KyleGolemMedia

MY BUSINESS IS LIVE! Check it out and give me some feedback please Responsive Mobile Design

...and I need some help! I'm in the process of building out the site which I'm fully capable of. If you can chime in on any of the below questions, I would be greatly appreciative. I've always looked at the Warrior Forum as a place to help and be helped. Try not to let me down

-I would like to offer 3 or 4 price packages for sites. What, in your opinion, would be a good starting list of metrics to consider for pricing?

ex. number of pages, number of images, etc.

-What is the standard commission for selling in this industry? I have two people helping me in this department and they'll be working solely by commission for the time being. I don't know what percentage of that sale I can fork over while being profitable. Any help?

-Which networks (whether it be people on to follow on twitter, linkedin groups to connect with, facebook strategies, etc.) should I tackle to become aligned with the right people?

-I'm using a CMS that I purchased through the forum...could a few people kindly toss me some links for other services that are CMS-based? Specifically to figure out if the one in my hand is, in fact, the best? I'm looking to white-label!

Thanks for reading and I look forward to the communities help! I'm launching January 1st so the sooner the better

Nick Surran

Here's a good thread from WillR that deals with pricing:

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...ould-help.html

I haven't hired any salespeople yet, but that is going to be my project going into the new year. For mobile sites, I plan on offering 50%. To figure out pricing around this, I'm going to take what I want to make on a mobile website, multiply by two, and that's my retail price.

I think Lime Cellular is the best white label SMS marketing platform.

Quentin

Nick has answered the question on pricing.

As for commissions we do a 60/40 60 to us or 70/30 depending on the agent and number of sales etc.

We use a number of systems and for CMS use Wordpress.

Quentin

edumonsters

Best of luck for your new company. I don't have much idea about the commissions, sales and pricing, etc at present. But I am just looking forward to it. Hope I'll create some product soon to sell it online! Am Optimistic!

KyleGolemMedia

You're using Wordpress for Mobile sites? Explain if you don't mind, Quentin.

RubenJames

Quentin,

I'm also a bit surprised that you use WordPress...

Our Good Buddy WillR from your neck of the woods says to stay AWAY from WordPress because of loading time, updates, etc. etc. etc.....

So... Why do you recommend WP :confused:

Ruben James

bit twiddler

Hi Ruben,
You will find this is a great divide among mobile site providers. I have tried both. A regular HTML5 site has more flexibility and is definitely faster, however, I have seen 5 side by side tests done this week and the difference in speed was under a half a second. I think you will find that for smaller businesses the WordPress option will do fine. For larger firms, where budgets are bigger, a well designed and customized HTML5 site may be more suitable.

There are ready made platforms out there. Many of them. You need to determine the structure of your business model and then determine whether to do the work in house, outsource it, or use a white label solution where can have an easy client management interface.

Start with your business model, then determine how to provide the service. Remember that there are mobile clients out there from $500 to $50,000. What market do you want to apply your business to?

T J

T J Tutor
T J Tutor, LLC
Syracuse, NY 13224
USA
315-569-7523
tj@tjtutor.com

bonn

We suggest that you charge your customers for 3 things:

1) $300-$1200 "Page Build Charge" depending on the complexity of the build

2) $50-$200/mo retainer for continued maintenence, and occation updates and changes

3) $5-$15/mo for hosting etc.

The cool thing about mobile is you tweak your pricing model pretty easily, depending on whether you're using a CMS or not.

For instance:

A) You can build the site for free, and just have them sign a higher maintenence retainer that includes hosting etc.

B) You can use mobile as an upsell in an internet marketing, social media, or local management product/service package - Using it as a Bonus+!

C) You can resell access to the CMS you're using at a monthly fee, which makes it much more hands off for you, maybe even charge them for the initial build on the CMS.

D) etc etc etc,

Depending on weather you're using a CMS or not, actually should affect your pricing scheme/model.

If no CMS (longer build and configuration times) I'd suggest

Wordpress has some awesome mobile plugins and make mobile a sinch... however i agree with everyone regarding weather or not its hte best platform. You can optimize your sites manually (takes some time) or use a CMS that automatically does the optimization etc.

RubenJames

Bit Twiddler,

Thanks for that info...

(Interesting moniker, by the way...you must have had a LOT of fun in middle-school) :rolleyes:

I've been around IM for a while, but I'm new at the mobile stuff so I appreciate any and all input!

I'm guessing that if the client has a Very large WP site with dozens of plug-ins, it would get to be a headache with upgrades and incompatibilities!

At the moment I'm in R&D mode and looking to where the $$$ is in my area.

I've touched on the restaurants, towing and locksmith Biz's so far, looking to start out with just putting up the mobile website at first.

When I find what niche works around here and "get a few" then I'll move into the SMS, QR and other abbreviations.... to offer back end ongoing services!

And yourself :confused:

Ruben James

WillR

Ruben,

Not all Wordpress mobile solutions are rubbish - a lot of them are though thus why I generally recommend people just use streamline html solutions. Usually non-Wordpress sites are going to be faster at loading than sites built using the Wordpress platform.

Having said that there are certain uses where Wordpress is going to be an advantage so i'm not saying you should never use it, I'm just saying for most people the easiest way to get a fast loading site is going to be with regular html and css.

I know a number of my members also use Wordpress mobile sites for certain clients who want particular features that a standard HTML mobile website doesn't have... and they seem to be fine with them. It's always a juggle between performance and features.

If you want to use Wordpress you just need to make sure it's created by someone who knows what they are doing and haven't just whipped something together for the hell of it.

.

➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online
This Week Using the Piggyback Method...

.

KyleGolemMedia

Thanks for the words, Will. I would consider my target clients to need something very light. Roughly 5 pages of information mobile users NEED. Therefore, I'm still behind a .php solution with some well-stitched .css.

KyleGolemMedia

This is some interesting stuff. Thanks so much for the post! I'm proficient in Wordpress and love the platform. The reason i had questions about it is because of load time and general heaviness. Glad I'm getting some well-articulated answers.

Can anybody chime in on the Social Media end of things? My goal is to have some leads come into the site. This is probably 6 months down the road but I would like to have my team collectively help and we need a distinct plan to stick to. Any help would be huge

Techono

Thanks for this thread, KyleGolemMedia and thanks to those who offered information.
This is certainly an eye opener.

When I can, I will offer up some knowledge.
MArk

KyleGolemMedia

I hope the majority of people are interested in giving back. I think it's important for the learning process.

Thanks for your words, Mark!

Kyle

MaggieMay

What do you think of Jason and Wills WP mobile software?

Jay Moreno

Not all Wordpress mobile themes and plugins are built the same, many simple don't address performance issues, mobile best practices, or validation.

Whilst a lot of people say those things are not important it's up to you to making that decision since your the one handing over the end product to the client, whilst a site may look good on a mobile phone it's no indication that it will also function well as mobile site or give the end user across the broadest amount of phones the best user experience - Research is key, know the pros and cons and limitations to several approaches and you will be able to deliver the best product to your client.

There are several tools available not just on here to develop mobile sites, each have their own place. Whilst you may use one more often than others there maybe a time a secondary or third solution is needed, whilst we use our own Wordpress framework to build mobile sites I don't limit or stop thinking to just believing our is the only solution. We have armed ourself with a great number of mobile tools, it helps when code isn't encrypted so you can tweak the end results to get exactly what the customer wants.

Hope that helps,

Jay

Quentin

I use wordpress for big content management sites.

They don't validate very well as I use various plugins to add functionality which pull it down a fair bit but in the end I am on a slow connection here in Thailand when not on WIFI and they load ok.

If you want to look at one on your phone we are just creating a Mobile Magazine using our Mobile Wordpress system.

You can check it out in My Sig file below. Have a look on your mobile and let me know what you think.

For just 5 Pages Wills PHP is great and I make it a little easier using the free microsoft share point design to edit the files.

http://businessmobilewebsite.com/php...site-template/

Quentin

Jay Moreno

We just finished our validation testing for our Wordpress Mobile Framework and we have it validating 100% on mobileOK, gets 5/5 on ready.mobi and also scores 4/4 on Googles How To Go Mo Inniative - it really just depends how you deploy/develop the wordpress site but its certainly not impossible to do.

There are certain content types that will dramatically decrease these values such as the obvious ie Video, and unfortunately certain non mobile valid social media buttons... for the most part its not a big deal if the bulk of the design is valid. What would raise an eye brow is if a site scored less than 85% but a bigger concern for me is when the mobile sites score less that 50% and certainly more so if it gets a big fat zero across the board!!! lol

Everyone to their own though - i would say at least try and understand and educate yourself as to why your sites validate the way they do... always try and make the best end user experience for your mobile visitors.

timlane

If you plan to sell at low prices, then you should use metrics like pages and images and the like to determine prices. If you want to make good cash and have an easier sale, you should offer something bigger than just a site.

Offer a marketing service. Or integration with their crm system, or something else thats not a product that can be compared and hunted for online. You need to avoid the price driven sale if you can.

The easiest way is to have a REAL conversation with your customer, find out what they really want, and then offer them a way to get that. Sell the whole thing.

I see many designers try to make a buck by selling a site to a customer, but then wash their hands if the customer gets no extra business from the site.

Customers are funny that way - they al secretly hope their sites will just take off by themselves.

That mistake is an opportunity for you. Learn how to offer a full marketing service including the site. Customers will happliy pay premium prices for any site if they are sure they will get more customers.

KyleGolemMedia

Thanks to everyone jumping in with their 2c. I'm currently writing content for the site and still hope to have the company up and running on the 1st day of 2012. I'm absorbing all of the information posted and will update this thread as things come together.

It's time for a big year. I can feel it.

Jay Moreno

Kudos to you for at least trying - for some they will never get over that first hurdle!

Wish you all the best of luck with it!

Cheers,

Jay

NerdGary

I would def give the option of making Native (real) Android Apps which can be published to the Android Market... The whole purpose of "apps" is for people to download them on the Android Market.. in front of millions of people.

.::NATIVE ANDROID APP CREATOR SOFTWARE ::.

onlinenoithat

1) $300-$1200 "Page Build Charge" depending on the complexity of the build

2) $50-$200/mo retainer for continued maintenence, and occation updates and changes

3) $5-$15/mo for hosting etc.

nội thất văn phòng, vách ngăn văn phòng, ghe nhan vien, ghế hội trường, bàn hội trường

Nail Yener

Hi Kyle,

First of all, it is nice to hear that another fellow warrior is starting mobile web design, good luck with that.

I usually price my designs based on the number of pages and additional features such as contact form, image gallery, database related things etc. Having multiple options is a good idea but I wouldn't give too many options, 2 or 3 is optimum.

I don't think there is a standard commission in the industry, it all depends on who you work with and how much both sides want to profit. 50%-50% or 40% (seller) - 60% (you) makes sense to me. If your workload will not be much you can give a larger share to the seller because selling is the important part in this game.

You might get some CMS ideas on this thread:

http://www.warriorforum.com/mobile-m...wordpress.html

HappyGayleen

I am also starting a mobile marketing company. I want to offer mobile websites, QR Codes, SMS Texting and FB Fanpages. I thought about just doing the text messaging because I really see the value as well as the easy sell on that. Then I realized that if someone got a text message and wanted to go to the website - and it wasn't mobile friendly -- oops! So, I've realized the value of a package -- or starting with say a mobile website (after maybe offering the QR code as a freebie to get an appointment). Then offering the other things as an upsell.

I have two people who will sell for me on straight commission. I am sure I can find others after I prove it works. I thought abut a 25% commission with bonuses. I may need to offer more, but I doubt it.

Ideally I'd like to outsource the website design -- I can do it, but see myself more in coordinating it all. I will direct the design with colors and what pages are needed and coordinating all artwork that is needed. I have used a wysiwyg program and have recently been creating wordpress sites for my other business which is for a book I wrote (on happiness).

I'm designing a powerpoint site that I can turn into a video right now aimed at the restaurant industry. (Maybe a wso in the future...?)

Does anyone know someone who might be able to fulfill my design work at a reasonable cost so I can pay my reps and still have a profit? You can PM me if so. Thank you!

I am confident that this model (perhaps with some tweaking) will work. The opportunity is just so huge!

rlhurst

Just sent a pm.... and you're welcome!

midasman09

I have two people who will sell for me on straight commission. I am sure I can find others after I prove it works. I thought abut a 25% commission with bonuses. I may need to offer more, but I doubt it.

Whenever I see "newcomers" in the "Sales Game" I don't know why BUT... they always seem to think that "Sales People" are "Low on the Totem Pole" and can be gotten "for a pittance"!

I try to "correct their thinking" by reminding them...."NOTHING HAPPENS... UNTIL SOMETHING IS SOLD!"

You do NOT have a business UNLESS someone can SELL your service or product!

And....by offering a "25% Comm"....you will either get;
1) People who CAN'T sell
or
2) People who CAN sell....and...will be looking for ways to "Start up their own deal in competition with YOU!"

So....I ALWAYS have made sure that my Sales People are Paid...and Paid well!

For ex: When I was operating my Advertising Biz I started my commissions at 30% for 4 Sales a week. If they brought in 5 Sales (one a day) I upped their comm to 40%. And...if they went over 5 sales a week I upped their comm to 50% on EVERY sale for the week!

My Sales Meetings were at 2pm on Fridays. Prospects (biz owners) were getting ready to leave early for the weekend anyway. I then paid commissions on sales for the Previous Week. This allowed for any sales that might fall thru or be delayed or cancelled.

Don Alm....sales manager from waaay baack

HappyGayleen

I am also a sales rep from way back - mostly advertising sales. I never got more than 25% and ususally it was 15%. I understand that when it's a digital product then I can pay a larger commission. I believe the sales commission has to be structured in conjunction with how much is being charged. I do believe there has to be enough to make it so the sales rep is making a good living. As the owner I have other expenses that I also have to cover including getting the work done - and I also believe in compensating my creative team well. However, if I don't make money then I can't pay anyone else... And, I also believe in keeping my cost to the end user, especially small businesses, as low as possible. I believe in a winning circle.

Have you calculated the costs of doing this business? Maybe you have found a way to get the services done very cheaply -- but then you risk unreliability in your people and poor quality work -- and undoubtedly you are hiring people from outside the US. I believe in supporting my fellow country men and women.

Not only defending my thoughts, but offering encouragement to other entrepreneurs to make sure they have a piece of the pie they made!

HypeText

Keep in mind Sales People need to be able to live on what they are earning. They need the opportunity to make REAL money.

As an Example:

We pay our Account Managers 60% of Setup Fees and 25% of monthly Fees, including subscription, management, etc, as well as overages.

It is also important to leave an opportunity for upsell. Mobile Websites as an example. We have a full small business services package that includes everything from Small Business Loans to Payment Processing to Gift & Loyalty Card Programs.

KyleGolemMedia

To everyone in this thread that took the time to give me pointers, thanks a bunch. You make this community what it is.

With a few weeks away from the boards with my nose to the stone, I can finally present you guys with my website for Responsive Mobile Design. I'm super excited to be launching the site today and hope some of you Warriors can help me get the site in perfect working order. Please drop me a line or PM with some advice or suggestions on how to improve the site. Also, feel free to reach out on Skype. Today is a big day and I'd love to top it off by talking to people about the business.

Official Responsive Mobile Design Release Thread

Here's to a great year!

Kyle Golembiewski
Founder, Lead Designer
Responsive Mobile Design

Lmr1

Go get 'em Kyle.....keep your chin up, stay positive, grow and learn...Believe in yourself and take your life to the next level...may success follow you in 2012!!!
Wishing you all the best!!!!

KyleGolemMedia

I wish I knew your name so I could formally thank you for the kind wishes!

HappyGayleen

I want to add that it all depends on the profit margin available. I agree that a salesperson has to be well compensated - and deserves t be! It depends on the profit margin. I've realized I can more than I thought I could, and I will be.

KyleGolemMedia

Couldn't agree more. I mean, lets be honest, without sales we don't work!

Here's to making tons of sales in 2012 and living comfortably,

Kyle

KyleGolemMedia

Ok. Quick update:

I've joined a networking group in my area and the first meeting was this morning. I had a lot of interest in my business and already gathered contacts as a result. I'm not financially stable enough to focus solely on mobile but hopefully that will change.

Another thing, I found a way to "warm up" cold calling a bit. Check out this thread for some info about it. I'm pretty thrilled about this, as well.

Thanks for following and I hope to come back with more great news soon!

Kyle

4webmaster

I've visit your website and there is one thing missing to close sales:
Clients portfolio or some mockups. My 2 cents.

https://stevesuard.com

KyleGolemMedia

That's coming as I will be completing client work and posting it in that area. Thanks for the comment! I appreciate it.

Kyle

lint631

Portfolio page is definitely important. Even if you mock up a site or two and take a screen shot. Then prospects will be able to see your what your work looks like.

WPMobileSalesPro - Mobile Web Sales Tool

KyleGolemMedia

I totally agree. Funny how things that are seemingly little can make a world of difference! Thanks for the advice

Kyle

nickhumph

Hey Kyle,

Congrats with the new business! I'll be launching mine soon soon aswell. How are sales going? Made any yet?

Increase Page Conversions by 72% through the most underrated marketing tool out there!

nickhumph

Hey Kyle!

Congrats with the new website. How are sales going? Made any yet?

Increase Page Conversions by 72% through the most underrated marketing tool out there!