Reasonable price for website design

Business
1

Hello everyone;

I am working on a business plan to open an online retailer (I will say for widgets). One of my two major suppliers has made an offer that I want your opinion on.

Besides being a wholesaler of widgets he has moved into web hosting. He says he wants to concentrate on wholesale onlu and his offer for $10,000 is to build a turnkey website based on cscart and fully populated with the products he sells that is designed and hosted by his company and branded to my company. First year hosting included.

This seems absolutely crazy pricing to basically design a template and populate the products database.

This actually sounded ok to me because I thought it was a one time deal for one website and the buyer would get all the retail enquiries they now process get sent to him, however they plan to sell these as franchises.

Thanks

2

IMHO that’s absurd for a couple of reasons.

  • $10,000.00 is way too much. How long would it take you to recoup?
  • Hosting on your own using any available cart system like CS-Cart (my cart of choice) gives you complete control plus you can stock products from other suppliers.
  • I design e-commerce sites for $750.00 and will add main header graphic, payment gateways, shipping options, etc.

As a store owner you should add categories and products and be knowledgeable about the back end of your store just like any brick and mortar store owner. Don’t hand your store over to anyone before you know how to run it.

3

Beware these “turnkey” systems where you’re
investing a lot of money with a company to
sell their products.

Franchises online don’t work the same as an
offline franchise and need to be carefully reviewed.

For example, offline franchises have territories but
on the internet there are no “territories” …so what
you’re really banking on is that you’ll be more
competitive than the “new guy” …it’s a tough
business model to succeed in.

4

Thanks for responses.

I tried to do due diligence on this but the people were very vague about special pricing on exclusive products that did not exist yet. I sent the usual questions for any disclosure statemet such as asking for referrals and financials and they acted like this was paramount to treason to question them.

Needless to say I have declined their gracious offer.

5

For 10,000 I’ll buy 500 domains and make 500 niche sites. 10,000 is just hilarious unless you’re site can make as much as 50k/mo