You might be thinking there are already enough options for small businesses to create websites, and you’re right - there are a lot of options. You might be thinking platforms have replaced traditional websites for business discoverability, and you’re right - platforms definitely help businesses get discovered. You might think email and websites are dated, unnecessary technologies, but on that I would strongly disagree.
There are many small businesses that don’t realize how valuable a custom, managed website could be for their business. Let’s explore this.
Website Costs in a World full of Providers 🔗
With high up-front time and money investments, many business owners opt to not create a website. They’re faced with costs in the thousands of dollars or dozens of hours of setup, learning, and building through a website builder. For busy, budget-minded business owners, this is often too much commitment.
| Model | Monetary Cost | Time Investment | Conclusion |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY | Free build, $25-50/mo | Many hours to learn, regular updates | Great if the tool has everything you need and you have a lot of time to invest |
| Consultant | $1,000-$10,000 build, $50-$500+/mo | Few, short meetings | Businesses proceed with caution, tightly couples your business to theirs with high costs |
| In-house | Build included, $1,000-$5,000+/mo | Once trained, they can be autonomous | Employee can become single-point-of-failure for your website |
| Hybrid | $0+ build, $25+/mo | Varies from best of both worlds to worst | Coordinating different models can add to the overall complexity of managing the website |
The gioandjake.com Pricing Model 🔗
We can leverage our expertise to offer the preferable, best-of-both worlds time investment of consultants and monetary investment of DIY. We price our build based on our hourly rate to build a website, which is quite low due to our resources and skills, for example, we charge $200 for a site with the same quality and features consultants might charge $5000 to build.
Where a consultant might leave you to figure out your own hosting, email, and e-commerce management, we provide this for a low monthly fee. Through efficiencies in acquiring and managing resources, we can pass off these savings and offer monthly fees on par with DIY website providers.
Start Thinking of your “Account” as a “Business” 🔗
If you’re making money on an online platform, tax authorities think you’re a business and you should, too. Whether you are hosting a short-term rental, adding an affiliate link in your bio, or creating paid content, you should be thinking of ways to build an identity outside of controlling platforms.
Algorithms can boom and bust individual creators or hosts. Even if you follow the rules, you can be pushed further down in feeds or even entirely out of results, and the companies behind the platforms don’t understand the AI algorithms themselves. You get this discoverability that can be taken away so easily, while the platform takes a huge chunk of your revenue.
Platforms don’t need to charge an extra fee per transaction, but they do anyways because it makes them more money. With your own website, you can be discovered by people outside of these spaces and convert them to customers on your own terms. With gioandjake.com’s websites, e-commerce is a monthly add-on fee; you don’t get punished for bringing more revenue into your business.
A Short-Term Rental Example 🔗
Let’s compare how a flat-fee booking service compares to a booking platform. The most popular booking platforms charge around 15% to be paid as a fee between the host and guest. If we take a $300/night stay, this is what the numbers look like:
| Item | Guest Pays | Host Earns | Platform Earns |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3% Fee on Rate | $300 | $291 | $9 |
| 14% Guest Fee | $42 | - | $42 |
| Total | $342 | $291 | $51 |
Let’s extend this out to a monthly revenue example for a short term rental:
| Monthly Revenue | Platform Cost @ 17% | gioandjake.com Costs | Cost Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| $250 | $37.5 | $50 | -$12.50 |
| $500 | $85 | $50 | $35 |
| $1000 | $170 | $50 | $120 |
| $2500 | $375 | $50 | $225 |
To conclude, if you are using one of the common booking platforms for a $300/night stay, you would save money after converting just a single night to a direct booking on a gioandjake.com custom website for your business.
Creators Need Websites, Too! 🔗
Being an online content creator is the dream for many, but relying too heavily on a single platform can crush that dream. Whether you’re making short-form videos, text-and-image posts, or long-form videos, the platforms where you post should just be a single channel for your business.
Selling products on an embedded marketplace subjects creators to fees of 5%+, reducing the money in the creator’s pocket; they can also raise their fee whenever and however they choose. If you are selling at least $1000 per month on these marketplaces, converting to a gioandjake.com custom e-commerce website will save you money. These marketplaces also limit the offerings creators can sell and many creators have to create third-party listings that lead to a clunky sales pipeline. Even the ability to sell goods in the marketplace can be taken away due to arbitrary rules that the social media platform imposes.
One alternative many creators choose is a DIY link-in-bio solution, however these platforms still charge per-transaction fees. Let’s take a look at one popular link-in-bio provider which charges a product-transaction fee and offers paid plans:
| Plan | Monthly Sales | Fee Paid | Plan Cost | Total Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $100 | $12/12% | $0 | $12/12% |
| Mid | $500 | $45/9% | $5 | $50/10% |
| Pro | $2000 | $180/9% | $10 | $190/9.5% |
Let’s compare this to what a creator’s costs would look like on gioandjake.com where you get so much more than just a list of links:
| Plan | Monthly Sales | Fee Paid | Plan Cost | Total Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tailored Build Kit | $100 | $0/0% | $35 | $35/35% |
| Master Artisan Launch | $500 | $0/0% | $50 | $50/10% |
| Master Artisan Launch | $2000 | $0/0% | $50 | $50/4% |
A dedicated website allows creators to forge long-lasting relationships with their followers outside of volatile platforms. They can build email lists and bring their subscribers to whichever platform they decide to prioritize. Instead of centralizing your business on a platform, create a dedicated website where your followers can turn into repeat customers and continue to support you wherever you take your creativity!
The Bottom Line for gioandjake.com 🔗
I’ve been getting a lot of ads for website design and website builders since researching this business. I’m seeing a lot of offerings that don’t prioritize the success of their customers’ businesses. Web designers want to charge thousands of dollars just to build the site, chasing the famous “ten thousand dollar sale.” DIY website builders want to turn small business owners into web developers and take their money for as long as it takes them to burnout. Our web services business relies on keeping our customers online; it relies on providing value to small businesses.
If you’re evaluating a provider for your business’s website, ask yourself, “does their business model care about the success of my business?” A website should bring your business value in terms of access to additional revenue. Whether this is through access to new marketplaces, discoverability across the internet, or increasing your offerings, the cost to build and maintain the website should not outweigh its value.
We aim to offer our websites at a low upfront cost to keep the risk low to our customers. Once we’ve built the site, our full management model minimizes our customers’ time commitment. Choose gioandjake.com if you want a provider who truly cares about your business’s success.
Success Stories 🔗
We have already helped small businesses with their web service needs.
South Shore Adventures | Apostle Islands Kayak Tours 🔗
South Shore Adventures approached us about a website for their Apostle Islands Kayak Tour business. Kayak Tour companies operating in waters and parks governed by the National Parks Service require the business to have a website. We worked with the owner to design, develop, and deliver a website that met their criteria and helped them with their online presence https://southshoreadventures.com/tours.html.
Mountain View Thai Coffee | Thai Coffee and Food 🔗
We were regulars at Mountain View Thai Coffee in Fountain Hills, AZ when the owners approached us about taking over a consultant-made website they were responsible for managing. The consultant had since stopped contacting the business and they needed updates to their site to keep it active. We were able to help them stay online while going through a successful exit of their business - increasing its sales value https://www.fhtimes.com/stories/thai-cafe,438454.
Facade Clothing | Streetwear Apparel and Art 🔗
Facade is a small clothing company that we helped my brother get online. While he manages his own site, we help with his domain management https://thatsafacade.com/.