81. High cost of webmasters in Singapore

1. It was great meeting you one morning to talk about IT from a practitioner.

2. I attach two pictures about "Be Proactive To Make Your Dreams Come True" to inspire you as you are a young man and can achieve so many great things in life. I hope you like the 2 pictures and can see the story in the picture. If not, I will explain to you the story behind my 2 pictures.


3. You are I are service providers in our own industry. Sometimes, our points of view may differ from the customers' point of views. If we can give what our customers want, we will get excellent referrals and lots of businesses. Good quality business clients are from referrals who trust me rather than think that I am the cheapest vet in Singapore.

4. I wish to share with you my experience in looking for a webmaster from a "customer's point of view". Yesterday, a client of mine whose dog I treated, introduced me to her boss who has a website producing company in Joo Chiat. It is a small office with 2 men and my client. It is called .... This young girl will make an excellent frontline administration officer as she follows up for her boss and ensures that I meet him.

4.1 COSTS OF AN E-COMMERCE WEBPAGE
The boss had only one account that suited my requirements. It was a website with e-commerce payments by Nets, Master and Visa credit cards for a charity run by a local university. "How much to produce this website?" I asked. "$15,000".

Definitely, I can't afford this amount."Can I see the website?" I asked since the boss was showing me printouts from his file. I am looking for past performances before I engage a webmaster as webmasters in Singapore are extremely expensive compared to South Korea. From a report I read some years ago, most Korean companies have online pages as the costs are much lower. Singapore is still in the Dark Ages as many companies don't do it. Now I understand why few small enterprises in Singapore do e-commerce as $15,000 is really a lot of money.

When I asked for the website to be demonstrated online, the boss said, "Sorry, No more," He suggested that I use PayPal for e-commerce. This is a sensible idea as it saves a lot of costs from webmasters.

4.2 CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS). I can't afford to pay the webmaster for updates. In any case, the webmaster will have no timely updates for me as I update anytime and daily. The boss said he can provide a CMS whereby the client updates pictures and pictures himself. As to the software used for webpage design, he said it is proprietary.

4.3 WHAT I WANT IN A WEBMASTER. Basically, it is e-commerce and self-updating at least cost. To save a lot of time for both of us at the meeting, I had an example of what I want from another company and asked the boss to click on "Asia Travel Concierge". Unfortunately, this webpage seems to have "expired" when the boss tried to access it. And I could see it in the morning before I met him.

I hope the above will be useful in letting you know what I want from a webmaster. I hope you will persevere and succeed in your IT enterprise. Go for it. Build up your commercial client base. Be amongst the best webmasters by giving what your customers want and having a large portfolio to prove it if this aspect of IT is what you are passionate about. Sometimes, bread on the table may be more important for your long-term survival. But if passion is there, your clients will sense it and with referrals, you will get "manna from heaven." I have the wording on my desktop to remind me daily. It is "Belief, Passion, Drive & Perseverance".


With best wishes.