 friends.

thats their site:

http://www.nwiremarketinggroupinc.com/about-us/

There site is awful loaded with basic, useless information about their services. Just regurgitated tosh that you can find on Wikipedia - probably with some incorrect details here and there and plenty of stock imagery that appears on the first page of Google for 'seo' or similar.

It might be a family business but they don't know the industry. It's a few brothers that probably thought we can make a quick buck here seeing there is nothing stopping us from being an 'seo company'. The industry is littered with mediocre websites like this that offer no value like the people running them.

I can instantly tell these people a mile-off now, it often only takes a glance at a website or listening to a sentence or two from what they've said. It's become so natural to spot these after being in the field and having come across so many hundreds over the years.

When you compare that kind of content to something like this or this, it's hopefully quite clear, the difference between the two and whilst this is one of our websites, I appreciate, it is still far from 100% perfect also. But that's the difference between 'seo is the process of...', 'seo stands for...' and real content that users want to know... how we can help and what we're going to do. Transparency goes a long way and installs trust in an already polluted line of work.

I just saw them and emailed them to get a quote but I do have a friend who's best friends with Owner of web design company based in Essex. They quoted me £750 for the web design (they told me they gived me 50% discount because of my friend's friendship with the owner) and £250 per month for SEO.

Did that not sound like a reasonable deal to you then or...?

Is it important to use a UK company? I don't know

Not necessarily, depends on your business. Targeting a niche in London (geographical based optimisation and targeting) is one reason right there to use a local agency though.

 

[Amazin]

There site is awful loaded with basic, useless information about their services. Just regurgitated tosh that you can find on Wikipedia - probably with some incorrect details here and there and plenty of stock imagery that appears on the first page of Google for 'seo' or similar.

tbh I also feel the same way and I don't even know that much about design & SEO.

Did that not sound like a reasonable deal to you then or...?

I'm really unsure about it tbh, Few people mentioned to that I can probably do it myself by using premium plugins and templates. I want it to get it done professionally because I'm worried that if I try to do myself then soon or later I will run into problems especially it comes to taking payments and online security.

Targeting a niche in London (geographical based optimisation and targeting) is one reason right there to use a local agency though.

I want to use an agency based in London but they're so expensive. I phoned few agencies but they want 1000s just for design. I don't think its necessary for the site I'm trying to develop and I need the money for SEO. anyways, I just got an email from my friend's best friend company, this is what they're offering:

[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Outlined underneath is what we can offer you here at Edge House Media.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]We will produce you a completely tailored site to your specification, taking into consideration all the functionality specified by you; something that is modern and informative, striking but yet professional.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Our Content Management System (CMS) or back office is very simple to use. Full training and support will allow you to update all parts of your website and manage content effortlessly, however full support is also offered.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Your account manager will hold your hand through the process from cradle to grave taking out any leg work needed by you. They are there to make your life as easy as possible so you can concentrate on what matters most; your business.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]We will create you a full online business platform. Something that is distinctive, efficient and designed to be informative. You will get the following:[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]We will design, create and build the package for £750 all in. Hosting and support is priced at £10 per month giving you your own dedicated account manager.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Please take a look at our online brochure and see some of the sites that we have created for our existing clients: http://edgehousemedia.com[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]SEO[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]You will be joining us at a great time, as we have recently begun an “above and beyond” policy so that we do more than we’re paid for to make sure that our clients get the best results for the budgets they have invested.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Below are some of the things that we organise and discuss with you when setting up your campaign.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Keyphrase analysis – A comprehensive assessment of what words your target market are searching for to ensure you get as many qualified users as possible[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Website Diagnostic – A full analysis of what works and what doesn’t in terms of SEO on your website[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Advanced Google Analytics setup, training and support – We get you up to speed and support you in the use of the number one analytics software online which provides invaluable feedback on your website data[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Usability analysis and report – We’ll provide you with usability advice and assistance to ensure any barriers your users face on your website are removed[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Meta Tag Creation – Meta tags professionally written to match all of your targeted keyphrases[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Competitor Analysis – We will research all of your online competitors to ensure that we know exactly what to do to beat them[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Support when you want it - Enjoy friendly one-to-one consultations with your own dedicated account manager[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]I would recommend our starter package at £250 per month, we design the SEO package to fit your budget and aims.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]We don’t hold you into any lengthy contracts, we just ask for 30 days’ notice if you wish you cancel your service with us. So it is our priority to get you the great results that will drive your business forward.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]If I can be of further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]I look forward to our next conversation.[/FONT]

 

[fisicx]

[FONT=Calibri,sans-serif]Meta Tag Creation - Meta tags professionally written to match all of your targeted keyphrases[/FONT]

That one line would be enough to send me running.

And if they are using an in house CMS it means you can't go anywhere else - you will be tied to them forever.

And there is no portfolio so for all you know they could be hopeless at building websites

And they reccomend 1&1 for hosting. Aaaaaaaargh!

 

[zigojacko]

Yeh, what he said ^^^

It's better than the Americans but it still doesn't convince me that they know what they're talking about. With the design or the SEO.

I'll be honest though, if you're looking for something 'cheap', this is the best you're going to get really. A mediocre company that doesn't really excel at either service you're after and can barely talk the talk, let alone walk the walk.

Most agencies in London are pretty damn good. They know their stuff, they have large teams that specialise in areas that matter like usability, user experience (UX), responsive design, retina support, typography, branding etc etc. All the stuff that will drive the business forward.

What kind of website are you wanting built anyway?

 

[a1exn1987]

Most agencies in London are pretty damn good.

Local for Amazin too. So it's much easier to go and actually see them and their setup.

 

[Amazin]

I'll be honest though, if you're looking for something 'cheap', this is the best you're going to get really. A mediocre company that doesn't really excel at either service you're after and can barely talk the talk, let alone walk the walk.

sigh* I guess what you pay for is what you get. If thats all I have access to then I might just have to accept that.

That one line would be enough to send me running.

And if they are using an in house CMS it means you can't go anywhere else - you will be tied to them forever.

And there is no portfolio so for all you know they could be hopeless at building websites

And they reccomend 1&1 for hosting. Aaaaaaaargh!

what's wrong with meta tags? I'm bit scared now that you mentioned that I can't go anywhere else if they're using inhouse CMS! Please enlighten me if there are other stuff to lookout for!

 

[zigojacko]

sigh* I guess what you pay for is what you get. If thats all I have access to then I might just have to accept that.

Why do you have to accept that? No-one should have to accept this work. This is the reason the quality of the industry has been driven so low because businesses keep lining the pockets of companies that aren't really that clued up about what they're doing.

Why not save up to invest or seek funding if your initial budget is low? From what I can gather, you're after a membership website that specialises in a niche in London? A membership website is a huge project (I've got experience with this, I'm the founding director of Clubnet UK (social network for a nightlife community) which we designed and built on an open source platform) - it's an immense project and any serious projects you're going to be looking at £5k + for something that fully does what you want. You can lower costs via various routes but if you just opt for something mediocre, your website will unlikely succeed and drain what money you do have until you eventually shut it down - we've seen it so many times already.

what's wrong with meta tags? I'm bit scared now that you mentioned that I can't go anywhere else if they're using inhouse CMS! Please enlighten me if there are other stuff to lookout for!

Anyone bleating on about meta tags is living in the past, it's not overly significant to any decent strategy online these days. If that's the best they can come up with, then they're not worth going with because that will literally be, the best they can come up with which isn't going to help your business grow at all. Meta tags perform probably about 1% of our marketing strategy.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

You can't judge someone's ability from their website or the cut of their suit. Doing so is likely to lead you straight into the arms of those who can pay for appearances, but don't necessarily have any ability. Those with ability will usually be very busy...

Look to people you know and trust to recommend someone. Then start small and aim to have any campaign pay for itself. Anyone who can't do this, I'd be wary of hiring. Marketing that doesn't pay for itself isn't really worth having IMHO.

A good marketer should be able to produce results that pay for themselves, so any budget should be flexible and seen as an investment rather than a cost.

There are probably good people in any country, it's a matter of finding them. It's unlikely someone offering packages as described is going to be effective. Anyone who immediately jumps in suggesting x keywords for y pounds/dollars without taking time to understand your business is likely to be ineffective.

IMHO design is overrated. If you are on a budget, focus more on copy-writing. A plain and simple design with good copy will pull more than a fancy design with mediocre copy.

 

[fisicx]

What we don't know yet is the scope of the project. Membership for what? Numbers of memebers? Location, services offered, payment options, marketing strategy and so on.

It's possible that a small wordpress site with a few plugins will do the job or you may need a bespoke platform. Why not put something in Tenders to give people an idea on the size of the project.

It's also possible that a small operation may winn the contract but not have the skills to deliver the level of complexity you require - meaning a cheap deal might end up with a website that just doesn't work.

 

[zigojacko]

You can't judge someone's ability from their website or the cut of their suit. Doing so is likely to lead you straight into the arms of those who can pay for appearances, but don't necessarily have any ability. Those with ability will usually be very busy...

Maybe not, but you can from what they say in their proposal. And that was the killer factor in what the OP has provided.

 

[zigojacko]

It's possible that a small wordpress site with a few plugins will do the job or you may need a bespoke platform. Why not put something in Tenders to give people an idea on the size of the project.

To follow on from this, OP, you may wish to check out Wordpress with Buddypress bolted on. Wordpress is cheap and simple to get up and running and Buddypress converts Wordpress into the elements you'd want with a membership website - all the social media side of it.

It's far from perfect but it's open source, has plenty of plugins and plenty of ready made themes and documentation to get you started on a budget.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

Maybe not, but you can from what they say in their proposal. And that was the killer factor in what the OP has provided.

I hadn't read that as a proposal - I thought it was a sales pitch...

IMHO any proposal should define a measurable objective and define what constitutes success and how that would be measured...

 

[Amazin]

Why not save up to invest or seek funding if your initial budget is low? From what I can gather, you're after a membership website that specialises in a niche in London? A membership website is a huge project (I've got experience with this, I'm the founding director of Clubnet UK (social network for a nightlife community) which we designed and built on an open source platform) - it's an immense project and any serious projects you're going to be looking at £5k + for something that fully does what you want. You can lower costs via various routes but if you just opt for something mediocre, your website will unlikely succeed and drain what money you do have until you eventually shut it down - we've seen it so many times already.

well, I can potentially pour more money into it but i'm not sure how well its going to workout and I need some of that money for other business use. I certainly don't think its a good idea to invest too much money simply because I really don't know much about websites in general, I feel quite vulnerable in that sense. At this stage I need someone to design a reasonable site for me and some SEO to get started to see how it goes. I will invest more if necessary. I just had a look at your site and its going through upgrad at the moment?

What we don't know yet is the scope of the project. Membership for what? Numbers of memebers? Location, services offered, payment options, marketing strategy and so on.

I will only be targeting London for now and I don't want to give my idea away. Ideally I want to get to 15,000+ members, not sure how long that will take usually but its certainly lot of work.

Why not put something in Tenders to give people an idea on the size of the project.

never used them before, I think I will give a go.

 

[zigojacko]

well, I can potentially pour more money into it but i'm not sure how well its going to workout and I need some of that money for other business use. I certainly don't think its a good idea to invest too much money simply because I really don't know much about websites in general, I feel quite vulnerable in that sense. At this stage I need someone to design a reasonable site for me and some SEO to get started to see how it goes. I will invest more if necessary. I just had a look at your site and its going through upgrad at the moment?

This is why you should use a consultant for advice (like we're doing now) to advise you on what's good and what isn't.

Before investing money into a website, you should have researched the market, the audience, the competition and have an idea of where revenue can be generated in the business model that you deploy into the website - no consideration to any of that will just result in a website being built blindly with no direction in a 'trial and error' approach. You may as well throw your money away or seek a DIY cost effective solution like Wordpress and Buddypress to test the water leaving funds to expand to a bespoke website further down the line if the business gains traction.

We pulled the plug on Clubnet UK (view it archived though) a while ago purely because the network wasn't monetised to my satisfaction and we faced so many limitations working with open source platforms/scripts and frameworks with what we had built upon so the aim is to go back to the drawing board with a completely revised business model and rebuild a platform bespoke.

I will only be targeting London for now and I don't want to give my idea away. Ideally I want to get to 15,000+ members, not sure how long that will take usually but its certainly lot of work.

never used them before, I think I will give a go.

No-one is going to be able to advise you accurately without knowing exactly what you want to do and what the business goals are.

 

[Amazin]

Before investing money into a website, you should have researched the market, the audience, the competition and have an idea of where revenue can be generated in the business model that you deploy into the website - no consideration to any of that will just result in a website being built blindly with no direction in a 'trial and error' approach. You may as well throw your money away or seek a DIY cost effective solution like Wordpress and Buddypress to test the water leaving funds to expand to a bespoke website further down the line if the business gains traction.

I think my site will be similar to yours once its finished. It look good btw. I have done some research and so far I have 2 major competitors and they have huge share of the market e.g. 70%. My idea will have enough USP to attract people to sign up and the rest will depend on execution. I'm not a huge fan of market research unless there're strong evidence that you should stay away from a particular market. Sometimes if you ask people what they want, they might tell you they want a faster horse instead of a car.(Henry Ford)

I can potential go down the DIY route but I know it will end up taking me ages and probably won't look anywhere near as good. I want the site to be up and running ASAP. I will study and learn more about web design and SEO as time goes on.

We pulled the plug on Clubnet UK (view it archived though) a while ago purely because the network wasn't monetised to my satisfaction and we faced so many limitations working with open source platforms/scripts and frameworks with what we had built upon so the aim is to go back to the drawing board with a completely revised business model and rebuild a platform bespoke.

I do have few ideas to monetise my site but largely depend on how many members and how they respond. So open source plateforms can limit you that much? oh oh, I hope its not too much work to make the necessary changes.

 

[amitaharij]

I used to outsource all my seo projects to Searchnscore (searchnscore.com) company located in India. They are very good performers and they are completing the tasks at right time. I'm more comfortable to work with those guys.

 

[zigojacko]

I used to outsource all my seo projects to Searchnscore (searchnscore.com) company located in India. They are very good performers and they are completing the tasks at right time. I'm more comfortable to work with those guys.

Yes but you're in India anyway so it's hardly the same as a UK business hiring an agency in India. And if they were very good completing tasks at right time then why do you not still use them? (You said "used to outsource").

I can hardly see an Indian freelancer/company out sourcing their digital marketing to a UK company somehow.

 

[amitaharij]

I don't have anymore seo projects to outsource. Thats why I have mentioned ( "used to outsource" )