| Self Assembly Sites | - Full access to all modules (no separate member levels or upsells)
- New modules added regularly
- Supportive community atmosphere where you can ask any questions & get advice from your peers and from experts
- Full Money Back 30 Day Guarantee
- High Majority of Training Modules accessible to completely non-techies
- Can just learn how to Maintain and Update your Wordpress Site
- Build Professional Looking Websites, using professional tools
- Not template system based, we train you to build open ended and future proofed sites that are easy to expand
- Develop new skill sets, useful in a huge array of future projects and interests
- You learn how to plan, design, implement, expand, update and improve websites
- The info is all immediately applicable. Even for a complete beginner you can have a simple, professional website live in an afternoon.
- If you wish, you can train to be a professional website developer, or just go to a level comfortable for you.
| - Low cost.
- You're NOT locked into anything, there's no contract
- You can cancel your membership whenever you want and owe us nothing...
- ... but you are welcome to return to us whenever you want
- Most Modules aimed at beginners and intermediates, less modules for experts at the moment
- Training Modules only on WordPress system, the most popular CMS in the world (of the top 1m websites, more use WordPress than all other combined)
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| Average Web Design Agency | - Outsource your website to 'experts' to do a professional job
- You can 'get lucky' in finding a quality web designer who understands your needs
- Can be fortunate that they don't sell you lots of things you don't need
- A good option if you have zero time or effort to spare on your site
- Good option if money is not an issue what so ever
- Can get a site that looks very smart and professional
| - $5,000 to $20,000, depending on project specifications (11yrs - 44yrs SelfAssemblySites membership approx)
- Can be very slow to deal with you, if you're not one of their top clients
- If you are a top client you might be over-paying on services
- Maintenance costs for changing small things usually between $100 - $250 per hour (1 - 5 months SelfAssemblySites membership Approx)
- Many meetings for many steps of the process
- Your site will rarely be right the first time as you're not educated as to what you want, so can't communicate it to the designer. Therefore often have to go back and redesign from an earlier stage, raising the costs dramatically
- Many companies bill you as if the top guys are always working on your site, however it may be college students, interns or new arrivals to the firm
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| Low End Web Design Agency | - Cheap alternative to the higher cost Website Designers
- Can be lucky in finding an up and coming talented Web Developer for cheap
- Can be more informal and flexible an arrangement
- Could get charged a very competitive hourly rate
- Could get lucky that you're treated as an important client
| - $1,000 to $5,000, depending on project spec (2yrs - 11yrs SelfAssemblySites membership approx)
- Have to ask why they're cheap: inexperienced? incompetent? worse?
- We all got to start somewhere, but if it's inexperience, do you want to have to pay to be part of their learning curve?
- Lower hourly rate than bigger firms but they may be more inefficient with each hour they charge you, so bill you for more hours than planned or is necessary
- Maintenance delays can be a huge problem, if they're a small outfit, your site changes could be far down their to-do lists if they're busy
- Maintenance costs for changing small things usually between $50 - $150 per hour
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| Your Mother's Friend's Son's Cat | - Can get lucky and get a site built very cheaply
- Can get extremely lucky to have a talented designer
- If they're using SAS could be easy for you to take over your site Management
- Why not buy them a SelfAssemblySites membership to ensure they do it well?
| - $100 - $600 (1month - 1yr SelfAssemblySites membership approx)
- They're not professional, so often make simple mistakes.
- They might show promise but YOU are their learning curve
- It's not their job, so your site could be down their priority list
- If they're not using pro tools, can be difficult to make changes
- Ongoing maintenance can take months to get to, as they're not a professional and you're not a priority
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| Get a Friend to Do It | - Can get lucky if they're very talented
- Can be ok if it's a small, very finite website
- Great if you've zero budget
- Fine if it's a very small and finite solution, replaced quickly by something else
| - Free - Nominal Cost
- Project often stalls for long periods of time as they've more pressing paying jobs
- Can create great frustration on both sides unless the project boundaries are clearly defined. The designer builds it and hands it over, the site owner wants more features than originally planned, and then updates. The designer often feels they're doing more than agreed and the site owner less than agreed. Can damage a good friendship!
- You can't talk to them like you're a full paying customer, so if things are late, wrong or not what you want; things can get messy very quickly
- Updates and maintenance can be a huge problem as you're not a paying client, do you pay? If so how much? If you're to do your own maintenance do they have the time to teach you how?
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| Hiring a Full-Time Web Designer | - Have someone on call and totally answerable to you
- No other distractions for their time or work
- Can continually develop and improve the site on an ongoing basis
| - $49,000 per year or more (98 yrs SelfAssemblySites membership approx)
- If they're very good they could earn more elsewhere, so there's a danger they would go to an agency at higher pay and with more diversity to their projects
- As an employee with salary agreed, there's less urgency for delivery of work
- Although talented in one area, they can't be brilliant at everything website related, so may have to outsource work, such as graphic design, so raising the cost of running or building your site
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| One Day Training Course | - Can be a social, warm and friendly atmosphere
- Opportunity for light and casual unfocused networking
- Can have a simple, sometimes professional, website built by the end of the day
- Could be using professional tools
| - $500 - $800 per day! (1-2 yrs SelfAssemblySites membership approx)
- Usually only get through the most rudimentary concepts and create highly basic sites
- There's little opportunity for questions after the event, no discussion forums
- Sometimes there's added cost a hotel or lunch and dinner
- Unless you take excellent notes, you can't go back over everything that was covered
- No ability to build on what you've learnt and move your site to the next level
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| Other Website Training Services | - Some of the better ones use professional tools like WordPress
- Some are better at teaching principles and core concepts than others
| - $50 to $1000, once off or per month (1month - 2yrs on SelfAssemblySites membership approx)
- No support, no room to ask questions should you not understand something
- Limited and finite scope: No facility to request new training modules
- No constructive feedback on your own site & how to improve it
- No peer to peer advice or suggestions or networking
- Often out of date or rarely updated
- Often not all training is by video; text instructions on their own can be confusing
- No conceptual thinking: no clarification why you'd choose one path over another
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| How To' Books | - Can lay out how to build websites for complete beginners
- Usually use professional tools to build sites
- Can be very cheap, but most would require a number of books
| - $10 - $100, usually $40 each (up to 1 month SelfAssemblySites Membership)
- Some of the pro tools they teach can cost money, not free ware or open source
- Extremely limited scope of what's included and what isn't included
- Can't ask questions, or request more topics, or ask for something to be explained more clearly
- Can be out of date very quickly, and have to wait for a new updated edition to fix that
- No interaction between different readers of the book, to assist each other
- Text and still images can be a lot harder to follow than videos when learning about websites
- May need a series of books to have a usable understanding of the topic
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| Website in a Box | - Ok if you have extremely basic needs
- Ok if you have nearly zero budget and don't have a friend to build it for you for free
- Good if you don't mind your site not looking very professional
- Good if you have zero intention or need to expand or improve your site
| - $70 - $500, sometimes also with a yearly fee (1 month - 1 year on SelfAssemblySites membership approx)
- Highly limited selection of websites' styles and templates
- The websites are usually poor quality, but sometimes you can be fortunate
- Very limited scope and options. If you want something slightly different it's unlikely you can be accommodated with those systems
- No ongoing support services or improvements
- Little ability to expand and improve your site or add more complex functionality
- Many of the less reputable ones, implant your website in a box with adverts and links back to their site and to their client sites, this drags you way down in google ranking
- Their interface is usually not as simple as they describe, and even when you you have learned how to use it, it's not useful anywhere else
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| Simple Flash Based Sites | - Great if you only have very small budget
- Good if you will not need anything complicated
- Usually the templates and designs look quite impressive
- Good if you will not need to improve or expand your site what so ever
- Good if your site is small and rarely need to ever update it
| - Free - $70 per month (1 month on SelfAssemblySites membership approx)
- For anything more complex at all they upsell you to more expensive packages
- The system does it all for you so you learn nothing
- The systems can be highly limited and inflexible if your needs are even slightly different
- Limited capability and functionality working within a narrow system
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| Self Assembly Sites | - Full access to all modules (no separate member levels or upsells)
- New modules added regularly
- Supportive community atmosphere where you can ask any questions & get advice from your peers and from experts
- Full Money Back 30 Day Guarantee
- High Majority of Training Modules accessible to completely non-techies
- Can just learn how to Maintain and Update your Wordpress Site
- Build Professional Looking Websites, using professional tools
- Not template system based, we train you to build open ended and future proofed sites that are easy to expand
- Develop new skill sets, useful in a huge array of future projects and interests
- You learn how to plan, design, implement, expand, update and improve websites
- The info is all immediately applicable. Even for a complete beginner you can have a simple, professional website live in an afternoon.
- If you wish, you can train to be a professional website developer, or just go to a level comfortable for you.
| - Maximum cost of $77 per month (less if you sign up for longer: $147 for 3 months, $447 per year)
- You're NOT locked into anything, there's no contract
- You can cancel your membership whenever you want and owe us nothing...
- ... but are welcome to return to us whenever you want
- Most Modules aimed at beginners and intermediates, less modules for experts at the moment
- Training Modules only on WordPress system, the most popular CMS in the world (of the top 1M websites, more use WordPress than all other CMS' combined)
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