I am the process of starting my own web design company after 10 years of either working for other companies or freelancing. One thing I am looking into is offering financing to my customers. I am trying to stay away from low budget websites and I think offering financing would be a good move. Do any of you web design business owners on here offer this? Any recommendations on a financing company to use? So far I've only looked at GE Business financing. What are your thoughts on this?
Yes my company is currently talking with brokers at the minute to find the best way to offer this. Just contact a local finance broker and talk over with them how you are looking at providing your finance, and they will get back to you. I am currently at the stage of waiting for there reply, so I will try remember to update this post if you don't find an answer yourself. Thanks.
Help your customers choosing the financing plans by examining there needs, limitation. and then compare these with available plans keeping in view annuity payments, interest rate, customers required rate of return
Financing loan amount for you clients is a good idea so you can easily convert all small clients to profitable deals.This is possible if you do with a broker.i do not have any designing company but i am in financial sector and saw some people do their business in this way.i think you can run finance business along with you host service without using middle man loan broker.
I am not a financing expert, but I noticed this thread, if you can wait for the money, and finance them yourself...a simple solution is to use paypals subscription feature. Just arrange the full amount they need to pay and divide it into 60 monthly payments or however you wish to structure it, and paypal automatically deduct the outstanding balance each month. Of course, they could unsubscribe...not sure, but something to look into. I guess you could make them sign a formal contract and if they unsubscribe you can sell the debt to collectors. Seems like a simple, quick solution.
Its very tough to get finance company to accept this kind of loan. Unless you have some sort of guarantor.
I don't think each company has the same plan as in your country, as we all know web site is something that can not be guaranteed. CMIIW
Hi Venex, in my opinion - dont finance your customers yourself. It will get to much trouble shooting, when the client cant pay. In stead, ask for a 25/50 % upfront payment - and if customer refuses offer - when you explaining why - you might let him run. Dont get burned in this economy, as a lot of businesses dont have funds to pay thier suppliers. Be picky in choosing your customers, regards, LASSE
Sign contracts with monthly payments. That's what I do. It works really well, specially with Real Estate agents.
Be careful with this advice, in some countries advising on finance is a regulated industry and you must have authorisation to do it. To be honest, if a business is struggling to get its financing for the design of its website how are they going to finance all the other aspects of the business? Generally you either need to give terrible interest rates (which again begs the question of the businesses viability) or you give them something good but actually reduce the money you yourself receive. You could use it as a USP, 0% interest loans to pay for the work and just build the finance companies costs into the quotes.... just check the T&Cs on how they recover bad debt from you and estimate on a moderate default level.