If you missed my last post, I was in the middle of finding a web designer at Freelancer and this blog had only just begun.
New applicants have now slowed to a grinding halt in response to the web design ad and most of them are waiting for me to hire them. Many of them have talent and can develop sites but most don’t have artistic flair. I was almost set to pick the potential candidate mentioned in the previous post. That was until I met a fellow nomadic entrepreneur named Dan at our favourite cafe in Pai, Thailand – Om Garden.
Introducing Dan the Portuguese man…
As soon as our conversation opened up to subject of becoming a digital nomad, we hit it off… actually it was near impossible to shut us up!
Dan, originally from Portugal, is a PHP programmer and had been working online with his own projects for 6 years now with most of his online work directed toward the global Portuguese speaking community.
Is hiring a Freelancer expensive?
I mentioned that I advertised for web designer on Freelancer and how much my ideal candidate offered to do the mock up – $200. Dan thought it was expensive and instead invest in high quality WordPress theme or put the money toward creating an ebook. From there I can work out how to improve the appearance myself.
Dan put up a good argument and although my mind was set… he had thrown a spanner in my works…
If I were to have this same job done back home in Australia it would cost thousands! That was my first thought.
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Content is King!
Above everything else we agreed that content was king over design but in my honest opinion its important to have a visually captivating webiste to complement your content and so people keep coming back. Having an aesthetically appealing site and an awesome user experience is what I’m hoping to incorporate into all my projects going forward.
Another problem is in the past I have bought so many DIY styled themes. I get into the full swing of building the site then but as the design becomes a little more complex, I hit road blocks where it requires some serious coding.
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How important is page load speed?
Another important element that Dan mentioned was load speed. Unless your developer can create exceptional code for your website they may in fact slow your website down. As we live in a world where we want everything yesterday, users could flee your site out of frustration if they must wait until Christmas until your page finally loads.
Instead of giving the designer the ‘go ahead’ with a mockup I’m strongly contemplating putting the whole project on hold and redirecting my focus on what’s important:
- Creating content
- Build the blog appearance myself with some small outsourced jobs i.e. logo design.
- Making connections with like minders
- And ultimately begin building passive income online.
At some point I will need to ‘bite the bullet’ and have a part time or full time web developer working on my projects and I continue to highly recommend outsourcing.
At the end of the day, If you’re a one man operation unless you are a gifted techie,eventually you will need help so you can work on your business instead of in business.
Are you in a similar situation? Where would you put your time and money in the initial stages of building a blog?
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