Many folks are surprised when they find out that I do most of the design work on my web sites and have been doing so since I started my business in 1998.

You may think that doing your own design is a waste of time and that it is better to outsource it all. And sure, I have outsourced some of my design work, particularly the ebook covers. But I personally find it frustrating to wait for site and logo designers.

Sometimes you fork out $199 for a logo or header graphic which ends up looking like a 2 year-old could have done a better job; or, you hire the same designer that everyone and his brother in the niche uses, and your design ends up looking like the ‘same old, same old' with only color and text variations.

So, I don't wait for designers… especially when I can do a good job myself in 10 minutes to an hour. Not to mention that it's fun! For me, it's a break from the ‘work' of writing. 🙂

What's ‘fun' for me however, is a a DAUNTING prospect for others. For newbies especially, designing or building their own website may seem absolutely impossible..

Quite frankly, however, I think it is a far worse prospect for your business when you let someone else have control over every aspect of your site. Too often the webmasters I talk to have been ‘working on their sites' for six months to a year and more, and they still don't have a clue how to FTP a page to the server, let alone insert a table into an HTML page.

As far as I'm concerned, that's like making your auto mechanic responsible for making sure that there is gas in your car and air in your tires.

For example, one webmaster, with whom I spoke recently, spent a THOUSAND Aussie dollars, (about $780 US) to a company for initial hosting and design work. All she got was … [Read more…]