Should I Start a Business?
The performing arts company I manage locally is in the market for a new website. As I will be managing the company, I’m trying to delegate as much responsibility as I can, including construction and maintnance of the website for our company.
We have been shopping around for a good local, Christian web developer who can get our website put together and operational. It’s not going to be the simplest site in the world, in that we’re not just going to throw some content up on a server and let that be that. We’ll be constantly updating curricula and calendar information, so it has to be pretty dynamic.
It will probably need to be developed on some sort of Content Management platform to allow authorized users access to certain subscribed areas of the site, while leaving the majority of the site open for prospective client organizations, and to allow site admins to update the site content regularly. An advanced system that would allow us to define our own data/page structures as we need them would also be preferable.
Would the Real Web Developers Please Stand Up?
Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen so far it seems all the web developers in the Metro Jackson area are stuck in 1999, putting together a bit of photo tweening in Flash and embedding it in a table-based layout in a static HTML page that doesn’t validate against anything. Not even HTML 4.01 Transitional. Hello?
Web standards? What web standards?
To top it off, most of them have a definition of SEO (Search Engine Optimizaiton) that doesn’t go beyond putting a batch of keywords in a META tag inside the document header. (Again: Web standards? What web standards?) Has anybody out there made it into the 21st Century yet?
To be fair, I have certainly not discovered or interacted with all the Jackson-area web developers. But I’m still looking…
I Sense Opportunity…
If this 1999-caliber work has such a high success rate, why couldn’t I take my up-to-date web dev skills and start my own business?
Doing some quick calculations, I could undercut the lowest price I’ve heard by just a little, work about 15 hours a week, pay Lawyers and Accountants to do what they do, and still make 150% what I’m pulling in working 40 hours a week as a C# developer. That’s rather appealing.
Chad Miller Design. It’s got a nice ring to it, don’t you think? OK, OK, I’d probably name my company something else.
And as busy as I am right now, I don’t really see this happening in 2007. But I’ll certainly let it stew for a while. Who knows? Maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way and I can’t afford not to do this. What do you think?
Comments
Jonathan Lowery /// Sep 19, 2007 /// 11:44 pm
Geez man, if you don’t stop finding ways to make money better and quicker I’ll have to come beat down your door with beggar’s hat in hand!
I don’t know about switching as a matter of course, but it does sound like you should send some feelers out. I’d help, but I’ll be in Rochester. I also know no-one and nothing.