Pricing Web Services

Let's take a more detailed look at pricing options. Here's what I think we want to accomplish:

1. Neatly scaling revenue as service grows
2. Affordable and simple pricing
3. Revenue streams for client, designers, coders, resellers, futurilla

Some ideas:

Futurilla: service charge for managing portal (scale, but ideally zero - can we cut to the chase on this?), job handling commission, specialised services.
LGD: design fee, per-page design, monthly support, page redesign, site management
Designers and coders: one-off design fees (this needs to be predictable)
Clients: Adsense, PayPal, e-commerce facilities.

In conversation we've discussed the idea of a marketplace for services with pricing responsive to urgency and availability. Certainly this needs to be considered, but is outside the scope of getting things started. Predictability of costs is an issue and keeping things to small atomic units might help, both for clients and suppliers; it's harder for costs to mushroom when they're small, simple jobs priced according to time and completed rapidly. Payments too need to be small and responsive to needs: Having a web page redesigned should be as simple as buying something from eBay; and both can use PayPal.

Notes:

It's important that clients should have lots of options for updating content themselves. Note that here we're not making any assumptions about the kind of website, nor whether it's static, dynamic, blog or any combination of things. This is purely about the managing of the design work and service.

The myprotova pricing is worth revisiting. This had a free option, with a three-tier paid service (create, design, develop). I'll try to dig out the documentation and see if there's anything worth exploring there.

Technorati Tags: Creativity, Design, Employment, Futurilla, Internet, technology, Web

LGD Notes

Following last night's meeting with LGD I thought I'd gather a few notes and ideas, and at the same time try out the Journler software for the first time (My initial reaction to the interface is very positive and it seems quite intuitive at this stage). LGD agreed to look at some proposals for what we have in mind, and seemed generally positive about what we were saying. I think they've moved closer to knowing they have to do something. The question now is what? We talked a lot about different pricing for web design, and about charging for more things, possibly on a subscription basis. This is certainly something to revisit at a later stage. Initially I think we need to experiment with using Basecamp for managing a web design project - possibly with Futurilla acting as host for this (though I have no desire to end up as another gatekeeper in the way their freelance web designers have tended to, it would seem churlish to not at least explore the option of hosting and managing this, and I think the reality is that they need someone to hold their hand if they're to do it at all). My objectives are:

• Assist LGD in developing a model for profitable web design work which takes account of new models
• Explore broader models for this in a collaborative mode
• Develop the futurilla portfolio and income streams

My current ideas (which I'd like to discuss more with Mike, and with Dan too):

• Open a Basecamp project for Futurilla/LGD Web Site Services (or similar)
• Begin work on compiling a database of web designers/coders
• Develop an LGD blog and LGD-designed template for their relaunched site
• Source server space (later LGD could have own space on which to host customer sites)
• Explore pricing based on per-client-month and per-item basis

Ideas for development:

• Use LinkedIn to source some coders
• Offer some work via Rent A Coder
• Use the futurilla blog to work up ideas for developing this
• Google analytics/Mint
• Blogger/TypePad/Moveable Type
• Backpack for client site pitches
• Flickr for photo hosting
• del.icio.us for link management
• Blinksale for invoicing
• PayPal for payments

Pricing needs special attention. LGD need to make some money, and the pricing structure should more closely match the actual costs of doing the work (ie not a single payment for continual futzing with the site). Cost for getting things online needs to be as low as possible, with basic templates and paid customisation work. Custom page designs at a per design rate (or a package). Site management on a per-month basis. We could look at the billing side of things and take a percentage, we could charge a sliding scale fee, the occasional one-off, make money on T-shirts, or anything else. I'm open to suggestions.

Technorati Tags: Birmingham UK, Design, Futurilla, Web