Help me please, re own business or franchise?

donna

Hi,

can anyone advise me on the following:

I have seen a Franchise for a website that is used to advertise local events and information, which generates revenue from charging £100 and upwards(per year) for business advertising on the site. It has has lots of praise and coverage from national newspapers, tv and magazines and is growing very quickly. I have been following its progress with great enthusiasm and have been trying to raise the £3500 to go ahead with it. It was kind of put on the back burner while we moved house and i have just been and checked the media progress on the website. I was amazed to see all the extra articles on the site and was again really excited about it. However i was dissapointed to find in a June 06 Mag article that the cost had risen to £3995 and then totally floored to find out it has now only 2 months on gone up to £4995. The monthly website upkeep fee has gone up from £85 to £95 and now £125. The MD has also informed me that it will be £4995 + vat from 8th Sept onwards.

The company itself has only 100 sign ups so far but as i say is really taking off. It is not particularly high spec website but for you £4995 you get a template website ready to fill in with training days, telephone support, web confereces and loads of step by step manuals and dvds. The basic idea is to fill the site with local info and call businesses to offer them advertising.

Because it is much further out of reach for me now i was wondering if this would be a simple enough idea for me to set up on my own, like a community noticeboard kind of thing? Has anyone else done this and succeeded? Obviously i would get the well established website name of the franchise.

Is setting up a website easy?
Can you buy a template and fill it in yourself?
Also can someone tell me a bit more about web hosting, would i need it to do this and if so who would be best to use?

It seems far easier to go the franchise way as all the hard work is done for you, but i don't have a spare 5 - 6 k lying around at the moment.


Any help with this would be gratefully received.

Donna x

Seraphim

I don't understand how this is a franchise? Do they just give you the templates etc? If so, my personal view is that it's a bit expensive. For starters, a "copy cat" website will not have the same amount of traffic - at least not in the beginning. Also, £4995 for a basic template? Sounds absolutely extortionate to me....you haven't said anything which sounds like it has anything major behind it in terms of coding. Basic HTML etc is easy so you could learn how to do it yourself, or, in fact, you could get someone to design you a site for much less than £5k. (more like £500 )

The web hosting sounds expensive. Obviously if you are getting thousands and thousands of hits a day, your web hosting costs will rise. However, for a start up website, you can pay as little as £30 a year for a decent service with enough bandwidth for a fair amount of traffic. What exactly is an "upkeep" fee?? Is this a fee for updating the pages regularly? If you had your own site, you could do this yourself incredibly easily and for free

From what you've described, the site itself sounds like a business directory. There are hundreds of these already out there - what's so special about this one? ie what unique feature(s) does it have that will make it stand out from the crowd and make it worth the return? Also, how will the site generate traffic? Where will the traffic come from? Word of mouth? It's hard to get traffic on new sites, so I'd want to know what sort of marketing plan comes with this site to promote it and get the surfers....just because the original site has a lot of users/makes a lot of money, it doesn't mean a copy of the site will.

Sorry if this all sounds a bit negative, but they were just my initial thoughts when I read your post. It's kind of hard to advise in detail when you don't know the full details

donna

Seraphim wrote:

I don't understand how this is a franchise? Do they just give you the templates etc? If so, my personal view is that it's a bit expensive. For starters, a "copy cat" website will not have the same amount of traffic - at least not in the beginning. Also, £4995 for a basic template? Sounds absolutely extortionate to me....you haven't said anything which sounds like it has anything major behind it in terms of coding. Basic HTML etc is easy so you could learn how to do it yourself, or, in fact, you could get someone to design you a site for much less than £5k. (more like £500 )

The web hosting sounds expensive. Obviously if you are getting thousands and thousands of hits a day, your web hosting costs will rise. However, for a start up website, you can pay as little as £30 a year for a decent service with enough bandwidth for a fair amount of traffic. What exactly is an "upkeep" fee?? Is this a fee for updating the pages regularly? If you had your own site, you could do this yourself incredibly easily and for free

From what you've described, the site itself sounds like a business directory. There are hundreds of these already out there - what's so special about this one? ie what unique feature(s) does it have that will make it stand out from the crowd and make it worth the return? Also, how will the site generate traffic? Where will the traffic come from? Word of mouth? It's hard to get traffic on new sites, so I'd want to know what sort of marketing plan comes with this site to promote it and get the surfers....just because the original site has a lot of users/makes a lot of money, it doesn't mean a copy of the site will.

Sorry if this all sounds a bit negative, but they were just my initial thoughts when I read your post. It's kind of hard to advise in detail when you don't know the full details

Hi and thanks for your reply.

It's hard to explain in full detail. You sound like you may know a bit about this so would you mind looking at a website for me and giving your opinion. The website that explains the franchise is https://www.mumsincontrol.co.uk, which will show you a list of what is included for the 5k. The lady who invented it has a her website at https://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/b92.

Please let me know what you think.

Seraphim

I've dropped you a PM....

donna

Wow, cheers for the PM. I have PM you back.

Kilty_2

£4995 for a TEMPLATE? :eek: :eek:

I'm a freelance web designer and couldnt justify £4995 for a bespoke website, never mind a template.

That's insane, and sounds like a complete rip off.

MalcolmCooper

I agree with what's been said and especially with Seraphim. I have a problem with franchises in general. Most brands are far too young to warrant the money they want and most franchises look to me like "buying a job". Even if you had the dosh available the real work would start after you'd handed it over. Selling advertising space on the web!!! One heck of job to have to buy.

To be fair to this particular operation they have achieved a lot of publicity and you are buying into to established traffic but selling space and getting a good return on your investment is a tough call.

You can of course start from scratch for a lot less money but it's a steep learning curve. A domain name from 123reg.co.uk, cheap hosting perhaps from them too and something like
http://www.izzywebsite.com/index.php
Voila! Total cost about £100.

Read all you can. Join http://www.ihelpyou.com/forums/ and have patience and you can get your site moving but think in terms of 1 to 2 years to get it established.

There are lots of local portal sites out there. Try to find a unique selling point for yours. Hey! maybe you can franchise it yourself in a few years.

abbecer

sent you a pm

Slinky

Donna

In my opinion, the fundamental question you need to answer for yourself here is 'DO I LIKE SELLING?' If the answer isn't a wholehearted yes, have a very good think about whether this is the right thing for you. Contra to whatever you might read on these franchise websites, advertising space in most media will not sell itself, and advertisers will NOT be falling over themselves to throw money in your direction. You will have to go out there and find customers and information to populate the site it isn't going to come rushing to you.

Good luck

keepitinyourtrousers

Donna,

Save your money - seriously!
I am a magazine producer and have been offered these web franchises on various occasions.

More and more Independent Magazine Owners, like myself, are launching websites offering the chance for local businesses to advertise as a way of fending off competition from franchises like the one you are interested in buying.

I am about to offer my customers the chance to advertise on my web site FREE if they are advertising in my magazine. The reason - to stop other websites charging for the privilege - and using my magazine to source their leads.

For £5000 + Vat you could get a web designer to build you a business & event guide site that would knock spots off of the one you are buying and it would have a unique identity too

Pacific_State

Donna,

Save your money, girl. I have been a long-time lurker here.

I run a fax and email marketing advertising company and we have had a few of the franchisees contact us for advertising.

It seems to me that the company give you the barest of marketing and selling plans to get started off with. If, like me, you've been selling for 16 years, that's fine, but advertising is a TOUGH game.

If you feel you have it in you, go for it. However, £4,995 for a template and a somewhat scarce business model seems extortionate.

Be careful.

Mark (MD)