goingincircles - 11:04 am on Oct 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

Have you had much experience with the sort of people who would go for this sort of thing?

Whatever you do will enough be enough, whatever you charge will always be too much.

I have tried a similar scheme with hosting, and it did work to a certain extent, but the 30hrs + technical support we gave to some clients in return for £30 a year hosting really didn't inspire me to continue.

Almost none of your clients will have any success with their website. They will want to know why. When you say "what do you expect for £#*$! a year?" they will think you have ripped them off, sold them something that is of no use.

Many big hosting companies offer pre-designed templates and online WYSIWYG editors that people use. How are you going to compete with their advertising budgets? You can't offer better customer service because you aren't charging enough!

The budget airline industry, much like supermarkets, are not cheap for everything! They have 'loss-leaders' - a seat for £9.99, two chickens for £5 (don't get me started on the ethics of that one) - that they don't make money on but it attracts people to them. They then say 'oh, sorry, no seats at that price - buy one for £200', and people do. They say 'as you've bought that cheap chicken, you can afford to spend £10 on a bottle of wine to go with it', and people do.

What are you going to offer to compensate for your loss-leader?

You can't say 'sorry, we've sold out of websites at that price' - people know websites are not a finite commodity!

Perhaps you could email me the website addresses created in this way after six months, I will contact the owners and offer them a price to actually make their failing website work, then I will pay you a 10% commission on any work I receive.

That's probably the best way to make money from it!