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Building websites as a franchise

Join McDonalds, KFC and Avon?

I made an impulse magazine purchase the other day because an interesting article caught my eye.

I was actually looking for the latest edition of ‘Pokemon World’ at the time, but that’s another story!

It was a feature in Making Money magazine with the sub-heading ‘Franchisor looking for ambitious people who are keen to help local businesses take advantage of the benefits the internet has to offer.’

I couldn’t resist having a read of that, so I paid for the magazine and made a dash for the bus home.

Fancy becoming a franchisee?

I wouldn’t personally consider becoming a franchise holder as it’s just not my thing, but I was interested to read how other people do it as it had occurred to me when setting up webcumbria.co.uk that you could actually role a similar model out for each county in the UK in the form of as franchise … if the original idea took off that is!

I discovered a couple of national franchises which offer territories throughout the country promoting and building small business websites.

If you’re interested in making a business out of the web, this is quite an interesting area to look at, even if you don’t go for it yourself.

ORCA franchise

ORCA Websites was the subject of the magazine article which was basically a look at how they’re currently recruiting across the country.

Here’s what they do:

• Produce websites for small-to-medium sized businesses
• Offer the full range of standard services like website construction, contact forms, SEO, e-commerce and so on
• An ORCA ‘territory’ (there are 447 of them) costs £13,000 and gives franchisees access to a training and support package and the services of a team of specialist website designers. They also provide marketing and telesales support for every franchisee.
• IT experience is not required as the central team do all the design and hosting work for you

If, like me, you build your own websites, I’m sure you’ll be interested in this model.

Funnily enough, I’d be more interested if I could actually build the websites myself rather than handing them over to a team to do all the fun stuff.

If I could do it with technical support, templates, marketing, leads and the feeling of a ‘big brand’ behind me, this could be an interesting option.

I’d love to know how long it would take you to earn back your £13,000 initial investment … maybe I’m charging too little for the websites I build.

Getting Activ

While I was reading the magazine, I found another advert for a Activ Web design which offers a similar franchise service.

Areas are priced at £6995 + VAT and what’s on offer are two basic products:

• £499 standard website package
• £999 online shop package

This is offered as a franchise which you can ‘pick up and put down’ as you want to, so it’s also aimed at part-time workers, retired people and so on.

Once again, no technical knowledge is required (hang on though, that’s the fun bit!) and the sites themselves look very nice as you can see on the examples page.

After training you are allowed as a franchisee to get involved in creating the websites, which is a blessed relief, and the info says you can make up to £35k annually from that initial level of investment.

Once again, this is extremely interesting as a business model and one worth clocking if you’re in the website-making game yourself.

If you know of any other quality/legitimate website building franchises like the two discussed above, please use the comments form at the bottom of the page to pass on info.

Similarly, if you operate a web franchise, I’d love to hear from you to hear how profitable it is and how long it takes to claw back that initial investment.

Is it all sales calls and leads generating or do you get to get your hands dirty with some coding work?

Two more of note

The company which runs Activ Web Design is probably better know for operating the UK Websaver franchise which offers loyalty cards to independent businesses.

I’d never heard of this until I met a lady on my New Entrepreneur Scholarship course last year, and she has just started up a franchise in our area.

Interestingly, she got in touch with me saying that she was meeting many small businesses who weren’t on the web and would I provide a discounted website for them, through her?

This I have done via my webcumbria.co.uk website, offering a discount for local businesses who commission via my business colleague - see the site demo here.

This basic site is driven from a standard Mambo database, which is why I can offer it so cheaply.

However, looking at what these franchises charge, I’m wondering if I’m pitching a bit low?

One other discovery that made me wonder about pricing the other day was an ebay advert for a local shop in Cumbria.

In selling the shop, the vendor revealed that she’d paid over £15k for an e-commerce website.

My online pals and I immediately set to work figuring out what she’d used and came across siteeditor.co.uk which charges - brace yourself - £15600 exclusive of VAT for an e-commerce shop.

The online shop itself is nice enough, but £15600!

Just in case you’re considering spending that much on an online shop can I urge you to check out Zen Cart, OS Commerce or Cube Cart first.

These are all Open Source, FREE sites (when downloaded via Fantastico), have extensive online support networks and in some cases, have entire books devoted to their use and development.

My personal fovourites are Zen Cart and Cube Cart, both of which I got to grips with very swiftly one rainy Saturday afternoon.

You can link them securely with Paypal and many other popular payment options and they are extremely impressive packages.

For £15600 I’ll move into your house for 3 months and set one of these programmes up with you on your own PC. I won’t clean up the kitchen as part of the package by the way.

Only kidding, but please check out all the alternatives before you part with cash like that.