E-Commerce site for 500-600 euro?

The_B_Man

Hi,

Can I ask some opinions on here regarding budget and time frame for a site to be built from scratch?

Budget would be between 500 and 600 euro.

The site will be promoting and selling a single product, with some other smaller supporting products.
It should have a shopping cart with paypal at least.
A blog with RSS feed,
and then the usual "About us", "FAQ" etc.

Is the budget reasonable? And if so, what timeframe would I be looking at for someone to make this?

I should note that domain/hosting hasnt been finalised, although there are existing domains held with GoDaddy so that can be used and just get another domain off them.


Cheers.

The Corinthian

The_B_Man wrote: »

Can I ask some opinions on here regarding budget and time frame for a site to be built from scratch?

Budget would be between 500 and 600 euro.

You may get a very basic site with ecommerce functionality and design put together, using existing CMS and ecommerce software, but if by 'from scratch' you mean a bespoke development, then you're not going to get it done for €600.

Try tendering it out to a student or a professional bottom-feeder here or, alternatively, outsource it to the developing World, using a site like eLance.

Usual caveats about getting what you pay for and penny-wise, pound-foolish apply.

The_B_Man

Sorry, when I said "from scratch" I meant that there is no existing site there already that needs to be changed. Wordpress or whatever would be fine, with a few plugins or changes or whatever.

The plan was actually to put it out to eLance and sites like that, but I suppose the question I was asking was, is €600 a reasonable budget, and if so, what time frame should I impose on the selected "eLancer"?

Thanks.


PS, regarding your first point, I think a basic enough site would do. The only dynamic content would be the blog, which could be updated by me when needed.
I'd be adding videos and other promotional stuff. The most important aspect might simply be the shopping cart functionality along with a nice Wordpress theme.

The Corinthian

The_B_Man wrote: »

The plan was actually to put it out to eLance and sites like that, but I suppose the question I was asking was, is €600 a reasonable budget, and if so, what time frame should I impose on the selected "eLancer"?

What's their hourly or daily rate? If they're charging you €10 p.hr., then, that's 60 hours or a week and a half approximately for one development resource, if €600 is what they're quoting.

Of course, you should simply take this as a baseline, as there's no reason to believe that they will be working solely on your site; they may have to wait on you for material before they can continue, or working for another client or you may get slippage, leading to longer development times.

So, I'd see what they suggest and then negotiate a reasonable compromise between that and the baseline; for example, they say it'll take five weeks and you compromise at, say, three.

All presuming that they're professional enough to give a realistic estimate in the first place.

The_B_Man

OK cheers, that's pretty clear.


Thanks again.

ChRoMe

The_B_Man wrote: »

I was asking was, is €600 a reasonable budget,

Not for a professional to do it.

The Corinthian

ChRoMe wrote: »

Not for a professional to do it.

In fairness, that's good money for a professional in Elbonia.

srsly78

The_B_Man wrote: »

Is the budget reasonable?

If that's the daily rate then sure.

amen

In fairness, that's good money for a professional in Elbonia

you would be surprised. The price of mud movers has gone up and thus there are fewer working in IT.

bigalk

It all really depends on your willingness / ability to learn. If your up for reading a whole lot (Magneto manual is 250 pages but easy to follow) and learning - then try this:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/making-money/556943-tutorial-how-build-your-own-professional-e-commerce-site-under-100-a.html

you have FREE access to the tools used by huge multi national companies on their sites. all you got to do is set some money aside for a designer (or a template / theme) and your there! €500 is plenty if youve got the smarts!

seems to be a lot of people on here who think its essential to spend 5k on a site. One wonders if those same people earn their wages from the 5k model?

The Corinthian

bigalk wrote: »

€500 is plenty if youve got the smarts!

How long do you think it would take to build such a site? That's not just developing, btw, but also time involved in speccing it out with the client, debugging it and so on.

Please feel free, if you actually know what you're talking about, to suggest how long it would take.

bigalk

from the OP "The site will be promoting and selling a single product, with some other smaller supporting products"

go with Shopify and have it done in a week for less than €500!

The Corinthian

bigalk wrote: »

go with Shopify and have it done in a week for less than €500!

How much less than a week exactly? In working days or hours please - just a ballpark figure.

ChRoMe

bigalk wrote: »

One wonders if those same people earn their wages from the 5k model?

They do, because they are professionals and have done these sorts of projects tens of times. Which gives their insight and estimations far more weight.

bigalk

the guy is on a shoestring budget, and all anyone on here can say is it cant be done on a shoestring, when in fact it can, giving willingness to put in effort and learn!

to The_B_Man - go checkout Shopify and see if you can handle it! send me a PM mate and ill be happy to guide you through what I have learned so far - or else just stay on here and listen to the sell side.

to the sell side mod - i said less than €500, not less than a week, and i dont want to participate in your flame war so i wont be contributing further on this thread. but maybe thats what you want????

Al

The Corinthian

bigalk wrote: »

to the sell side mod - i said less than €500, not less than a week, and i dont want to participate in your flame war so i wont be contributing further on this thread. but maybe thats what you want????

My apologies, I misread you when in reality you'd actually said how long, which is actually worse.

But let's look at that; a weeks work for under €500. That's an effective rate of up to €12.82 p.hr. before tax. Or before you pay for your expenses (computers, electricity and rent ain't free).

What's the going rate for a job in McDonalds, out of interest?

tricky D

bigalk wrote: »

€500 is plenty if youve got the smarts!

bigalk wrote: »

the guy is on a shoestring budget, and all anyone on here can say is it cant be done on a shoestring, when in fact it can, giving willingness to put in effort and learn!

How much does all these 'smarts' cost to acquire? Also what's the cost of the effort and learning and all the mistakes which implicitly result? It's a classic business mistake to neglect opportunity costs in this manner, especially near the start-up phase when your time is valuable.

The OP could well get a site done at the proposed price point, but the real question is will that site provide value to the business. If the OP is very lucky it might work out, but seasoned pros know that there's a lot more to setting up shop than it appears. The reviews forum is chock full of reviews of sites, so many of which make the same basic mistakes which hurt the business due to lack of skills and experience which are so often badly undervalued in our industry. That's just the basic mistakes nevermind trying to squeeze the margins which is where most profit is made.

bigalk

it doesn't cost anything to acquire 'smarts' - the guy writes well, uses punctuation, and obviously has an internet connection. all the information needed to build a website of any description or level is out there for free - you just need time to invest.

The OP didn't mention anything about not being willing to invest time - be that office hours or personal time - he specifically mentioned that he had a small budget.

as you pointed out - the review forum is a great place to start to acquire FREE information.

to conclude, if he has minimal time to invest - get a free or cheap theme from Shopify and pay a Shopify expert to do the donkey work = $500 (about €380). if he makes some bank or proves concept, then go the 5k route

if he has more time than that to invest - learn to configure:
Magneto
OsCommerce
Spree
PrestaShop
VirtueMart
Ubercart
etc
etc
etc

buy a theme for the above within budget. again if he makes bank or proves concept then go and spend 5k.

the important part of any new venture will be the product he sells. if he has a stand out product it will sell off the ugliest website in the world (presuming keywords have been properly taken care of) if he is entering an already crowded marketplace - then and only then does he need to differentiate himself with a flashy site.

re mistakes - show me a startup who hasnt made mistakes and ill show you a fairytale. Mistakes are the key to the learning process and an essential part of becoming an entrepreneur.

Wisdom soon follows money foolishly spent!

Colonel Panic

Sounds easy.

bigalk

never said it was easy mate! business is tough - why should this area of business be any different?

The Corinthian

bigalk wrote: »

it doesn't cost anything to acquire 'smarts' - the guy writes well, uses punctuation, and obviously has an internet connection. all the information needed to build a website of any description or level is out there for free - you just need time to invest.

The OP didn't mention anything about not being willing to invest time - be that office hours or personal time - he specifically mentioned that he had a small budget.

Oddly enough, that he mentioned that he had a budget was a bit of a tell-tale that he might be looking to have it done for him.

to conclude, if he has minimal time to invest - get a free or cheap theme from Shopify and pay a Shopify expert to do the donkey work = $500 (about €380). if he makes some bank or proves concept, then go the 5k route

Yet, according to you, it would take a working week to do it for €500 (or apparently now $500).

If we're talking outsourcing to somewhere like India, sure; however if you're talking about a developer in a Western country like Ireland, then you're better off working in McDonalds (certainly for €380 p.w.).

if he has more time than that to invest - learn to configure:
Magneto
OsCommerce
Spree
PrestaShop
VirtueMart
Ubercart
etc
etc
etc

Sure, and we can all represent ourselves in court or act as our own GP's too if we invest a bit of time too. Or perhaps we might have better places to invest our time (e.g. developing the core business).

buy a theme for the above within budget. again if he makes bank or proves concept then go and spend 5k.

That's not actually true. Concepts badly executed fail all the time. It doesn't mean the concept was poor, but the execution was a pigs ear and killed it. Very common mistake.

Of course the product may win through on it's own, but then it would have to be a seriously good product and you hold a monopoly in it. Even then, once in the open, you're inviting competition to emerge and given your Web presence is poor, they won't have much trouble copying and eclipsing you out of the market.

I'm not arguing that one should shell out thousands for a Web site; if you're competent enough to deal with an outsourced development outfit in Pakistan or India for a few hundred, then go for it - I'd likely do the same were I looking to get such a site off the ground, as my time would be better spent developing the business.

Nonetheless, much of what you've claimed is clearly poorly thought out, if not inaccurate. You recommend Shopify, yet have you actual experience with them? Have you researched the experience of others? Then you talk about how cheap it can be done (have you ever developed an even vaguely professional Web site?) and throw out figures that make little sense, or even change from post to post.

re mistakes - show me a startup who hasnt made mistakes and ill show you a fairytale. Mistakes are the key to the learning process and an essential part of becoming an entrepreneur.

Yeah, but at least an entrepreneur actually tries not to make mistakes.

bigalk

The Corinthian wrote: »

Yeah, but at least an entrepreneur actually tries not to make mistakes.

Nuff said!

The Corinthian

bigalk wrote: »

Nuff said!

Another pearl of wisdom?

00833827

Hi @The_B_Man - In my opinion your budget won't achieve what you require from a locally based developer. You will need to check out alternatives like the afore mentioned Shopify and see if you can get what you need from them (i have seen some decent results from Shopify) - Your budget should get you a nice little brochure site. Is the product something you could sell thu ebay? why not set up a shop there in tandem with your own website? Not an ideal solution but u are kind of caught with your budget.

Just an idea...

MOH

bigalk wrote: »

if he has more time than that to invest - learn to configure:
Magneto
OsCommerce
Spree
PrestaShop
VirtueMart
Ubercart
etc
etc
etc

You're mentioned Magneto twice now. If it's anything like Magento, it's got a pretty steep learning curve for any kind of serious customisation, is still quite resource heavy, especially out of the box, and is very likely to be overkill for a handful of products.

the important part of any new venture will be the product he sells. if he has a stand out product it will sell off the ugliest website in the world (presuming keywords have been properly taken care of) if he is entering an already crowded marketplace - then and only then does he need to differentiate himself with a flashy site.

So you'd buy online from a company you'd never heard of who appeared to have spent zero money on their site?

re mistakes - show me a startup who hasnt made mistakes and ill show you a fairytale. Mistakes are the key to the learning process and an essential part of becoming an entrepreneur.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is not budgeting enough for key elements of the business, and failing as a result.


It's certainly doable, especially the more the OP does himself, but in general that's going to take a lot more time, with the potential for mistakes that cost more down the line.

The Corinthian

MOH wrote: »

So you'd buy online from a company you'd never heard of who appeared to have spent zero money on their site?

You should see his company 'ecommerce' site - credit card details are sent over HTTP in the clear.

ChRoMe

The Corinthian wrote: »

You should see his company 'ecommerce' site - credit card details are sent over HTTP in the clear.

Seriously?

tricky D

Yup:

<form name="login" action="http://www.zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.ie/checkout.php?action=process" method="post">

flynnlives

its one thing having a website but have you thought about seo and marketing?

i really dont understand why people always assume that spending the least amount of money on their main source of transactions
is the right way to go.

i really have to laugh when people think that all you need to do is build a cheap ecommerce site and then the customers will magically appear.

there is a market for cheap websites and thats fine. A market im not in.
But ecommerce is a whole different ball game from your standard brochure type site.

ChRoMe

tricky D wrote: »

Yup:

<form name="login" action="http://www.zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.ie/checkout.php?action=process" method="post">

I'm .......... I don't know what to say..... :eek:

Creamy Goodness

flynnlives wrote: »

its one thing having a website but have you thought about seo and marketing?

i really dont understand why people always assume that spending the least amount of money on their main source of transactions
is the right way to go.

i really have to laugh when people think that all you need to do is build a cheap ecommerce site and then the customers will magically appear.

there is a market for cheap websites and thats fine. A market im not in.
But ecommerce is a whole different ball game from your standard brochure type site.

All the SEO and marketing in the universe isn't going to help you if people don't trust your site!!

using http:// is certainly one way to ensure this.

ChRoMe

And the moral of the story is....

"If you think its expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur"

The Corinthian

ChRoMe wrote: »

I'm .......... I don't know what to say..... :eek:

Well, don't say it to his credit card companies as it might endanger his merchant account. They get terribly upset when they see this sort of thing.

flynnlives wrote: »

i really dont understand why people always assume that spending the least amount of money on their main source of transactions is the right way to go.

It's partially cultural (Irish business is still treated in the same way as horse trading is), but also because of the bedroom start-up myth.

There have been numerous on-line ventures that started on a shoestring budget and have turned out to become huge successes over time. Thing is, they're a bit like winning the Lotto - people focus on the success stories and tend to forget (or simply don't realize) that for every successful shoestring budget venture, there's a thousand failed shoestring budget ventures.

And urban myths, such as how Ryanair got their site done by students for a packet of crisps and a Mars bar, add to this mythology - even though in reality those two students only did the HTML front end and the actual ecommerce booking engine set Ryanair back something in the regions of Irl£1 million.

Of course, you can get sites done on the cheap and be successful, but in reality that involves outsourcing, which in turn means you really need to know what you're doing. Most don't; even though they may have read a few articles and suddenly consider themselves experts.