2 builders who never spoke to each other · contested
Hire the site out, or keep building it yourself
One view is that logos, fonts and signatures feel like work while producing nothing customers asked for, so you keep hacking at the site yourself until the business is substantial, and even then you arrive at the agency with a fixed picture of the result to avoid paying someone to work it out with you. The other is that when your own appetite for marketing work fades, contractors keep it moving rather than letting it stall.
Where this splits
Jackson brings in contract designers and developers so the marketing site does not stall, while Welsh ran a site he had cobbled together for four years and warns that paid rebuilds take months and produce nothing customers wanted.
2 claims against 1
Justin Welsh
Keep building the site yourself until it matters
- 01Keep building the website yourself until the business is substantial, because logos, fonts and signatures feel like work while producing nothing customers want.
- 02Fix a clear picture of the result you want before hiring a design agency, since paying someone to work it out with you is expensive in both money and months.
Bring in contractors so the site does not stall
When your own appetite for marketing work flags, bring in contract designers and developers on the marketing site rather than letting it stall.
What it returned
- 2022
Justin brought in two contract developers during 2022 to work on Transistor's website, and ran a livestream event with Jeremy Enns.
- 130,000
Welsh ran a site he had cobbled together for his first four years and only paid for a redesign once it was drawing more than 130,000 visits a month. The outsourced rebuild then took seven months.
Welsh picked Andy Kennedy of the agency Ceremony, who had followed his work for years and interviewed him repeatedly before producing flexible brand guidelines.
Sources
- 2022 year in reviewJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Feeling the need for collaboration · undated · dissenting
- Why I Changed My Entire Brand (and what you can learn from it…)Justin Welsh · justinwelsh.me · Reason 1: 4 Years of Traction Required a More Professional Look · 2023-12-02
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
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