Once you pick a winner I hope you'll look at us as a hosting/content solution. We can integrate any of these designs into our CMS for under $300, or if you have design skills of your own we can give you back door access to the system and you can do it yourself for free. We can provide you with tons of content, hosting, and email for less than $50/month. We'd be happy to work directly with you as the designer (in which case you can set your markup to whatever you think you can get), or if you prefer, we can take you on as an affiliate. This is a fire-and-forget solution where we can take over tech support, billing, etc. on the site, and pay you a 15% commission on the customers monthly payments for as long as they keep their site here. This is an open offer to all of you, BTW. Anyone with an accounting client and a strong web design background is invited to contact me about this. Good luck to all of you! I'll be coming back later to look at all your final entries. If I see something I like among the "losers" I may well be in touch about buying it from you and adding it to my available templates, so lets see what y'all got!
CPA Site Solutions- Thanks but I am just going to throw it up on wordpress and do some seo to the site to get it to the keywords where I need it to be. I already have a dedicated server so I am going to just host it myself. Thanks
I have picked deisgn_nikki as the winner of the contest. The design was top notch and exactly what I wanted. Thanks everyone for your submissions.
Congrats design_nikki, although it would have been nice to get some feedback instead of being ignored.
Sorry I provided feedback to most of the designs sorry I didn't get to you I have been really busy here lately and I felt your design wasn't what I was looking for.
Congratz to the winner! I only dont get one thing: Why would a top notch designer not stand for his/her work by posting it here for anybody to see it? Is it because it is not original work? Or was it just a compilation of everybody else's designs posted here? Opened for any other reason, just wondering.....
Hello lejka, Let me reply all your questions: Why would a top notch designer not stand for his/her work by posting it here for anybody to see it? CH had not mention any where that he will not accept entry by PM. I have completed right to save my work. right? Is it because it is not original work? My work is always original, (i spend 4-5 hours on the design) without seeing the work you can't offend others. Or was it just a compilation of everybody else's designs posted here? CH has already given very clear instructions about his requirements, it would be better if you look the design. PS: Hey lejka, i am a professional designer, if someone says anything about my designs I can't tolerate that. Here it goes:
Nikki, no offense to your design, but let me react: Why would a top notch designer not stand for his/her work by posting it here for anybody to see it? CH had not mention any where that he will not accept entry by PM. I have completed right to save my work. right? Yes, all those who posted here did it bc they decided to do so, such as you decided not to do so. Btw. there are many ways to protect your design even when you post publicly. And I believe this is a public contest. So your reason for not posting it public seams to me a bit weak. And why should anybody bother about anybody else sending entry via PM? Bc you had a chance to see what others did and according to CH's comments you can get inspired or avoid mistakes. But you wont let others to see your design to be able to do the same. Maybe you are professional designer but what about trying to be fair by giving what you take?
NP AJ, But I think we both know that I'm not offering hosting for $50 a month. I'm talking about the content that accountants need on their sites to engage in relationship marketing. I know how to market accounting firms online. It's what I do, I've been doing it for a long time, and I do it better than anyone else in the business. You need to add content: Free reports, Financial Calculators, etc. A well optimized site might bring a few fly-by-night tax season prospects, but that's not how accounting firms make the big money. They are looking for what they call "big fish", and big fish don't Google up their CPAs. Big Fish can only be landed by networking. They need to be reeled in slowly using relationship marketing. It can take as long as 6 years to land one of these bad boys. A website can't help them do that without good, dynamic, constantly updated content and a first class Emailed newsletter oriented towards getting the accountants brand in front of the prospect and keeping it there. It also means getting them to come back every once in a while until their current accountant retires, takes a job for a larger firm, dies... whatever. Most importantly, it has to be designed to appeal not just to your prospects, but to influencers in your industry. For example... the best influencer for an accounting firm is a real estate agent. They have relationships with people who are virtually pre-qualified to need an accountant. They are buying property, so they have money, and credit, and they are no longer filling out short forms. Many of them are business owners or representatives. If you can help real estate companies sell houses by adding tools to your site, for example a Mortgage Points calculator, they'll bring these clients to your site. The fact that the information is on your site and not theirs actually lends credibility to their pitch. The problem of course, is expense. We have a 3000 page free reports section. It took years to develop and cost tens of thousands of dollars. There's really no way you'll be able to do this yourself without stealing someone else's IP, and I don't recommend stealing mine. By splitting the cost between my clients, though, we give them the ability to use the site as an effective network marketing tool. When you're casting for big fish it sounds something like this: "Oh... By the way, my web address is on my card. If you're serious about exploring retirement options for your business I have a bunch of articles about that on my website. And call me if you need help." And don't forget the niceties. This is all stuff you can do without me, of course, but without it I guarantee I'll steal your client in a year or two: Secure File Transfer: Accountants trade in QuickBooks files which are too big and too full of confidential information to send by Email. Downloadable Tax forms: Just links to IRS.Gov forms. This one's Easy. Downloadable Tax Organizer: Saves them a fortune each year in payroll and postage. Tax organizers are 10-15 pages long. We have an online one built into our secure file transfer, but don't try to duplicate this using a regular form. It's illegal to send that kind of info by Email. Ignore this free advice at your peril. I can't tell you how many clients I steal from guys each week who crank out quickie sites for accountants.
Lejka0- You can look at the site next week when I have it up and ready to go. The designers are not obligated to post it in the public forum. Alot of the times when that happens I will say I like a design and then the other designers will try to copy it so its not always the best way to do things. CPASiteSolutions- Thanks for your comments regarding this. I own the company Wired Media LLC I have sites that get 50k+ uniques a day and some that get thousands of hits from google. I could create a secure file transfer no problem I already have something I wrote up on that. That wouldn't be hard at all. I am far from a newbie when it comes to building websites. I may be interested in your content if it is unique content that isn't on any of your other sites. If you are just putting the same content on all of your sites then google won't rank those sites high in the search engines. If you have some unique content that is only unique to my site I would be interested in that. If not that I have no use for your service.
AjOnline, I definitelly understand your point of view and I respect your decision about winner. I think, this dispute about posting here or through pm is more or less between us, designers (and is nothing personal towards nikki, bc there are lots of designers posting through pm) And yes, no one is oblidged to post here. Such as no one is oblidged to be FAIR to the others, bc TO BE FAIR IS A FREE PERSONAL DECISION someone chooses or not. Anyway, thanks for the contest!
what I have found in the past is everytime I submit a design to a public contest someone else takes the better concepts of your design and revise their own to incorporate your ideas into them. I support design_nikki in her decision to PM a design for fear of others assimilating her design into theirs. @lejka - Only last week I submitted an entry into a competition my design had flowers overlapping the design from behind the site itself. Suddenly 2 hours later someon revised their design with flowers coming from behind to overlap their design. Its at the discretion of the contest holder to decide if they want public or private entries, and as there was no restrictions then whats the problem? You said it has to be fair .... how is using other peoples ideas to enhance your own designs fair?