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A
WARNING TO SMALL BUSINESSES:
Beware
the 'Virtual Consultant'
By: Leo
G!
Whether
you're a small operation seeking to hire a web designer for
the first time or someone who needs help with your current
site, please don't get suckered by ADS that sell you websites
for $99 (or even several hundred). The internet
is a haven for VIRTUAL CONSULTANTS- strangers from all over
the globe who have only a phone voice and an eye catching
website to represent their work. Their allure is in selling
a dream web presence at ROCKBOTTOM prices for design or development
services where the unsuspecting business newbie has little
reference to challenge the integrity of these unreal cost
offers.
You
Get What You Pay For
FACT: Websites
are a necessary MARKETING INVESTMENT for today's business.
From conception to execution, getting your website to represent
you correctly is contingent upon the developer you hire. Because
of the web's global accessibility, a poorly built site may
be the first-- and possibly the last impression that your
market gets to see about your business.
Looking for the right web developer means
finding someone who can carry out a certain level of care
and professional training, attention and follow-through. Because
it's for your business, you need him/her to ensure absolute
commitment and participation in project meetings and invest
a sizeable number of hours in the entire process- from outlining
to prototyping to content development to the finalizing stages.
In today's market, you're NOT going to get that type of quality
attention from a consultant for the price of a PAIR OF SNEAKERS.
Where websites take WEEKS and even MONTHS to produce, that
$99 consultant would have to trim a tremendous amount of corners,
take on hundreds of other quickie-side-jobs simultaneously
and limit their production time to a few HOURS in order to
afford doing the job for that little money. This also means
limiting client communications & collaborative support
while sacrificing a tremendous number of vital elements that
directly affects the site's quality and intended performance. 
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THE BAIT & SWITCH
By
now, many of us have either fallen prey to, or know someone
who has been victimized by virtual consultants sight-unseen.
Oftentimes, you only correspond with
them by email- or a cell # without a face or an office address
to ensure accountability. They could be young children or
off-shore foreigners or even scammers that bait you with a
professional service just to get your credit card info.
The virtual consultant has absolutely no care
for research and due diligence to create you an original branding
presence- where your site may easily look like 500 other cheap
sites that float around in cyberspace. Even more cases involve
a remarkably LOW STARTER PRICE followed by a overage bill
that you were not expecting at the end.
When it's
all said and done, you run the risk of getting a cheap looking
amateur template site whose programmatic code, photographic
images and graphic elements may be lifted or stolen from other
websites (a major copyright infringement that YOU are held
liable for). Such stories are all too common about this type
of 'web-guy' who many of us once contracted from the darkest
pits of the internet.
Please remember that in business, your time
is worth $$$ and wasting it by waiting for unresponsive and
unprofessional virtual consultants to perform right is a risk
and a liability to your bottom line. This article is based
on the fact that over 75% of my current website clients are
ALL former victims of such practices.
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