Webmaster Services - Building and Selling Websites

There is extensive demand for webmaster services - even during the existing credit crunch - and with newspaper, radio and TV ads costing so much these days, the one essential marketing tool that everybody needs is a website, even it's just a simple homepage.

Look around and you'll see that prices vary greatly for webmaster services and there are as many lone operators as there are big, flashy and expensive web design companies.

If you've decided that a website business is the way to go for your home internet business, there are a few things I'd recommend from personal experience.

I've made quite a few websites for other people now, and I learnt very quickly that you need to take great care in being clear about what's included in the price if this is one of your favoured money making ideas:

• Do sit down with your client and discuss what they want from their website before you do anything or start any work
• Make sure you state in writing exactly what you will be providing as part of your webmaster services and what the cost will be.Get you customer to sign this sheet before work begins.
• Be clear about additional costs for work if they ask for something extra which wasn't included in the original plan - be clear about your hourly charges
• If you're new to the game, don't offer a service which is beyond your technical abilities
• Keep the customer informed about the progress of their website ... let them view it's progress in a password protected area where the public can't see how the site is developing
• Once the website is finished, give the customer a signing off sheet so that they can approve everything that you have done. Make it clear that once they sign this 'approval' sheet, any changes are chargeable at your hourly rate.
• Make it clear that payment becomes due once the website has been signed off, and state prominently your payment terms (30 days, 1 month, 1 week ... whatever you prefer)
• Be very clear about who owns the copyright of the website ... is it yours or the customers?
• Find a pal to work with, in case you end up with too much work on your plate. It might be another local person offering webmaster services or a friend with the right set of skills, but set up an 'overspill' arangement if you're a 'one man band'.
• As a webmaster you hold all the power over people who don't pay up. If they don't pay within 30 days, remove their website from the live server ... it helps to focus priorities!
• Only release passwords (FTP, hosting company etc) once payment has been received and cleared.
• Make sure that you delete records of private data afterwards under your data protection obligations.

5 more useful tips for people offering webmaster services That's the sensible and business-related advice, but what about the day-to-day practicalities of offering webmaster services?

Here are my top 5 suggestions to help you on your way:

• Think about your marketing, online and offline. Make sure you havea web presence set up before you start in business and get some cards printed, it costs less than £20 for a couple of hundred these days.
• If you're working from home, consider setting up a PO Box number to separate your home life from your work life. These cost about £65 per year, and for around the same amount you can have the PO Box mail automatically delivered to your home address.
• Consider setting up a Skype telephone number as a business number if you're working at home. It can be easily set up with a voicemail facility and it means that clients won't get the kids picking up the phone when you're not around, giving you a 24/7 phone service at much less than the costs of a landline.
• Build testimonials as you create more websites for more people and make sure you link out to other sites that you have created - it's your portfolio after all, or online shop window.
• Consider establishing a reputation for online freelance work as this will help you to even out the peaks and troughs of not having much work on at times.