# Trade: a deck for a website?



## painter1986 (Mar 19, 2012)

I have a client who recently accepted my bid to repaint their deck (it's already been painted before, not much of a choice at this point). They're members of my business networking group, and they do web design and marketing. They offered to trade some or all of the work for some website work. 

My website

It's all stock images, because I made it before I started, and I didn't have any pictures of my own to put up. I'll be swapping out the stock photos for real ones, and adding a testimonials section as well as a portfolio in the next couple weeks.

They presented me with a few options, and the one I'm leaning towards is a re-write (not a re-design) of my content. This option will fix my SEO, and hopefully improve my search rankings. I designed my website myself, and I know it's not garbage, but it's not perfect either. This option would be a straight trade (other options were some blogs/social media stuff that I can do on my own). I know it's frowned upon here to talk prices, but I bid the deck at $1100. But if you discount that by my average profit margin of 25%, it's really only costing $825. This package normally is $1500, but they would do it for a straight trade. 

I don't know a ton about SEO, and I don't really have the time to learn enough about it, then implement it. My question is - does this seem like a good trade? I know web work is expensive these days, and I'm typically really conservative when it comes to my marketing dollars. What have you guys paid for similar work?


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## premierpainter (Apr 17, 2007)

Sounds good. A small investment/trade could land you much more work down the road.


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## painter1986 (Mar 19, 2012)

Thanks for the input. When you say that it could land me more work down the road, do you mean from those clients, or as a result of website improvements?


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## Xmark (Apr 15, 2012)

i'd ask for references and then do some follow-up. nothing wrong with bartering if they offer a quality product.


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## Stonehampaintdept (Jan 10, 2013)

Bartering is getting to be somewhat of a trend for service providers. They pay for materials, you supply labor, they give you new website. It's a win win. Plus at the bottom of your webpage may be a note saying Designed by Billybobs webcorp.


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## kingsebi (Jan 27, 2009)

As long as they do good work, it sounds fair. Give it a shot. A good website with good SEO is an awesome thing!


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## Ultimate (Mar 20, 2011)

http://youtu.be/u6ALySsPXt0




.


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## Red Truck (Feb 10, 2013)

I would definitely go for it! It should pay for itself in no time. SEO is Huge.

I did my business cards/ company logo on trade, and it was one of the single best investments I have ever made.


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## Kirbyworks (Dec 10, 2011)

painter1986 said:


> I have a client who recently accepted my bid to repaint their deck (it's already been painted before, not much of a choice at this point). They're members of my business networking group, and they do web design and marketing. They offered to trade some or all of the work for some website work.
> 
> My website
> 
> ...


I don't know what you are getting here. It's a nice site, but apparently it's not a Content Management System which is why you have your blog on another site. If you don't have a CMS then you really don't have much, in my not-so-humble opinion. Static sites just don't have the value of a CMS.

As for SEO, just "fixing" the content may not be enough, even for a small market like Ft. Collins. You will probably need to create more pages, one page per keyword, with the keyword in your title tag, description tag, page title, and h2 heading tags. If you had a CMS like WordPress (like your blog site), you could do that yourself with an SEO plugin. Even that may not be enough to get you to Google page 1. You will probably need to pay for some off-site SEO work to get make you visible, and until then you really don't have anything worth much on its own. You'll just be $800 closer to having a website that will do you some good.

As for price, $1500, or even $800, seems steep for a static site like that.


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## Xmark (Apr 15, 2012)

Kirbyworks said:


> I don't know what you are getting here. It's a nice site, but apparently it's not a Content Management System which is why you have your blog on another site. If you don't have a CMS then you really don't have much, in my not-so-humble opinion. Static sites just don't have the value of a CMS.
> 
> As for SEO, just "fixing" the content may not be enough, even for a small market like Ft. Collins. You will probably need to create more pages, one page per keyword, with the keyword in your title tag, description tag, page title, and h2 heading tags. If you had a CMS like WordPress (like your blog site), you could do that yourself with an SEO plugin. Even that may not be enough to get you to Google page 1. You will probably need to pay for some off-site SEO work to get make you visible, and until then you really don't have anything worth much on its own. You'll just be $800 closer to having a website that will do you some good.
> 
> As for price, $1500, or even $800, seems steep for a static site like that.


good post. this reminds me of the time i traded a used car for a computer many years ago. it was my first computer and didn't know what the damn thing was worth. turns out the guy sold me a piece of crap. the reason i brought this up is because we often do stupid things when we are ignorant about a subject. a website,seo and everything involved has so many variables that one may not be able to determine what it is really worth.


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## GrantsPainting (Feb 4, 2013)

Kirbyworks said:


> I don't know what you are getting here. It's a nice site, but apparently it's not a Content Management System which is why you have your blog on another site. If you don't have a CMS then you really don't have much, in my not-so-humble opinion. Static sites just don't have the value of a CMS.
> 
> As for SEO, just "fixing" the content may not be enough, even for a small market like Ft. Collins. You will probably need to create more pages, one page per keyword, with the keyword in your title tag, description tag, page title, and h2 heading tags. If you had a CMS like WordPress (like your blog site), you could do that yourself with an SEO plugin. Even that may not be enough to get you to Google page 1. You will probably need to pay for some off-site SEO work to get make you visible, and until then you really don't have anything worth much on its own. You'll just be $800 closer to having a website that will do you some good.
> 
> As for price, $1500, or even $800, seems steep for a static site like that.


I agree. Maybe not with a page per EVERY keyword. I certainly need more service pages but without them Im doing pretty good in a competitive market. Plus google can penalize you for duplicate text and keyword stuffing if you go too far with this. "Too far" is general done on purpose.

For the price or even time vs time. It seems in their favor unless your getting a darn good site with maintenance should any problems arise. 

Some if it depends on if your busy too. Sit at home on your butt or get up and do a deck for a website...


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