Forum Moderators: phranque
I'd love to pick your collective brains on what to do next with my website. I've reach that position that a lot of us probably get to: my site has become succesful, grown and generates significant income, but I don't know where to start in terms of taking it to another level. Previously I have never really invested in my site, just grown it as my own skills have improved; in a way it has never really been a "full" business.
I run a teen site in a fairly competitive market. The trend of late is obviosuly social networking. My site is growing but what I need to accept that whilst my monthly uniques may be increasing, the sector as a whole (and certain sites within it) are growing much more quickly.. so in effect my market share is falling. As well as that advertisers appeared turned off by anything that hasn't been hastily-badged web 2.0 (that is what my ad agency tell me).
My biggest issues I have had are:
Employee
When would you feel is the best time to bring in an employee. I am absolutley useless at the financial stuff and have an accountant, but I still never record this fully - and always end up paying financial penalties. I just hate anyhting to do with invoicing. As well as this I often spend many days doing menial tasks when more important things need doing. And lastly, and probably most importantly, I have no one here to bounce ideas off, speak to and get a sense of what is going on.
Function of website
I need to make my website more functional.. but the costs for this seem insane. The first company I contacted were preprared to add a registration system for a reasonable fee, but then had all their time taken up by a larger client and left me hanging.
The next one developed some basic member area functionality- but charged a day rate of £500. I appreciate that this might be market rates.. but when projects start getting bigger (60 days) you're almost paying a salary..
I tried outsourcing to India previously - ouch - that was a big mistake. The communication was not quite there.
In the end the 2nd company seem best, but I don't know if I want to make something ultra functional and intelligent, paying someone day by day is going to be the best thing. Then again, spending the budget in one go (which normally means more coding for your money) is such a big risk.
This company was also not so good at the visual stuff and I have spent a lot of time looking up US companies that do very very good CSS work - retemplating sites.
What have people done here. Have any of you taken the risk of taking your website or community and putting in a large investment into office space, employees, development. How did you know it was the right thing to do? Did it go wrong? Can anybody help me?
Having someone take care of the financial side is probably a good start. Especially if you're wasting money by having to pay penalties for late payments.
I suggest you spend some time and keep a good log of all the work you do. At the end of a few days, it should give you a good idea of how much time you're spending in each area (coding, financials, business development, etc.). So of the things you may be able to get a temp agency to help with, instead of jumping into the huge investment of an employee.
The rate of £500 definitely sounds excessive to me! I'm sure you should be able to find something cheaper than that. Again, a temp agency (one that specializes in IT work) may be a good place to look.
Personally, I have learned a great deal from his freely available material - it will help you think about moving beyond the lone ranger system of working in a concrete way. (I haven't moved on to "the next stage" yet, but I am preparing to do so before the end of this year).
