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Ask HN: Would you spend $30K on a landing page?

13 points by ge96 ↗ HN
I know my answer, and I'm aware you can find themes for like $20.

The landing page is a single page thing, jump links on the page, then a form to collect an email.

With regard to responsive design, cross browser stuff being a given/addressed... $30K?

Point of this is I'm trying to see if there is any reason to think this is reasonable.

Hosting/certs is a minor concern could be done by you or provider. No changes to the site after it's done.

I would also add that you're a startup/don't have cash flow, maybe some kind of investment/seed money.

37 comments

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newsbinator
How likely is the landing page to make me $60K?
ge96
ha... in this case it did not help any/past tense.
warrenm
I'll spend as much on a landing page as it takes to make NOTABLY MORE than I spent on it

If I can make $1000 for $20, I'll spend $20

But if I could make $100,000 for $30,000 - dang straight I'm gonna spend $30,000!

ge96
Yeah maybe part of the question is when do you do it. This landing page was not amazing, a slider, couple of left/right sections, a form to collect an email... I just have a hard time rationalizing that to be worth that much.
warrenm
How much did it earn after being put in place? Was it more than it cost?
netizen-936824
Another comment by OP says that they are 300k in the hole. So it sounds like it lost 10x what it cost

Also 30k is absurd for a single static web page

s_severus
My initial answer is "hell no" but on second thought I maybe need more context. As others asked, how much do I expect it to generate? How much do I have to play with? Am I a BigCo with an end of year departmental budget to burn?

Even then, 30k for a single page, which I assume is static, is kinda ridiculous. The only justification I can think of is very, very good design from an expensive design agency.

For the dev work we are talking paying someone $300 / hour for over 2 weeks. Seems out of my reality.

ge96
> very, very good design

It wasn't

sergiomattei
Then? You already know the answer: it’s unreasonable, period.
warrenm
How do you know "It wasn't"?

Did it achieve its purpose?

Did it make more than it cost?

ge96
By good design I'm talking about aesthetics. A person with a few hours of basic html/css could build this site. In the end it literally was just a WP site with a $60 theme on it. Also turns out we host it so it was a one time cost deal.
warrenm
If it were that easy to build...why did you just have a "person with a few hours of basic html/css" do it?

Surely you had an intern who could've knocked this out in a week? Or yourself in an afternoon?

ge96
This already happened I wasn't involved at the time. Just trying to confirm externally that this was a waste of money.
warrenm
It doesn't matter if it was a waste of money, then

It's water over the bridge at this point

sharemywin
I'd be happy to make it for you for like 27K and you'd save 10%.
ge96
haha I'm just trying to explain to a person what they got was a waste of money, oh well
sharemywin
maybe they can save a screenshot as a jepg or something sell it as an NFT
ge96
Yeah an imprint of tears
muzani
I'll do it for $24k.

full disclosure: will probably outsource all the work to upwork or toptal

Now that I think of it, $24k is a year's salary for the average senior developer here. So I could actually stretch that out quite a lot.

ge96
I was looking at different salaries by profession in a third world country (thinking may end up there someday). It's interesting how software is not a high paying role there. I'm thinking it's demand but yeah. So if you were to "make it big" there I think you would need money coming in from other countries over the internet which hey, Starlink maybe.
muzani
Depends on which countries. $25k salary here is double of, say, a really good accountant or a senior civil engineer. Taxes are much lower too.

Countries with no unicorns generally pay a lot lower, but there's more potential to do a startup. Everyone in the world deals with taxes, payrolls, and resells cars, but sometimes there's no localized software for that. Companies with corruption have far more financial restrictions and often global companies are reluctant to enter.

netizen-936824
Where does starlink come into play? Do these countries you speak of just not have internet?
ge96
The internet there is not great. I will say I don't know how good Starlink's internet is but the idea of like being on a random island/boat and having internet... that's pretty nice. It sounds like a dumb dream as I'm afraid to travel but it's a bridge I will cross at some point. Have blood-families there though they're practically strangers to me as I haven't had contact with them for almost 20 years.

My father (why I exist) was an expat/had kids with random women but he had money in a poor country. I wouldn't feel safe being in that situation (as a yes man). Somehow the dude had a 60' sailing yacht and was just bumming around hong kong/nearby islands. He was in the wars (flew Hueys in Vietnam for ex.) but he did run a diving/tour kind of deal with this boat/was a street smart guy. In the end his life decisions caught up to him (taken out by strokes) under 60.

I think about it because I have a fear of going there and not being able to return to the US for whatever reason. I like living in a developed place but that area is also a paradise you know cliche blue water/tropics. Alternative is own a small piece of land somewhere in the US/do stuff, live a regular life. I also can just completely shut that side of my life off and live here but as I question if altruism is a thing, I've been supporting them for the last two years. Feels like a drag but they literally live on dirt/I got a well installed in their village.

Anyway... I will be CTO of this thing taking a new direction, hopefully it becomes something. Will check back in 3 months ha, gotta finish my last month at my current job before I lose 50% of my income and health insurance, oh well. I haven't been to a doctor in years so a gap is not a huge concern, will figure it out. At least I have ownership of this thing/a co inventor.

Sorry for the unrelated rambling.

poulsbohemian
Would love to know the context here - is this what someone offered as a project bid?

Spending $30K might make sense if the landing page just part of the deliverables. For example, I can imagine if you went to a marketing firm and they are assisting with branding, copywriting / editing, syndication, social, etc and the landing page is just the most obvious deliverable of the bundle, then... sure, you could spend $30K really fast.

ge96
No it's past history, possible there was marketing or something. Main point is we're sitting at -$300K and this is one of the reasons

More issues than that, at one point AWS bills were 10x of what they should be. Mostly the thing had bad market reaction.

Case of check reality vs. your personal beliefs/hopes.

poulsbohemian
Got it. If I was auditing someone's books and I saw this, I'd say that either someone got completely suckered (sorry) or they were getting some kind of kickback / the vendor was their cousin and they were basically funneling them money. A static landing page with no other deliverables or not part of any larger project shouldn't be more than maybe a couple hundred bucks.
ge96
Yeah was done by an agency, my point is you could pick some Envato theme and slap this on WP and it would be good to go. Anyway, we're pivoting hoping not to do that again.

Minor add, you don't need to use WP, it's a single page, no routing or anything required, just host it somewhere as static.

It is WP actually. Ha template used is $59 lol.

Adrig
Not sure if it OP's reason to start the topic, but not long ago a designer on twitter made a bit of turmoil by offering to design a landing for 20k and use it as an example in the course he was making. Turns out he sold it and a couple more since then at the 20k-40k range, so I guess some people really have this kind of money to spend (he's focusing on web3 right now, so there might be an explanation there.
unbanned
No. Use a WordPress theme. Pay $1000 for SEO. Call it a day.
cm2012
Absolutely not, build it in squarespace or instapage. Hire a cheap designer for $1000 to customize it for you. That's what I did for my agency website that we do $10m a year in revenue through.
moooo99
Would like to add Webflow to the list of suggestions
rad_gruchalski
Back of the envelope calculations: $30k, say they charge $150/h. That $30k is 200 hours. That is 25 man days x 8 hours. You have a designer, copywriter, probably a product manager, customer rep and a coder involved in this.

Sounds about right. Maybe you need a cheaper agency?

XCSme
I would spend $1k on the site and $29k for 6 months doing whatever I want.

You would get the exact same results for $1k and $30k, the only difference would be the developer's profit.

peanut_worm
For a landing page? No I can’t imagine I would ever do that. Maybe for an entire website but not a single page.