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Yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $15, I make them a web design
- frazerb 16y agoI like. I'm sure you are at least three times as good as this alternative, but I have enjoyed using a few different (similar) $5 services from fiverr: http://www.fiverr.com/ http://www.fiverr.com/
- swombat 16y agoAssuming it takes you at least 1-2 hours per design (and even with mad photoshop skillz it's unlikely it'd be much shorter than that), you're probably better off getting an office job somewhere, or even maybe a burger-flipping job. Given all the additional expenses of running your own business, this is probably not a viable business model (i.e. you will lose money on the whole). The only way this would be justified is if you use this as a source of clients to up-sell more expensive work to.
- steveklabnik 16y agoOr portfolio building.
- earnubs 16y agoPlease don't build a portfolio based on work you spent 2 hours or less on.
- steveklabnik 16y agoWho says he's spending two hours or less? Normally, you'd spend hours on a portfolio for free. Now he's making a small amount.
- earnubs 16y agoTrue, but given his advertising and rate I would imagine he'd be busy enough. And yes, you spend hours on a portfolio for free, free from the pressure to do inane, boring corporate work for example. I mean, at the end of the day it's just advice, but I don't imagine there are many designers would agree this is a good thing. Entrepreneurs, maybe; designers, no.
- byoung2 16y agoWho says he's spending two hours or less? If he spends 1-2 hours on a design, that's $7.50-$15 per hour. Any longer and he wouldn't be making enough to be worth his time, even in the Philippines or India. For a true portfolio, you'd want better designs than 1-2 hour quickies
- steveklabnik 16y agoIf he's trying to build up a portfolio of work, he'd normally be doing it for free, why would he be trying to make market rates? You're assuming that this is someone building a living from this.
- byoung2 16y agoBut if he spends more time on the early projects (say, 10 hours each to showcase his best work), eventually he will have to cut down the time per project or increase the price to make it profitable. In that case, he would Need complete rebranding, which would be tough, since people would know him as the cheap design guy. If he were just after the portfolio, he should design 10 designs on spec and put them on a site that pitches high end design from the start.
- steveklabnik 16y agoIt's not that tough. Does this site say who he is? Or what he's doing? He could drop this next week and nobody'd know the difference. You're assuming that he's going to keep this domain and brand to build a later business. This doesn't have to be forever.
- anigbrowl 16y agoNo, it's not done for free. It's an investment of time designed to earn a return. The value of that time is supposed to be included in the price charged to the client. 'Doing it for free' is about giving value, not the inability to get paid.
- araneae 16y agoIt's possible that maybe he's only spending an hour a piece on these, but he might go back to them later and build on them more for a portfolio. It's good to make a bunch of quick and diverse designs just to see what happens.
- symptic 16y agoHis portfolio should be relative to what he wants to do in the future. If he intends to do full-scale designing, then of course he should focus on getting that into his portfolio. But if he intends on doing quick, small design deals, this is perfect. Time invested is not a measure of quality.
- rokhayakebe 16y agoInteresting. Can you look at any logo or webpage and tell how long the designer spent on the mockup?
- siong1987 16y agoI don't know where this guy comes from. But, USD15/hour is a very high rate in many countries. Or, he is just trying to build up his portfolio and get his name out there. This seems like a very good approach to attract people attention.
- jefflinwood 16y agoLooks like he's in Brazil from his paypal page. Not sure about the cost of living there, but that's probably a decent wage for a lot of people there.
- marcofloriano 16y agoI´m from Brazil and i already have stablished contact with him. You see here, $15 per hour is a good deal for a beginner designer. If he works 8 hours per day, he can make $120 bucks. In 20 days (avarage working month here), It´s a $2.400 or R$4.000,00. For somebody starting his professional life, around 24 ou 25 years old or even less, IT`S A KICK ASS MONEY !
- golfga 16y agoThis is actually a decent wage in Brazil. When I lived there (15 years ago) minimum wage was equivalent to $100 a month.
- andersonfreitas 16y agoBut it's completely different if the person works in the IT industry. I do live in Brazil (Sao Paulo), and I can't hire a GOOD web designer for my company paying less than $3.000 USD/month (R$ 5K). Here, an experienced designer can easily ask $5K USD/month for working fulltime.
- ericb 16y agoOut of curiousity, are people with these jobs considered high status in Brazil? Is the profession held in high esteem in the sense that being a Doctor in the US is? That seems like a lot of money compared to the median salary, and I'm trying to imagine what impact salary discrepancies like that would cause.
- jacquesm 16y agoIn Brazil a $ goes a bit further than in the US.
- notyourwork 16y agoCan we quantify "a bit"? How much further?
- elomar 16y agoPrice of a Big Mac in USA: $3.73 Brazil: $5.19 (Big Mac index, http://www.oanda.com/currency/big-mac-index http://www.oanda.com/currency/big-mac-index) Jokes aside, in Brazil you need ~$1000/month to live* in a big city, ~$700 in a smaller one, ~$500 as a broken college student. (live* as in small apartment, internet, public transportation, entertainment but no luxury).
- Aqua_Geek 16y agoI spent 2 years in the greater São Paulo area ('05-'07). The exchange rate went from about 2.7 Reais : 1 USD when I got there to about 2.1 when I left. I lived in an apartment off the beach in Praia Grande for a few months. Rent was about R$650 (~$300 US) for a little 2 bedroom. I met a number of people who lived on less than R$300/mo (granted, that was in some of the poorer areas). Lunch in the financial district (where I spent about a year) was ~R$10 (for a pretty good lunch - chicken, rice, vegetables, and a drink). Most American fast food restaurants, however, had prices comparable to the US (McDonald's dollar menu items were about R$2.50, it was R$30 for a pizza at Pizza Hut, etc).
- rgoddard 16y agoAlthough given that this seems to be run as an experiment, so far it seems to be rather successful. Granted, in the long term it might not be sustainable, but for the short term it can provide a number of benefits. First of all the designer will be getting lots of practice and making a number of contacts while building up a good portfolio of examples. Also the low price makes it a low risk for anyone trying it out, so it is the type of experiment they can be tried with little cost and quickly. I would find it interesting to see what the designer ends up doing as a result of this experiment.
- tlrobinson 16y agoI'd rather do something I enjoy for slightly less money than get an office job or flip burgers.
- anigbrowl 16y agoYou must have very cheap rent. If you don't ask for money for what you do, then you are saying that what you do is worthless. You probably don't actually believe that, and the only reason to sell your work for less than the most basic labor is because you don't know how to get paid properly. But customers see your pricing and conclude that designers do not need to be paid even the normal minimum for other kinds of work. If you keep working like this, you will find yourself unable to ever get a design job that pays well. Everyone who calls you will do so because you are cheap. When you go to visit clients who have money to spend, they will not want to hire you. Not because their is anything wrong with your design; but because they are not designers, and so they will try to estimate the quality of your work by the visibility of your financial success. If they notice nothing that suggests you can make money, then they will assume that you can't, and they will assume that the reason you can't is because your designs are no good, and hire someone else. Later, when you want to get married or have a family or just enjoy a better standard of living, but you can not afford to do so because you undervalued your work, you will realize that you designed yourself into poverty. It's true that some very rich/successful people dress or act like they don't care about money. This is because they have so much money that they don't have to care about what clients think. They have agents who take care of all that annoying business stuff for them. Agents only work for people whose work can be sold for high prices, because agents only get 15%, on average. A lot of creative people fall into this trap, I have made this mistake on some occasions. It is a bad pattern, for you and also for your colleagues in the same profession. Also, it's insulting to people who work in offices or flip burgers. Maybe they would like to work at something creative, but when you price your work so low you are demonstrating that creativity is worthless, and that skill and hard work do not deserve a reward. Here's my advice: it's OK to do some work for free for your friends and family, but when you work for money your minimum should be 5 x the minimum for a 'boring' job. Some people will refuse to pay so much, and then you must refuse to work even if your bank account and your stomach are empty. Many will agree. You should use your price to drive bad clients away. Good clients will either pay or negotiate. If you do not make them work in negotiation, they will understand this to mean that you are not going to work on their commission, and hire someone else. If you cannot make a living this way, then get a job flipping burgers. First you will learn some humility, second you will get free food every day, third you will have some more financial security and fourth you will be very tired when you go home every day. Now, do a few hours of design work every week too. Of course, it will be much more difficult now because you are exhausted by working in a hot kitchen before you draw a single line. Now you will start to understand the value of time, and charge accordingly.
- DavidBishop 16y agoI like the idea, and I believe you have a market, but your prices are too low. More importantly it won't scale with inflation. In 10 years, that $15 will be worth around $10 but you will have all SEO links pointing to a domain that is most likely in need of change (You are stuck with a particular price with the domain name you have now). $15 is way too low. I don't know where you are located, but you need to do some market research to figure out what you want to make per hour, how long the average project will take you, how many projects you can do a week, and what your overhead is per week (to figure overhead per project). Once you have those numbers, you will have a better price point. Also, keep have a plan for what you want to do if there is more demand than you can support. Do you hire others? If so, will others work for that price and if so, how much do you need to make to pay them appropriately? I hope above all you do not find my post discouraging. Instead, I hope you continue on with what you are doing, tweaking it to make is sustainable for as long as you wish to do it!
- ericd 16y agoHe can always do a 301 redirect to another page and send the google juice that way. He's getting a lot of advertising from this outlandishly low price.
- ladon86 16y agoIt is crazy. I really think you should charge more.
- bee 16y agoI need a logo for my website, do you also make logos for $15?
- joshfinnie 16y agoI agree, logos for $15 would be a steal!
- malte 16y agoYou can get a 'horrible' logo for five bucks: http://www.horriblelogos.com http://www.horriblelogos.com
- venturebros 16y agothose logos are better than what I can do. Perhaps I should start a site called really horrible logos. I will guarantee all logos will look like a 2 year old on something did them.
- slig 16y agoYou can try to contact artists on fiverr.com and see what they can do for 15 usd.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jeffclark 16y agoJust out of curiosity: why did you buy the designfor15bucks.com domain and STILL setup a gmail account for contact? Related: http://www.google.com/a http://www.google.com/a
- nuclear_eclipse 16y agoBecause Google Apps isn't free and gmail is?
- bry 16y agoThere is a free version of Google Apps: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html
- crocowhile 16y agoThere is. I used that for several years. However I don't anymore because if you work alone or small groups I strongly suggest to use a regular gmail/google account and forward your @domain.com email there instead of using the gmail/app. Otherwise you will be always be running an outdated version of all gmail services and there is no real benefit really in having gmail handling your MX.
- jonknee 16y agoThat requires you to maintain a mail server of your own and everything that comes with that. I prefer to have pagers go off at Google's HQ instead of mine when something happens. What features are you using in Gmail that I'm not getting in Google Apps? I have priority inbox and all the latest Labs experiments. I haven't heard of anything I'm missing.
- crocowhile 16y agoAs I said, I closed down my google apps account a few months ago because things were missing or they arrived later compared to the regular gmail, so I don't know what you may be missing right now. Also, if you have an android phone you cannot buy apps if you sign in only with your apps account, you must use a regular account. That is a PITA, believe me.
- byoung2 16y agoWhere are you located? $15 doesn't sound like a lot of money for what could take about an hour of work (simple 1 page design). Unless you live in a country where money goes farther, or you can do designs much faster than 1 hour? Will this be profitable? EDIT: I see that you are in Brazil, and a quick Googling shows that web designers make $4-$8
- RyanMcGreal 16y agoIs the "Hire my services now" button supposed to have a 2px blue border around it?
- wmeredith 16y agoI'd really like to see the quality of these designs. I sure they'll reflect the price.
- marknutter 16y agoHN, yesterday I had this crazy idea: People pay me $100 and I build them a car.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jeffclark 16y ago...as in "dentist" or "male prostitute"?
- mortenjorck 16y agoNormally, I find the remains of partially-deleted comment threads on HN disruptive and irritating. Normally.
- corin_ 16y agoI really want to know the context of this comment, now the parent is deleted...
- jeffclark 16y agoOriginal was something like "give me $x and I'll fill your cavities"
- lhorie 16y agoInitial thoughts: - the linked images have blue borders around them, look ugly - you could put a couple of samples up if a design costs just $15 worth of your time - I hope you don't live in North America or Europe, otherwise, you're undercharging.
- Cushman 16y agoNice! Do you want to tell us something about your background? I'm thinking a lot of people will see this as absurd, but if you're not spending too long on each individual design, $10-15 and hour is great money for a student or hobbyist, especially since you're developing a marketable skill at the same time. Also, the #1 recommendation here is gonna be to put something up under "latest designs", even if you haven't had any clients yet. The first customer is the hardest, and you can help that along by putting a few coins in the proverbial hat yourself. (Although I realize the site itself is an example of your design :)
- findm 16y agoIf you're doing the designs yourself you're doing yourself a great disservice by charging so little. Often times most people assume they have an endless well of creativity in them but in actually its a feast and famine scenario. Assuming you want to do this full-time you will burn out eventually.
- Luyt 16y agoBut he can stop at any time. He can even send back the money for unfinished jobs.
- seanMeverett 16y agoGreat concept, love the branding, and love the marketing built into the concept. Not a lot of fluff on the page, just the necessities. And once you get busier and have a portfolio, you can start charging more, more, and more until you're getting a good return on your time. Helluva business model, love the thought that went into it. If there's anyway I can help, let me know. Tweeting commencing right....meow!
- wccrawford 16y agoI just started a new blog and wanted a nice design for it. $15 is definitely a good price, if it's a decent design. (Note that I said 'decent' and not 'outstanding'. I know what design is really worth.) But without some samples, it feels like I'm just throwing away $15.
- calloc 16y agoFor $15 you can test the waters. How much do you make in an hour? How long will it take you to design your own web site? In other words, is it worth the $15 gamble to see if someone can come up with something to blow you away?
- wccrawford 16y agoNo, I don't think it is. I could give random people $15 all year long and still not end up with a decent site. Now, someone who has a history of decent-looking sites is a good gamble. And it is a gamble, since he says it's non-refundable and no changes can be made.
- jtheory 16y agoAgreed -- it's a better idea to wait until he has posted some example $15 designs.
- Maro 16y agoRight now it says "Latest designs: COMING SOON". Put up a template or something! Also, charge $30. If the sample designs are actually somewhat good, $30 is worth the gamble, maybe $40-50. I'd probably pay $30. But I'd need to see at least 2-3 references/samples/templates.
- Skywing 16y agoThe thing is, the more he begins to charge then the less and less he'll be able to say "first design is final, if you don't like it then buy a second one." At this point in time, anyone buying from him is just throwing away $15 since he has no examples of previous work.
- mechanical_fish 16y agoI hope this guy thought ahead and registered designfor30bucks.com and designfor60bucks.com.
- forcer 16y agoJust ordered design and looking forward for the outcome in 2 days :)
- rkalla 16y agoGreat idea, good marketing. Hope this does well for you.
- revorad 16y agoInstead of penalising the customer($5) for not listing their design, offer it as a discount for listing their site. So, base cost $20, but with listing only $15!
- Sukotto 16y agoYou allow me to put a screenshot of the design on this page; ($5 extra if you don't) You could reword that clause so your clients feel they're getting something valuable for their $5. Please note that I post all designs to my public portfolio and this website. If you need the design to stay secret, it only costs $5 more Or you could invert your pricing. So you start off as "designfor20bucks" and offer a $5 discount if you can add the image to your public portfolio and post it on the site. People generally feel better about getting a deal than getting hit with extra costs unexpectedly.
- TamDenholm 16y agoReally good advice here, problem is, it'd require changing of the domain name. :P
- mgkimsal 16y agoor two domains point to the same site, and have a $20 in the logo slashed out, replaced with $15.You're the creative one - make it work :)
- chunkbot 16y agoThis would make for a fun A/B test: "$15 + $5 extra" vs. "$20 - $5 discount". You might collect some evidence that people like getting a deal more than getting hit with an extra cost.
- hoop 16y agoHitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a design store, you see designfor15bucks.com sittin' there, there's designfor14bucks.com right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man? Ted: I would go for the 14. Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. designfor14bucks.com. And we guarantee just as good a design as the designfor15bucks.com folk. Ted: You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that? Hitchhiker: If you're not happy with the first 14 bucks of design, we're gonna send you the extra dollar of design free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from "A" to "B". Ted: That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with designfor13bucks.com. Then you're in trouble, huh?
- Legion 16y agoNo no, not 13. I said 14. Nobody's coming up with 13. Who makes a web design in 13 minutes? 14's the key number here. Think about it. 14 days in a fortnight. 14 - the atomic number of silicon. 14 stations of the cross. 14, man, that's the number.
- user24 16y agobut on the web, there is no street on which to see sites next to each other. I knew a jewellery company once which had two sites. One was all red and gold and stars and flashing things, the other was all purple and white and curvy things. The items on the purple posh looking one were 15% more expensive. Same products on each - heck, it was the same database, product description and images on each site! Point is, this is the internet, you can do that kind of thing.
- Benjo 16y agoActually I think that street would be Google search results.
- user24 16y agothat's the obvious reply, but it fails for two reasons: 1) SERPs are not fixed; they vary from month to month, and even from day to day as new sites and pages appear and are added to the mix. This is akin to the houses on a street changing order frequently, and ruins the analogy 2) SERPs differ between terms - you and I might be adjacent for "cheap widgets" but for "budget widgets" the SERP might look entirely different. This is akin to shops having a million doors, each on different streets, and ruins the analogy.
- coffeeaddicted 16y agoAs psd file - so I would have to spend another few hundred $ to get a legal Photoshop to watch it?
- lhorie 16y agoOr you could spend $3 by going to a local internet cafe (or Kinkos or whatever) and downloading the free 30-day trial vesion (Assuming they don't already have a copy there)
- loboman 16y agoGimp will work
- coffeeaddicted 16y agoSometimes. I actually posted it because I had exactly that problem in the past with an artist delivering me .psd's while I'm using The Gimp for everything.
- rgoddard 16y agoOr use Paint.net along with a photoshop plugin to open it for free.
- indiejade 16y agoA couple weeks ago I built http://www.hackeress.com http://www.hackeress.com with the crowdspring / 99Designs clientèle in mind (who seems to be your audience). You could expand your site and add a section for designers who specialize in the code-writing aspect of design. Just a thought. EDIT: Fixed. I'm still working on the site's content; got busy over the holiday. But the design of the site is done, as are the custom 404 error pages. :)
- Huppie 16y agoSince you're probably using that website to get clients, you might want to verify that all the pages work. (The link you used works, clicking on any of the links gives me a 404.)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mgkimsal 16y agoClosed already - dang it - was going to send in a request :(
- grandalf 16y agoThis looks great. I'd like to submit a few designs, so please re-accept submissions. As long as they're done within a week or two that's fine.
- zimro 16y agoGood job, I think that it is a good way to earn some bucks while gathering experience.
- Staydecent 16y agoI'm wondering, as I'm not making any money (devoting time to a startup idea) right now, if anyone would be interested in a similar service for the markup? I'm really quite good and would charge $15/page. I can offer impressive turn around times and even CMS(WordPress) integration for an additional flat-fee($250?).
- mdda 16y agoWould you be cutting it up onto a 'backbone' of our choosing (like 960.gs or blueprint) ? (Obviously this will depend on the overall design, but hopefully the idea is clear).
- Staydecent 16y agoI was just thinking of something similar; Would everyone want HTML5 elements or rather not? My thinking right now, is I would build an order form that has a few predefined options. I usually use my own CSS starting point but am familiar with 960.gs. Blueprint seems to be the other big one, so I could look into adding support for that. But mostly, the markup and css would adhere to my standards. I would have to do this to make the development time minimal so charging to low price makes sense. I would of course offer example markup on the order website.
- mdda 16y agoThe benefit for a coder of having it built on blueprint is that it can be worked with immediately - otherwise one might as well be working with a template from a theme site with unknown/inconsistent markup. Basing it off a well known framework should (a) make life easier for you, (b) give your work a hook other than low price-point.
- Staydecent 16y agoValid points. If there was interest in this I would offer the choice of Blueprint or 960.gs. As for HTML, I would use my starting template which resembles HTML5-Boilerplate and the choice of HTML5 elements(header, footer, article etc.) or not. In theory, this would be a decent paying day-job. I spent the year of 2008 converting PSDs to WordPress themes for $500/theme. With that experience I can convert a PSD to markup in under an hour per page.
- winternett 16y agoA PSD file does not a web design make.
- jorisvoorn 16y agoWell, as you said, you had "this crazy idea" sounds crazy indeed! Hope to see some designs in the lastest section ;)
- spoiledtechie 16y agoLove the Idea. I know for my few websites I have, I would be willing to spend the $15.00...
- tropin 16y agoHow do you convert the PSD files into HTML & CSS? Does Photoshop have an option for it or what?
- alinajaf 16y agoYou learn HTML/CSS, fire up your favourite editor and start slicing.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Luyt 16y agoI wish I could do this for application prototypes. But from experience I know that prototypes can take much more time than $15 justifies. Or maybe I could just accept the ideas which interest me. Hmmmm....
- acangiano 16y agoSomebody delivering the same service, but including HTML/CSS, could easily charge $150 and have more customers than they could possibly handle.
- prawn 16y agoSomebody could offer it sans HTML/CSS, charge $150 and still stay busy IMO. My basic mate's rates fee for that sort of job is $1000-1500 for a PSD. That said, $15-20 is comfortably in that "If it doesn't work out, who cares" bracket. The problem will be that for many people, time is far more crucial than the cost. If I need a turnaround of 3-4 days, and the queue is 7+ days, it won't matter if it's $15 or 15 cents.
- anon-e-moose 16y agoReally? Where do they get clients? I'll start tonight!
- prawn 16y agoHave a good portfolio and gradually build up awareness. If you offer this service, link to a portfolio in your profile. Don't compete on the same turf as elance types. I've used PSD2XHTML type services for $150-250 before and the main reasons I stopped was that the product wasn't really done to our house style and they couldn't hit deadlines. (Now I have staff that do these jobs for me.)
- zabraxias 16y agoIntermediate level front-end web developers are costly due to high demand and the work is arguably more difficult. I agree the $150 might be great for someone offshore though. In any case I like the idea behind the $15 blind design since designers tend to suffer from "I like it but..." with indefinite tweaks and last minute changes. I wouldn't be surprised if customers end up going through several iterations...which would still be inexpensive in this case.
- greyhat 16y agoI find this extremely hard to believe. Have you visited freelancing sites to check this assumption?
- tlrobinson 16y agoNot a bad idea if you can make the numbers work. One variation would be to charge $15 per iteration. The first one might take you 2 hours, but each additional iteration might only take 15 minutes, in which case it becomes more economical.
- LiveTheDream 16y agoThen you're possibly incentivized to do subpar work the first time around to ensure a second round. On the other hand, if you push that too far it will make for a bad reputation. Also, if there is enough new work coming in then it's probably better to spend the time with new clients (with the aim in mind to up-sell later).
- snorkel 16y agoI bounced out immediately due to lack of Latest Design samples. I get the concept, like it, but gotta have examples.
- jlees 16y agoI believe that's the reason this entire site exists. (Portfolio building).
- snorkel 16y agoIt's a visual product so you got to prime the pump with visual samples to entice the first customer.
- treeface 16y agoUnless he's selling his skills for $15...which basically primes the pump itself. According to his website, he's already got more customers than he can handle for a week. Come back in a week and he'll probably have 5-10 items in that portfolio.
- oogali 16y agoUhm, how about you team up with one of the many PSD-to-HTML services and do it soup-to-nuts, or at least get referral compensation from said services?
- Malcx 16y agoI know you're not taking any more design requests at the moment - but could you put a reminder form on your site that emails when you are? By Monday I'll have forgotton all about you.
- tlrobinson 16y agoI just came across this site, which lets people sell their services for $5: http://www.fiverr.com/ http://www.fiverr.com/
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- marcc 16y agoI had never seen fiverr.com before. Interesting. I just tried them out, paid someone $5 to take a look at one of my sites and send me some feedback. I was honestly impressed with the comments.
- mikegreenberg 16y agoI think you guys are looking at this all wrong. This isn't $15 for a complete and polished design. This is $15 for Marco's inspiration and thoughts being invested into my product! $15 is nothing to lose out on if it falls on its face, but imagine the benefit you could be missing had you not tried?
- jasonmcalacanis 16y agoThis is Genius. You should only do one a day, and if someone wants to jump the line they can big higher than $15!!! I'm going to put the Launch conference www.launch.is/conference and ThisWeekIn.com up for $50 each right now. $100 is no risk... if you have one good idea in each design it would be worth it. i love this idea!
- NHQ 16y agoHN, I will make your psd into html/css and even javascript for $200.
- cloudhead 16y agoIndeed, a crazy idea. Considering any decent design would take at least 3 hours of work, you'd be making $5/hour. To make it worthwhile for you, you'd have to spend at most 1h per design, in which case it wouldn't be worth the $15 for the client, or a spot on your portfolio.
- fido 16y agoviral/discount/link juice - Offer a $5 discount for anyone who tweets/blogs your site
- NxguiGui 16y agoThats why i quit making colorful pictures for "blind" people with small pockets long time ago. Time (effort spend) to return (money) equation is terrible. Its shameful that todays perception on web design is PSD layered file. Web design is a process of communication of an idea/marketing concept to a consumer. Web design is UX thinking. Than: Web design is UI doing. Than: Web design is a illustration. I don't see how the Client will perceive this low price PSD oriented service with less expectations. The price is so low that its not serious, it's a joke. Advice: Make some sassy layouts, put them online in portfolio section. Than put up your price per hour. Give a client full service, feedback, comments on their ideas, professional advice etc. But: Value in web design is not in pictures. It is in successful conceptualization of your professional view on clients problems. Years ago i stop offering cool pictures, and start learning more about technology in front-end (html.css.js), UX, marketing, communication with customer and now i perceive the web design process as a whole of many valuable parts. If you are in desperate position, do some freelancing or get a routine job and invest in your self in your spare time:))
- alinajaf 16y agoI don't understand why so many replies assume that this was intended to be long-term, sustainable business model. It's a brilliant marketing exercise, nothing more, nothing less.
- nhangen 16y agoSo true. Look at the comments here...has HN in a frenzy. I hate it, but it's brilliant. Seems like something Tim Ferriss would do.
- ticktock 16y agoAll this talk about how to price your service and nobody mentions the .99 (save a penny) trick? Put that in your A/B/D(umb) testing and that'll be your winner. People are sheep.
- dpcan 16y agoEveryone watch as this fellow goes from zero to burn-out faster than any web designer ever.
- yosho 16y agoJust a thought, you can consider teaching design which allows you to meet customers and give back to the community. http://skyara.com http://skyara.com shameless self plug :)
- run4yourlives 16y agoHe doesn't say anything about the design being unique. Odds are he'll make 50 templates at a loss and just reuse them. Eventually, he turns a profit with an automated muse and everyone is happy.
- DistortedRhymes 16y agoYou could probably charge double, triple or quadruple and still get customers.
- kunley 16y agoAfter 18 hours, still no example designs.
- lsc 16y agoRelevant to my interests. I'll probably be giving it a go shortly. My buddy (who has taste) suggests toning down the front page, though. While others say 'raise your prices' my suggestion is to keep them low, at least until you have more work than you want to handle. at $15, I might as well give you a shot. at $150? eh, I'm much less likely to blow that on something I have no idea if I will like or not. Oh, also, if I like the design, it'd be pretty cool to slip you another $100 or something and get the html/css, I mean, if it's possible to get that sort of thing at that price.
- DanielStraight 16y agoYou know... most of the comments in response have been negative. Some have said the $5 charge for keeping the design off the portfolio is phrased wrong. Some have said the price is too low. Some have criticized the site design, but you know what? In about an hour, this guy got more customers than he could even deal with. He now has a collection of email addresses he can send an announcement to when he launches a "real" web design company. He has a bunch of examples he can show of real customers using his designs. He has the experience of actually having someone pay him for his work. Heck, he even got over 200 HN karma out of the deal. How can this be a bad thing?
- luckydip 16y agohe's loaded some designs