What is the Downside to Affordable Web Design?

Have you ever outsourced or considered outsourcing a design or website development project to save money or time or both? Any number of portals offer us Design and WordPress Development services  that are supposed to make it easy and affordable for us less tech-savvy DIYers–but do they really when we take all into accounts?

Even Premium WordPress Themes “appear easy enough to work” with (or so the marketing says). BUT for some non-tech types the learning curve is steeper. Our initial investment (thinking we can do it all for ourselves) is a penny saved but pound foolish.

Trouble is we figure that out after the fact and we may opt to keep trying and throw a little more money at it.

After investing a mere $87 in a  Premium  Wordpress Theme, for the sake of launching an online business, one person I know of found it was not as easy as suggested to set up their initial site and there was no support! So a freelancer was engaged for a song and $300 was paid up front with the expectation that the website desired would now be built for them using the Theme. But no, the freelance programmer tried through email to train the client on how to do it for themselves. Even this might have been acceptable, if the site could have been created and populated with content.

Last I am aware, it still doesn’t exist. So what is this person into for at this point?

$387 in cash and countless hours in email exchanges that got her no closer to what was wanted.

Efforts to communicate strictly via email with the outsourced programmer in a different time zone 12 hours away were never successful. Weeks passing and still not having the desired end product: a WordPress site that could be monetized and improved upon functionally.

Ask yourself as the business owner you are or are planning to become when is it wise to hire a professional you can work with closely and whose on the same page as you?

What is your time worth and billed at? Why are you spending money  trying to do something for yourself that is not where you earn the most bang for your buck?

We call that working in your business when we should be working on our business.  Too many a budding business owner tries to be chief cook and bottle washer, virtual assistant and bookkeeper, depleting their creative juices and energy for business development and stellar client services. Why? To have a sense of control? To save money in start up costs?

Again, what is your “sweet spot” for earning and why would you overwhelm yourself with a task that is not your strength? I know I am a strong writer and editor and creator of bog content. I am in my element doing this for others. I love doing this for my clients. I do it effortlessly and could do it for long hours and find creating blog content for a site energizing.

I have come to realize VERY quickly, that while I could be a WordPress officionado, I am not efficient beyond basic operations. And, quite frankly, if I wanted a more complex site with widgets and sliders and custom elements, I am hiring a local and reliable professional. I’ll do so for the sake of working with someone who can understand my language of my vision and my ideas. Clarity of communication saves time and money. It also assures we get what we wanted.

More power to the tech-savvy and creative sorts who can take a pre-packaged theme and make the most of it on their own but for the rest of us who will spin our wheels and grow frustrated with every plugin we attempt to discern and activate (as we hope we don’t break our site–which I have done!) I say:

Go local. Stay local. Exhaust your local resources before you try what may be a too good to be true scenario. There is so much talent in our own backyard.

*P.S. As the writing mentor, copywriter and editor I am, I 'll egg clients on till they produce copy they really are pleased with AND that copy needs a home that is not delayed! Here is to being able to recognize when engaging another is the wiser business choice.*