Pro web designer or D.I.Y.?

[erez80]

hello,
My name is Erez, I've decided to enter the affiliate marketing world.
I have a problem with having a website.
A professional looking & working website built by a professional Web designer costs about 1000$.
When I build a website the pages load after about 3-4 seconds (I work with wordpress) and it doesn't look professional to me.
What do you advise me to do. Pay a professional or do it myself?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Erez,

My advice is to keep Wordpress and find a professional theme (free is fine) but then have a good WP pro help you add all the needed plugins and set everything up properly for speed, security and search engines. I think you could get something set up that was just fine for 200 or so. Just be sure to find someone with really good reviews and check references.

 

[schniek]

Stick with wordpress and diy. Going the diy route may take some time, but at the end of the day its worth it - just imagine if you are able to do more sites by yourself in the future.

A little tip - just browse some sites and you will be able to identify the wordpress sites easily, then just look what the other sites look like and incorporate what you like.

 

[TJReed]

I "D.I.Y." and always have.

It has worked for me thus far and I am a full time affiliate marketer.

I use Kompozer. It's a free web design software and it works perfectly.

I also use Wordpress but as a secondary source. My main sites have all been created in Kompozer.

I am not an affiliate of Kompozer, it's just what I use.

 

[sillyme]

Erez,

I'm brand new here, and just started with affiliate marketing. But I've been in the web business for a long time. I actually own a professional web design firm, and do a lot of work with it. I'm not a programmer or designer, so technically, I'm just like you, instead I work with a partner in India, and we do a lot of work together.

My answer for you is do both! DIY and professional. For a few bucks, you can have help with the parts that you can't do, and do the rest yourself. Wordpress is great, but can be complicated for many unsaavy marketers. It's not a bad thing, because we all delegate our resources differently.

Here are some awesome sources to find great cheap developers, and designers:

99designs.com - this is the more quality driven community. You select a project, offer and commit to an award, and designers make designs for you with the hopes that you'll select them. Can get expensive though.

elance.com - cheap labor from across the globe. Be weary, but every now and then you'll luck out and find someone who's awesome!

fiverr.com - my favorite, but again be careful. You'll find loads of people willing to do almost anything for $5, but let me warn you, anyone good is going to charge more. the community has this way of charging multiple gigs for one project. So if you need some coding, they can say give me 4 gigs for this, and i'll do it. Seems upside down, but i've had decent experiences with them.

Hope these sources help, and naturally I don't have any affiliation with any of those, just have used em' and they have been decent.

Personally, if you check out my own blog, I'm using blogger. Mostly because i'm just starting out, and don't want to invest time and energy into design and development. If and when I do a little well, I'll invest more in my platform. I didn't pick wordpress because of that. But I have nothing bad to say for wordpress, it's totally awesome!

Marc