5 ms·

I think it is great that children are building things, although I don't think it is news to anyone here, I think everyone here have built things as a child. Th

by nadam 16y ago

I think it is great that children are building things, although I don't think it is news to anyone here, I think everyone here have built things as a child. The other moral of the story for me is that I should avoid markets where a 10 year old can easily be successful. I mean if the client cannot make a difference between your work and the work of a 10 year old, then you may not be in the good market. Here in Hungary 'small scale web development' (website creation for small firms) is in the hands of young guys (although not 10 year olds, more like 20) working for very low amount of money. I avoid that market like plague. Also I don't want to be 'the IT guy' for a small non-tech firm, which is very similar. "He dashed off a check for $2,000" My god, how incredibly happy a 20 year old average PHP developer in Hungary would be for having $2,000 for the mentioned site...

notahacker 16y ago
You could probably get a half-decent local-US-based small web firm to do something quite slick-looking for $2k, (throwing a basic CMS and 12 months' hosting into the bargain). Getting £2k from an unfussy client for a site that can be put together in a day is a sweet spot for many people. As it is, it kind of reminds me of a slightly cruder version of the sites I was building in my early teens for £4 per hour back at the beginning of the last decade. I'm amazed they turned down all the extra cash...
- jambo 16y ago
  Not sure which you meant, but they're both low. $2000!=£2000 My experience is that fussiness is inversely proportionate to price sensitivity. Now if a prospect tries to dicker over hundreds or tell me they "have a nephew who does this kind of stuff," I end the conversation as quickly as possible. [edit: I say this as someone who, in the early days of the web, was one of those kids making websites by hand or with pagemill for $2000 a pop. I don't begrudge anyone doing this today.]
  - notahacker 16y ago
    For a $2000 flat site with minimal graphic work and minimal iteration of the end product you'd probably be looking at an hourly rate of $250 plus, which unless you're investing huge amounts of time into acquiring these customers is good whatever currency you're mistakenly converting into using the wrong ratio... I agree about customers that try to use the boss' nephew as a bargaining chip generally being the ones that also expect the website to rapidly delivered and perfect, but there's plenty of money to be made from small businesses that don't need or want anything complicated.
    - jambo 16y ago
      I meant that you were mixing currencies, and 2000 quid is a lot more than 2000 bucks. I agree on the rate being high if you can do it in a day, but my personal experience is that clients like that are hard to find. Long-term clients who need one-off sites are different because there's established trust and empowerment to make decisions.
yock 16y ago
Or perhaps you could take to writing a few of these a day? A website such as the one demonstrated in the article isn't much of a task for anyone with a modicum of experience.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jonnathanson 16y ago
I would expand on that and say that it's best to avoid markets where the customer cannot easily tell the difference between expensive work and cheap work in general. If you're the high-end provider in a space where the average customer wouldn't know high-end from low-end from a hole in the ground, you're in for a bumpy ride. Innovation -- on a scale untouchable by cheaper, younger, hungrier competitors -- is one way to differentiate. Another is to find a niche that cares about (and will pay for) the best of the best. But those niches shrink every year as the Great Unwashed move up the learning curve.
smokeyj 16y ago
Why would you avoid a market a 10 year old can easily be successful? Web development is a pretty big market to say the least. There's many small businesses who need a wordpress install with a few pages, and others need a their own CMS that integrates with special API's, the market is huge. I was salaried and wrote maintainable code that's still used today at 17, and generalizing an entire market isn't very constructive.

by nadam 16y ago

notahacker 16y ago

You could probably get a half-decent local-US-based small web firm to do something quite slick-looking for $2k, (throwing a basic CMS and 12 months' hosting into the bargain). Getting £2k from an unfussy client for a site that can be put together in a day is a sweet spot for many people. As it is, it kind of reminds me of a slightly cruder version of the sites I was building in my early teens for £4 per hour back at the beginning of the last decade. I'm amazed they turned down all the extra cash...

jambo 16y ago
Not sure which you meant, but they're both low. $2000!=£2000 My experience is that fussiness is inversely proportionate to price sensitivity. Now if a prospect tries to dicker over hundreds or tell me they "have a nephew who does this kind of stuff," I end the conversation as quickly as possible. [edit: I say this as someone who, in the early days of the web, was one of those kids making websites by hand or with pagemill for $2000 a pop. I don't begrudge anyone doing this today.]
- notahacker 16y ago
  For a $2000 flat site with minimal graphic work and minimal iteration of the end product you'd probably be looking at an hourly rate of $250 plus, which unless you're investing huge amounts of time into acquiring these customers is good whatever currency you're mistakenly converting into using the wrong ratio... I agree about customers that try to use the boss' nephew as a bargaining chip generally being the ones that also expect the website to rapidly delivered and perfect, but there's plenty of money to be made from small businesses that don't need or want anything complicated.
  - jambo 16y ago
    I meant that you were mixing currencies, and 2000 quid is a lot more than 2000 bucks. I agree on the rate being high if you can do it in a day, but my personal experience is that clients like that are hard to find. Long-term clients who need one-off sites are different because there's established trust and empowerment to make decisions.

yock 16y ago

Or perhaps you could take to writing a few of these a day? A website such as the one demonstrated in the article isn't much of a task for anyone with a modicum of experience.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jonnathanson 16y ago

I would expand on that and say that it's best to avoid markets where the customer cannot easily tell the difference between expensive work and cheap work in general. If you're the high-end provider in a space where the average customer wouldn't know high-end from low-end from a hole in the ground, you're in for a bumpy ride. Innovation -- on a scale untouchable by cheaper, younger, hungrier competitors -- is one way to differentiate. Another is to find a niche that cares about (and will pay for) the best of the best. But those niches shrink every year as the Great Unwashed move up the learning curve.

smokeyj 16y ago

Why would you avoid a market a 10 year old can easily be successful? Web development is a pretty big market to say the least. There's many small businesses who need a wordpress install with a few pages, and others need a their own CMS that integrates with special API's, the market is huge. I was salaried and wrote maintainable code that's still used today at 17, and generalizing an entire market isn't very constructive.