The Brads - The Cost of Starting Up
November 8th, 2010
Do you have a blog? Are you looking for content? Feel free to post my comic on your blog. The Brads is licensed under Creative Commons. That means you can repost or modify this work as long as it's not for commercial purposes.
Brad Colbow is an independent web designer and illustrator living in Cleveland Ohio. He is the owner of Colbow Design and creator of the web comic, The Brads. If you’re looking for fun and practical website design Contact Me.
Website © 2010 Brad Colbow. The Brads is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License
Home | About The Brads | Illustration | Comic Archive | Store | Contact
Dave
November 8, 2010 at 11:54 pmHell…yes.
burgin99
November 9, 2010 at 12:40 amGood point, but I think you forgot the punchline.
Brian Purkiss
November 9, 2010 at 2:55 amAMEN!
If only clients could understand this. Oy.
Stomme poes
November 9, 2010 at 3:20 amBut, but… I gotta nephew with a copy of DreamBeaver who can build it for 50 bucks!
R Sebastian
November 9, 2010 at 3:47 amRight on the spot again!
Shaun H
November 9, 2010 at 5:31 amSo True!
client
November 9, 2010 at 7:17 am...The fact there are a good online presence solution for even tinier budget?
It’s not that good for sales person to bash the client who wish to buy cheap.
“You have only $400? Great, we can build nice and quality one-pager”
Brad Colbow
November 9, 2010 at 7:50 am@client, Sure, you can build a site on the cheap, anyone can, the web is flooded with them. My point is that every business has costs associated with starting up and the web is no different. If you opened a restaurant on the cheap people would get bad service or bad food and never come back. Starting a business on the web is no different.
Chris
November 9, 2010 at 10:27 amI can understand your tweet after reading.
After working at an ad agency that tended to deal with smaller businesses, this is something I heard my bosses dealing with a lot.
If you only have $500 to spare, then you should really be saving some more before you take a crack at starting a business, online of off.
kyle steed
November 9, 2010 at 11:52 amBOOM!
Ryan
November 9, 2010 at 11:53 amI like that when you get a little sassy with the guy, you scare the color out of his eyebrows
Brad Colbow
November 9, 2010 at 12:02 pm@Ryan, ha! how did I miss that? actually I’m not sure how that happened, he’s just copied from an earlier panel. *shrug*
Philippe ALves
November 9, 2010 at 12:14 pmWhoo hooo!! I like that man! That’s exactly what I think when people ask me that. But… I wish I had this courage… :(
Jeff Bridgforth
November 9, 2010 at 12:17 pmExactly. I think most people equate online with free or cheap. I wish more people thought of their venture as an online business and went through this same thought process. I will definitely be using this idea when talking with potential clients. Thanks Brad.
seutje
November 9, 2010 at 12:27 pm@Ryan: must be due to the question posing as a statement or command.
the comparison is kinda broken imo, webdev takes time & intelligence and pretty much nothing else
all those other examples take physical resources that were once dug up (or w/e) and prolly went around the globe one or twice
elso, using a website (or code in general) doesn’t wear it out over time. Not like spam-clicking a link for a year will make it suddenly break (sure, maintenance can be necessary, but again, no parts, only time)
tbh, I’ve made a ton of sites for under $500 even if I were to charge $50/hr… it’s all about reusable building blocks and sensible defaults, rly
a good comic nonetheless, I did chuckle
Adam Wagner
November 9, 2010 at 12:50 pmThis one made me stop for a minute. Isn’t the radical low startup cost of e-business a fundamental part of the legend / allure?
Maybe I’m missing the subtext, which I interpret as: “The web has grown up. Its practitioners are grown up to, with big boy demand & salaries to match.”
Bridget Stewart
November 9, 2010 at 1:48 pm@seutje - You’ve heard the saying, “Time is money,” right?
Physical resources, indeed, cost money. But so do resources that are not tangible through touch. If you pay to have a mechanic fix your car, you don’t pay only for the materials they used. You pay for the labor - the time it took for the mechanic to do the work.
Building a website takes time (labor), and the expertise of the person doing the work didn’t come for free. Often people who are “expert” at doing those tasks, spent money out of their own pocket to get education (one way or another). It could be by way of school, conferences, or reading books to obtain that level of expertise. And that doesn’t come cheap, either.
/soapbox
Brad Colbow
November 9, 2010 at 2:05 pm@Adam and Seutje, You guys make really good points and I agree that one of the allure of the web is that there are very low startup costs.
When I was freelancing a lot of the inquiries I was getting were from people who just wanted to slap up a site and watch the money pour in. This comic comes from my frustration of dealing with that expectation.
If someone thinks they can just slap up a site and watch money roll in that tells me that they have no intention of working hard and running a successful business. It also tells me that they haven’t put a lot of thought into what they were doing. I wanted to put startup costs into context. In an old school business you can see where your money is going and it’s easier to see where you will go wrong by doing it on the cheap. This isn’t always apparent on the web.
Kim
November 9, 2010 at 2:10 pmCan I get a printed copy of that? It would look great in my office beside my “How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell” poster http://shop.theoatmeal.com/collections/frontpage/products/how-a-web-design-goes-straight-to-hell-poster
Sooo true. I want to hit people in the face with this.
Jonathan Penn
November 9, 2010 at 2:24 pmThis is so full of win. True on all accounts. To those who don’t get the point, it’s not that running a business on the web can’t be cheaper, it’s that slapping up a $500 site is NOT a business.
Ross
November 9, 2010 at 3:29 pmHey Brad, another great comic and I love the premise behind it.
Without intending to needlessly nit-pick, I think the point isn’t driven home as neatly and powerfully as it possibly could have been.
I see it’s been discussed above, and I understand your approach.
Unfortunately there are those 1 in 10,000 that are actually simple concepts that absolutely coin it (eg: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/) and there is the perceived simplicity of a decent design that disguises the complexity of the underlying code and structure.
All quite difficult to portray in a single comic strip… but I think you succeeded on the most part.
</analysisparalysis>
Adam
November 9, 2010 at 6:56 pmOh yea, Brad, I see better where you’re coming from now. I think my naive optimism was getting in the way of a deserved reality check for some clients.
Nathan
November 9, 2010 at 11:28 pmThe expertise is the overlooked factor in most situations this comic is referencing. In my experience, I’ve dealt with this mostly when a potential client thinks they are just paying for someone else’s time. Ultimately I think that many people confuse publishing things on the Internets with web design and/or development. I always use a construction metaphor when talking about this - anyone can slap together some boards and nails, but when it comes time to build a house you want to live in, are you going to cut corners or have your neighbor’s 14 year old kid do it? Awesome comic Brad, I’m envious of your skillz.
Frederick
November 10, 2010 at 2:27 pmPERFECT! too good.
Joseph S.
November 10, 2010 at 4:51 pm@Bridget Stewart: Indeed, reminds me of this:
Picasso was in a park when a woman approached him and asked him to draw a portrait of her. Picasso agreed and quickly sketches her. After handing the sketch to her, she is pleased with the likeness and asks how much she owed to him. Picasso replies: “$5,000.”
The woman screamed, “but it took you only five minutes.”
“No, madam, it took me all my life,” replied Picasso.
Unknown Source for Story
Yuan Ma
November 12, 2010 at 12:40 pm@Joseph S: Agreed, I often tell clients “It took me a couple hours and 10 years of experience.”
The issue isn’t really the time though, it’s the belief that someone else (even the client themselves) can do what a designer is doing for much cheaper. The problem with that is the inaccurate measure and value placed upon creativity. What I found is that most people don’t seem to care about the differences between a well-designed, well coded website—these are the same people that are very misinformed about both their own businesses as well as ours.
anon
November 12, 2010 at 2:02 pmAbout time.
You were really starting to milk the poop dry. (Ick!!)
altrugon
November 12, 2010 at 8:01 pm@seutje: To be a lawyer takes time & intelligence, to be a pilot takes time & intelligence, to be a politician takes time & intelligence, and like these many other professions. Why when they have nice profitable salaries and nobody discuss them, we (the web developers) have to work basically for nothing?
vdog
November 28, 2010 at 5:15 pmNice one. I’m sure there’s a place in the market for $500 websites but it’s unlikely to get you a good result. Time and expertise are what ultimately delivers the goods, and those things aren’t cheap.
rod rodriguez
December 2, 2010 at 11:09 amYou said it man, it amazes me how some people think that starting an online business is peanuts compared to a real business. Hello! online business is a real business. Awesome illustrations man.
cesar
December 6, 2010 at 4:19 amTotally agree with brad on this one, doctors & lawyers are not questioned about their expertise because it’s based on a long tradition. Web development is relatively new, a factor that makes it incomprehensible for most people and easy to underestimate.
Mike
December 30, 2010 at 9:17 amWhere ya been Brad?! Missing your Comics!
Martin Varesio
December 30, 2010 at 3:42 pmWhy when they have nice profitable salaries and nobody discuss them, we (the web developers) have to work basically!!
james
January 19, 2011 at 12:32 pmIt’s really a catch twenty two and old business which is really just an attempt to devalue your work.
Don’t take the work. It is simple as that. If someone is going to lowball you, let them go with the guy for $500.00
Hell… point them in the direction of the cheapest possible solution, set them up with a dot tk on their way out the door.
For the love of god, do not defend your skill set by explaining what it is you do, let them enter that hell on thier own terms.
I mean you can teach them, but if they didn’t learn it, they won’t understand it anyways.
Twitter
February 6, 2011 at 8:42 pmSeLam oLsun Herkeze twitter or badoo
Computer Squad
February 15, 2011 at 5:32 pmNice cartoon. This happened many times when I tried to explain to clients about online business. “You paid for what you get!”
Guillermo Ortiz
September 19, 2011 at 2:15 amIt’s always a challenge to make customers see the value of what they are paying for. This is especially true when they feel like all you need is a computer to get their work completed….