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Carl Taggett
10,321 PointsBuilding and Selling a Web Development Company
Web Development companies to me seem to be more profitable. With less overhead and money upfront for build with monthly hosting, and or, service and up keep at a monthly service price.
Certain web companies such as AgantImage.com "as example" would put you under contact, build the page at a fee of $500 to $5000, own the page and charge between 50 to 350 per month for hosting. Good luck trying to use your own hosting.
Therefore, I see assets that would be of some value. (1) The pages themselves could act as physical assets. (2) Contracts, as far as I'm concerned the most important part if your going to sell your company.
Has anyone out there sold a Web Development company and or branding company? How was your experience? What did you learn? What will you do different? I'm about to start a venture and would like to have a idea of what way to building this company to make it most profitable for a END Sale outcome.
5 Answers
Rob Allessi
8,600 PointsThis is a friendly reminder to everyone to keep all discussions polite and respectful. Thanks! :)
John Wheal
27,969 PointsI think you are completely missing the point. A website development business is a life style business not one to make some quick money. The prices you are suggesting would totally rip people off. You would need to be a very good developer or an agency to build a website for $5000. Charging $350 a month for hosting is just a plain con unless you have a hell of a big infrastructure and some serious credentials.
In my opinion you are asking completely the wrong group of people about selling a web development company. You would be damaging the industry. Period.
Paul Graham
1,396 PointsI do development only and almost all of my contracts run in the 3K-10K range, so it's not that high a price. I'm certainly an experienced dev with a decent portfolio and modern skills but I'm no wizard. You can't charge Joe's Donuts across the street that much but I have no qualms charging companies with 50 to 100 employees a bill of 10k for development. It would already cost them probably 60K to bring someone in house to work on it.
I do agree that $350 a month for most site hosting is ripoff. I put pretty much everyone on their own VPS and charge them 20% over cost if they want me to take care of it. I do not support these servers at all except on a per-incident basis and I generally charge in the $100 an hour range to do server work. One of my larger clients I'm handling hosting for is doing about 200K uniques a month and their entire bill is under $120.
Paul Graham
1,396 PointsYou will not succeed in this, thank Buddha. Any developer can start their own business and no developer worth a dime would work for the company you described. You could grab a bunch of low level dudes but your output will be garbage and people will not continue to use that company.
No web development company with ethics would own their client's website.
Literally the only way you will make this happen is to scam someone who is confused about business valuation.
Don't mean to sound overly harsh, but please stay out of this business.
Carl Taggett
10,321 PointsThis question based on a company called /www.agentimage.com/? Not what I'm currently doing. This is a development company that my firm hired, and changes what I am talking about. My question again was "What is the best way to develop a company to have the highest profitability at the end sale." Rip off or not its a free market and you could charge what you want. Weather or not you price yourself out of the market is another thing.
Paul Graham
1,396 Points"Dummies."
Of course we didn't see it because you didn't type the address correctly in the original post.
The fact that you hired these guys shows what you know about development and web design already. Just stay with the trash business and out of the web business. Or go talk to some douchebag message board somewhere else. Treehouse is for people who want to make a career of this, not whore out the industry with subpar work.
Carl Taggett
10,321 PointsYour right I will thank you. I think your being very rude.
Carl Taggett
10,321 PointsAnd your in a business message board. By the way.