Mel,
Web design is dead.
At least, that's what I'm hearing from many of the "old guard" designers who got their start in the years before Google shoved Yahoo into a locker and ran off with their lunch money.
In the web design "golden age," freelance work was abundant, and a decent designer could pretty much name their price.
These days the 5-figure contracts are few and far between.
Why should a business hire an expensive artist when $39 buys you unlimited access to 200 WordPress themes and all the hyper-optimized landing page templates your heart desires?
This is a prime example of how markets shift when technology lowers the barrier to entry.
The music industry has been reeling from this for decades.
35 years ago, if your album was a full digital recording, you were hot stuff. In 1980, a sixteen track digital tape recorder cost half a million dollars.
Today you can lay down an entire album on a $600 iPad—oh, and you can do all the editing and remixing on that same device with free software.
DIY has all but killed the recording studios. Musicians are out of work because people with no chops, no talent and no musical sense can hack something out and then edit it with Garage Band until it sounds right.
But when technology takes one opportunity away, it introduces another somewhere else. Will Denton is a drummer (he's worked with Stephen Curtis Chapman) who does a lot of recording work via the Internet.
He built a home studio and learned the nuances of miking drums, which is quite difficult to do properly. He promotes a service on his website—people send him files they've recorded. They email him notes detailing what they want in terms of drum parts. Will records them and sends back a file. It's almost like he's phoning in his parts, and he gets paid via Paypal. Never even meets most of his customers in person.
He says lots of people can afford to pay a drummer the day rate for a record; they just can't afford to fly to Nashville, pay for housing and meals and rent a studio. It's a completely viable way of getting the job done more affordably.
Back when I was still taking consulting projects, I rarely took on a project that was "just" AdWords or "only" a sales page.
Instead I'd deliver a complete package, including web traffic and a multi-step sales process. Google ad campaigns, squeeze page, autoresponder series and sales letter, all in one package. I'm in control of all that.
Consultants and web designers, take note.
Web design in 2016 isn't just typography and white space—it's those things PLUS ecommerce shopping cart optimization.
Lead generation isn't AdWords and a landing page. It's Maze 2.0—PPC + content + time sequenced retargeting + email follow up.
Technology ruthlessly slaughters markets. But every time an industry falls, 10 more opportunities spring up to take its place.
The sharp-eyed consultants who spot them will have well-fed families—and those who don't will huddle in the dark corners of the Internet, spinning yarns about the days of old.
Carpe Diem,
Perry Marshall
P.S. This trend toward more and more specialization is why I created Marketers 24/7.
Marketers 24/7 is like an Angie's List that brings Planet Perry consultants together with the entrepreneurs who need YOUR specific expertise.
Join here today.
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