Seeking Partners

Before I get into this, I am conscious that this is going to look like a pitch to some people, and others may miscontrue this as a "home business opportunity". It is neither, though it IS getting some new information "out there" and it may well be of interest to people currently working in the home business market.

It's quite sad to realise that a large chunk of the "home business" market consists of people doing the things they are trained to do, but they wind up pitching to others in the same industry, who are trying to make money and don't have any to spend.

This is why I say it may be of interest to those people, it's something for the small business operators; one man bands, partnerships and "mom and pop" operations. People with "bricks and mortar" businesses, and with a few dollars to spend.

So that's a bit of pre-amble that tells you nothing - on with the show!

Avallach Technology is essentially a "Web Consultancy", working with clients through the whole process of getting an online presence, and maintaining it.

Having spent some time analysing the excellent service provided by existing "boutique" design companies, web hosting providers and the like, I have found evidence supporting some things I believed as a "gut instinct". Small business is either being charged a lot for a web presence, being left to their own devices too much, or simply being forced to forget about it.

You see, most of these small biz operators do what they do because that's where their skills lie. They do NOT have computer science degrees, so they don't want to get into the "how many gigs of bandwidth will you need per month?" type stuff.

They may be tempted by some cheap-as-chips "SiteBuilder" offerings - some of them can look fine, but when you start scratching the surface, there's no chance that Google will ever consider indexing the site, or they make beginner errors with colours or large graphics.

If they don't just abandon the idea, they often wind up paying thousands for an expert to come in and fix things up, or create the site in the first place - thousands and thousands of dollars in some cases, where that money would be better spent on the business itself.

There ARE free services out there, and using things like blogs and lenses is great, but it's hard to put in place the functionality you want and you get an amateurish-sounding web address.

So imagine this - you go online (or pick up the phone, or speak to someone in person) and say to them "I want a web presence for my small business", and they say "OK, leave it all to me, you just run your business". How much sense does THAT make? How hard is it to see that is a GREAT solution?

That, not surprisingly, is the thinking behind our new service - in the first instance you only make one decision: Do I want to include a shop in my site, or not?

We quite literally build your web site, work with you to get the content online, and continue to work with you on an ongoing basis. Not only that, but we work with you person-to-person, not via an online support facility, or an offshore call centre.

Old fashioned customer service, a personal touch throughout, and a focus on creating clean, responsive web sites that get your message out there and cause you zero grief. You don't need to worry about what the site runs on - you trust our expert knowledge to provide you with something that is appropriate to your needs. You don't need to worry about learning HTML or PHP - you leave that to us as your experts. We get relevant information from you, and transform it into the geek code required.

We are in effect, your very own IT arm with 100% of the convenience but 0% of the overhead.

Now the final pricing has yet to be set but here's what we're currently working with:

A web presence with no ecommerce: Initial fee $199, then $49 per month
Web presence WITH ecommerce: Initial fee $399, then $89 per month

Those are fully inclusive prices, but subject to terms and conditions - for example we can't be expected to give our full attention just to you 24x7, but we don't leave you languishing in a pile of "to do" items either!

Also, we focus on sites that can have your wording, your colours, and your logos but NOT a full custom design job with Flash animations etc. etc. If you have these items already, then yes we can incorporate them into the site. We also have access to designers who can give a competitive quote for a truly custom piece.

Trust me on this - 99% of small businesses, when they go online for the first time, do NOT need anything more than what we deliver. That's WHY we deliver what we do - we analysed it, we understand it, and we don't try to over-sell or over-charge for that expertise.

Now I don't know if you noticed, but I did say we focus on working with people at a local level. This causes issues for us, being based in Perth, Western Australia. Now this is where you guys come in - you see I am not trying to sell you our services, the fact that you are on this social site indicates to me that you probably got yourself an online presence already. No, why I am mentioning all this here is because you guys are important to me in a different way; many of you currently provide products and services to businesses in your local area, have that personal relationship, and provide great value and customer service "with a smile".

I want people like you to join what will be our "Partner Program" - if I were to sum it up in a sentence, it's a bit like a franchise that you don't have to buy.

You see, we're going to continue engaging with clients directly here in Perth, but we would love to widen the scope, and have Independent Consultants acting on our behalf OR bundling our services into the overall package they sell to their own clients.

In both cases we will be providing ongoing support and information relating to how WE do things, and encouraging our ICs to follow those tried and tested processes closely. But we also encourage them to be every bit as pragmatic as our own people - one size can fit many situations, but not always all. Our ongoing support will help inform those sort of decisions.

The key difference in the two partner variants relates to billing - in all cases we look after creation of the site, software installation, ongoing maintenance of infrastructure and upgrading software.

We will either:

Bill the client directly, and then pay 50% of the initial and recurring fees to our partners

OR

if the partner is handling billing themselves, we will bill them (and not the client) at wholesale rates (50% off)

The advantages to any business, working in the small business sector, is that there is no need to get into the technical stuff (unless you want to), you tap into a tried and tested approach that delivers results over and over again, you build on the decades of skills and experience that are contained within Avallach.

Not forgetting to mention, of course, incredibly affordable pricing, and a great partner margin on prices!

If you, or anyone you know, is currently working with small business, or experiencing frustration with the "home biz" sector then this is a fantastic opportunity.

HOWEVER... please don't think this is going to be just like all those "biz opps" - we need to preserve the integiry of the product and company name, we need to ensure that clients derive as much benefit from their purchase as if they had worked with US directly.

Unfortunately we can't clone ourselves, but we CAN be careful with who we choose to work with. That said, if you're a hard worker, a decent "easy to get on with" person, and able to operate a word processor and/or blogging software, then you probably fit the bill.

Hope that wasn't too sales-y - I really wanted to get over a few key points:

1. I don't like what I see in terms of web options for small businesses at present
2. I don't like some of what I see in the home biz industry - people caught in vicious circles
3. I want to do something about both those things

I hope I achieved that, and I hope I have given at least one person food for thought, or another option to consider.

All the best
Gaz