Hi Ollie, thanks for a comprehensive reply
- How annoying is doing this work to you? i.e. How valuable is your time? Consider what else you could do with it. How long does all this take?
- How many of these do you have to do in, say, a week?
- How many of these do you expect to have to do in the future?
- And, of course, as you have already asked, what are the costs involved in an automated solution? Also consider if there could be other side benefits to automation.
let me start by saying that its a relatively new process, as we have just launched our website using a method completely different, easier and with more robust features than above, however in this we have a cost of $10 a month in which we charge $24 a month for the elaborate service (includes a thing like short text # for corresponding web page, etc). As of now, we (me and partner) could resell the existing service, or create a simple webpage in the fashion described in the original post.
I have not started selling pages in the aforementioned fashion, so its hard to answer those questions accurately right off the bat, however in a weeks time, that may very well be different. As it stands, I have enough free time which I can take care of at least a dozen or a few dozen in one days time If I needed to, and furthermore I feel I could pay someone a nominal wage to do this for me, since the process isnt too complicated to begin with.
In regards to how many to expect, Im selling to an industry I am well connected in, so once I get the word out, there should be a constant flow of pages, which is why automation is important here. To give an example, one company who caters directly to my target market has a customer base of 100000+ that he is ready to upsell, although we are obviously going to spread that out into what we can manage.
I can't say I know how you could automate the creation of these, it will probably depend on your server's hosting platform (Plesk, CPanel, self-managed?) some research on these could confirm if it was possible and how to do it.
I think my partner has some kind of script, but Ill have to check, on Hostmonster I have CPanel
I'm without work at the moment so I could write this for you and give you a quote beforehand. I won't go into details on that point because it's off-topic; PM me if you're interested.
Thanks, what I will do is quickly PM you the URL address of the existing site, and since It is getting late for me, Ill have to ask if you can wait until tomorrow and Ill send you off much more intimate details of the existing operation.
I will say that I do have work, but it is usually commissioned base, and it is an extremely slow time right now in this specific field of international trade; I dont have much money to spend at all, henceforth my motivation for posting around and not going straight to RAC or elance. The money that we have put in this project, is mostly tied up in the marketing side, which is vital and cannot be subtracted.
Be that as it may, I am much more inclined to accept a commission heavy deal over one with a direct payment, in which Ill grant what I believe is irrefutable evidence of any revenue and automatic payment on each deal. Since I am in a commissioned based trade, I can surely understand anyone being disinterested in such a payment structure as I have to do this all the time for myself.
Anyone interested, please PM me and I will respond with the existing URL, and some details about the marketing we have in place.