ertio, design laboratory

High Quality
I build sites to official web standards and produce pages that will validate in HTML and CSS code validators, for modern versions of the 4 most popular web browsers (MSIE, Fire Fox, Safari, Opera).

Fees
My fee for web services is $80 per hour. That's less than many pros charge, but I do live in the San Francisco Bay Area and living here IS expensive. Don't let that scare you though.

Saving Money
There are many ways in which I save you money, such as using pre-designed, tested and validated "templates" as the basis for new web sites and pages, or installing professional menu systems, slide shows, catalogs, and other web functions - rather than building my own from scratch.

Cost Controls
Also, I can do projects in "Phases", so that you pay-as-you-go, authorizing new work only after approving previous phases. And I can produce proposals with cost estimates for you.

From my many years of project management experience, I realize how important client communication is. With me, you always know how things are progressing and what costs to expect. You will always have an opportunity to review and approve major tasks and proposed web pages - or to request changes to parts of your project which you have not yet approved.

To be realistic, please realize that in project management of this kind, estimates are almost always low (typically by 20% to 33%), but they still give you a valuable rough idea of costs.

Project Management
And if you download, read and implement my white paper on how you can help to keep your project on-track and in-budget, you can avoid many common causes of budget overruns.

You can always get web sites "On the cheap", or even for free, if you're willing to sacrifice enough control over what you get.
But do you really think one of those sites can sell your goods or services successfully?

Your 2 Choices
You really have only 2 choices. Either spend what it takes to get a professional job done, or save money by spending the time required to learn to Do-It-Yourself (DIY).

Please remember that when you choose the DIY route, your first attempts are not likely to be good enough (how many students reach perfection on their first try?). So be sure to include 2 or more complete re-builds and lots of learning time in your DIY estimates - plus the costs of good software tools, books, etc.

Do It Yourself?
I don't mean to discourage those who want to do everything themselves (I'm one of you). And there are great opportunites there. In fact, I encourage you to learn to be your own web developer, webmaster and web marketer, if you have the time and chops.

The DIY path is especially good for those who dream of a "labor-of-love" site. That is, a site on some topic they are passionate about - but which is not necessarily a money maker (at least not in the near term).

Nobody understands a business and a market as well as the business owner. And nobody is in a better position to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities of the Web than a business owner empowered with their own web skills. But if you decide to take on all that, as well as running your business, you'd best forget about having a life!

The Reality of Work-for-Hire
It's important that you know what to expect when you hire work done. If you naively ask for too much, some people will promise you that they can deliver it - but surely you or they (or both of you) will end up disappointed.

My diagram below shows what IS practical.
For example, if you want high quality at a low price, be prepared to wait, because high quality work cannot be done both quickly and cheaply.

Likewise, if you want work done both quickly and cheaply, don't also expect high quality. Finally, if you want high quality work done quickly, then expect to pay more.

And so it goes...