Like many people, I suffer from back pain and therefore I visit an osteopath every once in a while to get everything ‘put back in line’.
I visited my osteopath this week and while he crunched and pulled at my back and limbs, we had a chat about the Internet and websites etc. He explained that he was considering creating a small website to let local people know a bit more about his business – nothing fancy, one or two pages at most.
Knowing that I worked online, he questioned me as to how you actually build a website and how you get from your computer to the Internet? So being the helpful chap that I am, I started to try and explain the process from start to finish.
Now, this is not an easy thing to do in a short period of time and in the end, it occurred to me that, to be honest, there isn’t really any need for a small businessman such as my osteopath to learn how to design websites or learn FTP etc. After all, he only wants a one or two page site…
I therefore decided that in half of the time it would take me to explain how to get a website online, I could do it for him myself – after all, if you know what you are doing, a two page website is only a couple of hours work at most. So I told my osteopath to draw a picture of what he would like his website to look like and write down what he would like to appear on the site and I would create the site for him. In return, he could give me a few osteopathy sessions at no charge – everyone’s a winner.
This situation got me thinking, how many people are there that are in exactly the same position as my osteopath in that they want a very simple site just to give their business a presence online? There must be thousands and thousands. They don’t want to employ a professional web designer as the costs would be too great and they don’t want to learn how to do it themselves but they would be willing to pay someone $50 – $100 to put them online. With a few days spent learning how to design simple websites, almost anyone could provide this service to their local business community.
True it is the bottom end of web design but if you can build a two page site in a couple of hours and earn $100, that’s a pretty good hourly rate. You are also in an ideal position to sell additional services such as hosting, logo design, regular updates etc.
I am sure that with a bit of effort, it would not be difficult to earn a few hundred dollars a month on a very part-time basis working in the way that I have outlined above.
The moral of this story?
If you have an osteopath, then go and offer to build him/her a website – my guy charges £60 ($100) an hour so if we trade two hours of web design time for two hours of osteopathic treatment, I have saved myself £120 ($200) and been relieved of a painful back!!