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Website Designers and Webmasters Proposals
The first step is the proposal. Someone will contact you
about site design, and decide they want to move forward. During
the interview, you will discuss what they want, features they
want on the site, and who will provide the content and graphical
images. You will take all this information, review it, decide
what you will charge for your services, and the projected
time constraints for the project.
You will want to include a statement of the work proposed
from start to finish. You should also include basis for your
cost estimate with exclusions, a sitemap, schedule, and fees.
You can save some time by covering as much information as
possible in the proposal. The proposal can then be used as
a means to develop the contract.
Website Designers and Webmasters Contracts
A contract is a legal and binding document between two parties
that lays out each party’s responsibilities under that contract.
It tells who’s involved, what each will do and their responsibilities
to the other, special considerations, copyrights, confidentiality,
indemnification, termination of contract, limited warranty,
governing law, severability, and force majeure. Once you have
all this legal stuff taken care of, you can then incorporate
the content of your proposal to provide a finished contract.
You should always seek the help of a legal professional when
dealing with contracts. You can also use contracts known to
have been created by a legal professional.
Summary
Striking out to be self-employed as a website designer or
webmaster is no easy task. The competition is global, and
there are thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of website
designers and webmasters for prospective customers to chose
from. A search at Google for "website design" yielded a 3,610,000
return on 2/03/2004. To make matters worse, today’s customers
are looking for more than just web page and site design. They
want functional sites that prompt actions and rank well in
search engine search results. The days of designing a functional
aesthetically appealing page with slick navigational abilities
are long gone.
To survive in today’s website designer and webmaster world
you will need to be a hybrid of designer, marketer, and SEO.
It won’t hurt to be knowledgeable in copywriting either. Without
knowledge in the newest technologies coupled with these hybrid
talents, you will gain little work. Without work to sustain
your business growth, you will have no business. Failing to
plan will assuredly mean ruin for your business.
You should formulate a business plan and make careful choices
when it comes to your legal form of business. By knowing where
you want to be in the future, you will have a basis to make
the right choice for your business. Choosing the right legal
form of business will ensure proper shielding for your website
designer or webmaster business. Failure to make the right
choice could leave you open to un-needed liability down the
road.
There is a framework you should follow when developing sites
for customers. By following this framework, you will be able
to document customer choices and avoid problems later. By
effectively communicating with your clients you will leave
nothing to chance, and improve the chances that the work you
do will be what the customer wanted. This will pay off in
word of mouth advertisement and repeat business. You will
have nice customers and you will have demanding customers.
The ways to deal with each of these types are different.
Before starting any work for a potential customer, you should
provide them with a proposal that outlines what you will do
and what you expect from them. It should be detailed to show
the exact things you will do, and how much it is going to
cost the potential customer. After some negotiation back and
forth, it will become time to draw up a contract. By doing
the legwork with the proposal and being as detailed as possible,
you will be able to add the proposal content to the final
contract and save yourself some time. When dealing with contracts
and proposals, you should always seek the help of a professional
legal service.
This article in no way covers all the possible situations,
nor do I attempt to do so. It is well out of the scope of
this article. Should you wish to read in more detail about
website designers and webmaster business, then I would suggest
an e-book by Mark Frank, The Webmasters Business Masters Course.
Mark goes more in depth to the legal sides of the webmaster
business, and covers the topics I mention here in a much more
concise and expanded manner. You can read a review of that
free book here,
or you can download
it directly from us here.
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About the Author
James R. Sanders is the owner of Sanders
Consultation Group Plus. He has been a webmaster and website
designer since 1997. He has also been involved in self employment
ventures since 1992. He is presently a contributing author
of NewbieHangout,
and has been published through WebProNews
and 4Rankings.com.
His writing is targeted to webmasters, would be webmasters,
website designers, would be website designers, self employed,
or those researching information looking for solutions to
questions associated with design, business operations, and
promotion today. His goal is to provide practical information
based upon his years of experience to help webmasters, website
designers, and self employed people achieve their goals in
today's competitive global market. You can subscribe to his
free newsletters at SCGP
- Newsletter.
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