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Websites and advertising


yorks45
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Hi all

I am currently looking for a property in France, not to rent out but to eventually live in for a proportion of the year. I work as a self employed web designer specialising in database driven website (for the non technical amongst you they are websites that use a database to store information and that can be updated very easily). This type of works means I can work from anywhere , even France and not have to worry about renting gites out etc.

I see alot of posts on here about various rental websites, developing your own website etc etc. The Internet is a wonderful advertising medium. After all what other medium offers 24 hours/7 days/364 weeks a year worldwide advertising for very little cost ?

Unfortunatley the Internet does have problems, getting people to view your website, "website designers" who havent a clue what they are doing, websites which charge a fortune for worthless advertsing..I have seen them all.

Anyway to the point. Why dont all the people on here work together to develop a website that everyone can use to advertise their businesses ?

I am not suggesting this as a way to get business as I am snowed under with work at the moment anyway but I would be happy to give free advice / help on how to do this. Its far easier to get a project like that off the ground if you already a large number of people wanting to use it and willing to contribute to it rather than everyone creating their own little piece of cyberspace and hoping it works.

Anyway its just a thought and in the long term it may save everyone money and bring in more business. Comments are welcome !

Yorks
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Hi Yorks

 

I was interested in your post as my own website tried to start out life as a co-operative about nine years ago, but very soon fell foul of apathy.

 

I have a few questions and observations which I hope you’ll find constructive.

 

How would your project work?

Who would build the website?

Who would promote the website?

Who would own the website?

How would you allocate disk space?

 

I’m sure you are aware that promotion alone is a very costly business in both time and money. If you are not proposing to lead the project yourself, who would? It would need a co-ordinator to ensure that everything got done. Would this person have to be paid? The people you are talking about joining your ‘community’ are not, in the main, going to be knowledgeable about the internet and its workings; they will therefore have to employ someone who is. This will need to be paid for, presumably by the members of the ‘community’. This would leave them in exactly the same position that your idea is critical of, i.e. paying to advertise on a website. The only difference would be that this new website would not be established in search engines and directories for some time.

 

In my humble opinion, if you have a business, be it holiday rentals, gardening services or whatever, I think you should have “your own little piece of cyberspace” as you put it. You should also learn how to run it and make changes to it yourself whenever you want to without relying on outside companies. There are thousands of good home made websites out there and a few bad ones, but that’s the beauty of the Internet, we can all have a voice and a place to be seen.

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Hi Ken (France Direct)

Thanks for your reply. I would just like to address a few of your points.

How would your project work?

Ths message I posted was just an idea. Its a result of seeing so many people ripped off by worthless advertising on websites. I talk to 2-3 people a week who have paid to appear in directories, specialist websites etc and get no response to their adverts. Thinking aloud here..but many people I speak to pay £200/year + to appear in these. If people wishing to advertised their gites/B&B's pooled their resources then they could actually build their own professional website with online booking and admin facilities, availablity, tours etc etc. For example I would estimate such a website would cost in the region of £2000-£3000. Twenty accomodation owners paying £150 each would be able to have such a site developed. That would be a one off payment and they would own the website.

Who would build the website?

Any competent web developer

Who would promote the website?

Website promtotion is not difficult if the site is developed correctly. For example I did a site for a client which was launched in Dec 04 and now attracts 100+ unique visitors / day and now growing by 20 unique visitors per week. I quote visitors here not hits as that is a worthless figure and gives no indication of popularity. People involved in the project also use the address on all correspondance which in turns helps

Who would own the website?

The people who paid for it developing would own it.

How would you allocate disk space?

Why do you need to allocate disk space ? Disk space costs nothing these days. Also an interactive website would need to have an underlying database which uses database data and templates to run. This means that pages do not physically exist but are generated when required. Disk space is not an issue

You mention payment for doing the work. Of course the person doing it would need to be paid but that would be a one off payment not a yearly payment nor would the owner of the website take a cut of the rental charges as the people who paid for it developing would own it.

Yes the project would need a coordinator but this isnt a difficult job.

1. People agree to join the project

2. Facilities are discussed, agreed and specified.

3. The website is developed, tested

4. Every owner contributing has their own login details to use the admin system. In the admin system they enter their accomodation details, photos and any bookings they may have. Details of accomodation are stored in a database so visitors to the website can search through all available accomodation quickly and easily.

5. Each accomodation owner has their own virtual website within the main one. They would easily be able to modify this via the admin system. In addition they could point their own domain names at the site.

You mention that everyone should have their own bit of cyberspace. Whilst I agree with you that its no bad thing the problem is that times are changing. Your website is now seen as a storefront to your business. Personally I have no confidence buying from any website that is poorly designed, unattractive,doesnt work etc. I strongly disagree with you that there are very few bad websites. 90% of websites out there either bad, poorly designed, dont work or amateurish. Whilst this doesnt matter for non commercial websites it certainly does for commercial ones !

Anyway what I am suggesting would mean that everyone would still have their own part of cyberspace but it would be a properly written and designed piece of cyberspace not one with red writing on a green background, flashing icons everywhere, photos that take 5 minutes to download on a broadband connection, links that dont work etc.

Also you have to remember not many people are capable of running their own website. Many people struggle with HTML so how can you expect them to write online availability and booking systems , credit card facilities etc ? You may argue that many people do not want these facilities but as i said earlier times are changing. People expect to be able to check things like availablilty online, book online etc. If I am looking for a B&B in Brittany I want to be able to look at the website, see what the accomodations and surrounding is like, check if its available and book it if it is.

Nice to have a bit of discussion on here

Robert

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How would your project work?
Ths message I posted was just an idea. Its a result of seeing so many people ripped off by worthless advertising on websites. I talk to 2-3 people a week who have paid to appear in directories, specialist websites etc and get no response to their adverts. Thinking aloud here..but many people I speak to pay £200/year + to appear in these. If people wishing to advertised their gites/B&B's pooled their resources then they could actually build their own professional website with online booking and admin facilities, availablity, tours etc etc. For example I would estimate such a website would cost in the region of £2000-£3000. Twenty accomodation owners paying £150 each would be able to have such a site developed. That would be a one off payment and they would own the website.

I think we both know that £3,000 for a mysql/php website is extortionate. There are far too many web designers bandying around these ridiculous figures, which is a rip off and perhaps another topic for discussion on this forum! Most of the mods you mention above can be picked up at ‘hotscripts’ and other like websites free or for a small fee. I’m sure you will agree that building the website is the easy part.

Who would promote the website?
Website promtotion is not difficult if the site is developed correctly. For example I did a site for a client which was launched in Dec 04 and now attracts 100+ unique visitors / day and now growing by 20 unique visitors per week. I quote visitors here not hits as that is a worthless figure and gives no indication of popularity. People involved in the project also use the address on all correspondance which in turns helps.

 

How many ‘uniques’ will you have in six months time if you don’t continue to promote it regularly? Once the developer has stepped back from this project how will the ‘uniques’ grow without regular stimulation from someone who knows what they are doing. Hard coding pages for search engine refreshes is one thing, but it has a very limited shelf life.

 
How would you allocate disk space?
Why do you need to allocate disk space ? Disk space costs nothing these days. Also an interactive website would need to have an underlying database which uses database data and templates to run. This means that pages do not physically exist but are generated when required. Disk space is not an issue

 

Sorry my question was not clear. By disk space I meant actual quotas. In your example above you say  that 20 people will pay £150 each. Let’s just suppose we’re talking only about holiday rentals. So, one of your members has one Gîte with a very nice pool, so he/she will only require one description page for his business. Another member may have four Gîtes, so he/she will want four description pages. Surely this is unfair to the member with one page as he/she has paid the same amount as the member with four pages. I know this was only an idea and you probably haven’t worked out all the angles, but I’m only generating a discussion here.


Yes the project would need a coordinator but this isnt a difficult job.

 

So is this a paid job or is the co-ordinators time given freely?

1. People agree to join the project
2. Facilities are discussed, agreed and specified.
3. The website is developed, tested
4. Every owner contributing has their own login details to use the admin system. In the admin system they enter their accomodation details, photos and any bookings they may have. Details of accomodation are stored in a database so visitors to the website can search through all available accomodation quickly and easily.
5. Each accomodation owner has their own virtual website within the main one. They would easily be able to modify this via the admin system. In addition they could point their own domain names at the site.

 

Yes agreed, this a basic off the shelf package.

You mention that everyone should have their own bit of cyberspace. Whilst I agree with you that its no bad thing the problem is that times are changing. Your website is now seen as a storefront to your business. Personally I have no confidence buying from any website that is poorly designed, unattractive,doesnt work etc. I strongly disagree with you that there are very few bad websites. 90% of websites out there either bad, poorly designed, dont work or amateurish. Whilst this doesnt matter for non commercial websites it certainly does for commercial ones !

 

I’m sure if you asked those 90% of home made website owners, they would tell you that they’re website is functional. Also they’re skills increase the more they use HTML the better their websites become. As you say it doesn’t matter for non-commercial websites and sometimes the home made aspect can have a positive reaction for Gîte websites.

Anyway what I am suggesting would mean that everyone would still have their own part of cyberspace but it would be a properly written and designed piece of cyberspace not one with red writing on a green background, flashing icons everywhere, photos that take 5 minutes to download on a broadband connection, links that dont work etc.

 

In that case wouldn’t it be better to try an help those people who build these Day-Glo websites? Perhaps  a workshop for them with useful information would be a better idea. Perhaps lesson one could be “Never use a background wallpaper”!

Also you have to remember not many people are capable of running their own website. Many people struggle with HTML so how can you expect them to write online availability and booking systems , credit card facilities etc ? You may argue that many people do not want these facilities but as i said earlier times are changing. People expect to be able to check things like availablilty onl

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Hi Ken

Just wondering what your background is ? Are you a web designer ? I notice your website seems to be entirely HTML which is very different from a database driven one.

£2000-£3000 is certainly not a rip off considering the amount of work involved. You not only have to consider the actual website but also the admin system that runs it. That effectively doubles the amount of code required. Also you have to think about quality and maintainability.

I have just completed a job for someone who had a website written in India which he had put out to tender. It cost him just over $2000 (dollars) for a huge community website. Unfortunatley the quality was appalling and I have just finished rewriting it completely. It took me 6 weeks. I can get my house painted by some 16 year old for £200 but I bet it wont be much good ! Getting it done cheaply doesnt often pay.

Regarding hotscripts/free scripts etc ..I dont know if you have ever tried to use any of these but it can actually take longer getting them to integrate than it does to write the thing from scratch. I have been working on the net now for many years (i can still remember 14.4k modems !) and working in the database design / web design area for nearly the same amount of time and have rarely used hotscripts.

Re web promotion - agreed this takes time but these days its content and relevant links that drive traffic. You dont have to be a web guru to do this, neither do you have to pay web promotion companies hundreds of pounds.

You mention a basic off the shelf package ...do you know of any ?

re "90% of home made website owners, they would tell you that they’re website is functional". I agree but I wonder how effective it is. Another forum topic on here is asking for guinea pigs to test a new website devoted to French accomodation. Look at the amount of replies that topics has had. If people were content with their 'functional website' why are so many people interested in that ?

I agree the idea might not be better than a reputable letting agencies but I bet it would be a damn sight cheaper in long term which was the whole point of my idea. Advertising could also be shared on Google ads etc. Also it would give owners more control over what they want.

I think we are on the same wavelength here as your website states it "was formed in 1997 as a direct reaction against the ill conceived, poorly promoted and above all expensive advertising that was available at the time"

Thanks for you support anyway

Robert

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Hi Robert

 

If you think my website is only HTML then that is excellent and exactly the result I was trying to achieve. This means it is 100% search engine friendly. Actually it is 100% database driven; I thought the Advertiser log-in might have given you a clue to that. Everything, including the articles are operated from a mysql backend, then rendered to generate html pages.

 

I agree that getting it done cheaply doesn’t always pay. But there are a lot of good PHP coders in India and Pakistan who do a very good job for not a lot of money. There is also a huge amount of talent in the emerging eastern block countries, where salaries aren’t as high as the U.K. for example. You should try putting a project on Rentacoder and see what prices you get back. You could probably get a site like mine, with availability calendars and all the database functionality etc, etc for around $600, don’t believe me, give it a try. I know a guy who owns one of the top gambling sites on the internet. Money isn’t a problem for him, yet all of his IT people are in Rumania and Russia. We shouldn’t put these guys down, just because there economy is not the same as ours. So I’m afraid to my eyes, £3000 is a rip off.

 

I’m sorry, but I can’t accept that integrating a ready made script into your website is harder than coding it from scratch. It doesn’t make sense. Yes I have used off the shelf scripts from hotscripts and elsewhere. The PHPBB forum script is probably one of the most popular open source scripts on the internet.

 

I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one. Your idea the way it is set out at the moment would cost more in the long run than advertising on a website that for instance only charged you a commission if they got you a booking. If they got you nothing it would cost you nothing.

 

Best of luck with your property search. I hope you find something suitable soon.

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Hi Ken

I am afraid we will have to agree to disagree then. I am not knocking foreign workers at all but the experiences I have had havent been good. The same goes for English people too however, I have seen poorly written website done by english companies too.

I dont think however you can say £2000-£3000 is a rip off though for a job that could take 6 weeks. Of course you can get it done cheaper in India or Pakistan but look what is happening to call centres now..they all moved to such countries because it 'was cheaper' but many companies are now reconsidering this and moving back here...wonder why ?

I hadnt really looked at your website in detail but can see the PHP in the login. Interesting you choose to render HTML pages, how often do they refresh ? Unfortunately for alot of the sites I work on that isnt an option as they constantly change and pages that are more than 40 seconds out of date are unacceptable.

Anyway thanks for the discussion..its been fun I notice you sell advertsing to property owners so I can understand you not liking my idea !

Robert

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Re web promotion - agreed this takes time but these days its content and relevant links that drive traffic. You dont have to be a web guru to do this, neither do you have to pay web promotion companies hundreds of pounds.

Advertising could also be shared on Google ads etc.


Bit of a contradiction there, why use adwords if promotion is easy?

Take a look around some of the SEO boards - the industries top experts struggle, esp. with Google - I wouldn't be so quick as to 'little' web promotion with sweeping statements.

The amount of time I spend on some of our sites would but the pricing over the 2 - 3k mark just for promotion alone, but then the sites are in competitive arena's they are not selling '2mm tungsten rivets' or the like

The travel industry is very competitive - do not under estimate the work required to get good positions for the terms you're likely to be aiming at - and without those good positions the site may well become one of the many - never to be found

I think 2 - 3k is a reasonable price (if not a little low!) for a full on site (excluding SEO), I have seen some horrible stuff come out of trying to save a few quid

re: hotscripts, think I may have used one or two snippets in 6 years - the rest needs to be hand coded - no two sites are the same

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Hi Mike

Agreed promotion isnt easy especially in very competative areas but we have found it has to be approached from a number of different angles. What I was trying to point out is that paying hundreds of pounds to web promotion companies who say they will give you top ten listings is futile. Hard work getting good relevant links can pay dividends and you dont have to be an expert to do this.

Obviously content and relevant linking is important but we have found good results with targetted google ads. Also websites renting out a gite or two probably dont need thousands of hits per day unlike dedicated travel sites.

I agree with you about saving a few quid. The owner of the site I worked on last year tried to save a few quid and ended up spending at least 3 times more than he should.

Also agree about hotscripts...most are a pain and you usually end up hand coding.

What sites do you run ?

Robert
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Hi Rob, yeh I agree the 'get you top 10 for 39.99' crew are a waste of time, but SEO goes far beyond link building (although that certainly is one factor!)

Following good usability guidlines and using valid code also helps - which is where many fall down (and this is at initial build level! - hence my agreement with you on the $600 eastern build crew) so its no wonder that few sites survive in competitve areas

What sites do I run? A few are on our clients pages, but obv. not all of them - larger clients, or clients in high competition areas are not so keen on letting competitors know where their site came from

Rob - are you in France? If so where and what skill sets?

 

 

 

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Hi Mike

No not in France at the moment. Been looking for a property there for a few years now ..hopefully this year will be the one.

I work as a web designer using ASP, Coldfusion. My background is mainly database design. Also had alot of experience with multimedia CD-ROM, sound video etc.

I run a few websites for clients but usually when they have admin systems they run their own. I do administer a large community site for someone so am responsible for the smooth running of the web servers, video chat facilities etc etc. This was the one I was talking about in an earlier post which was developed in India. It was so inefficient it was running up £500/month bandwidth charges.

You in France then ?

Robert

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Hi Robert

 

I didn’t like your idea because I sell advertising, I didn’t like it because it wouldn’t be cheaper than the alternative. I could easily have said that “you would think that £3000 for a website wasn’t expensive because you’re a web designer!!

 

Cheers

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Rob - yes we are 1hr east of Toulouse, do quite a bit of work here in France (more and more) mainly ASP / Access DB's with CMS and more and more XML. We also provide consultancy on SEO / Usability / Site design for clients across the world

Property is realtivly cheap where we are - although its climbing fast!

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Hi Mike

We are visiting the south of France in August. Were planning to spend a few days on the coast ..Nice, Monaco etc and then move inland (East) to have a look around and at property.

Can you recommend any areas to look at / stay ? Know of any good agents ?

Regards

Robert

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