About budget sites, people, and automation

The crisis in the yard. In RuNet, the topic of cost reduction, automation, and the transition to the conveyor is actively discussing. This was already expressed by Niyaz Garayev , who built the conveyor, while increasing prices to quite un budgetary ones. I will allow myself to continue the topic of the conveyor. In contrast to the production of Reaspekt and especially QSOFT, WebCanape operates in the cheapest segment, so to speak at the very bottom. With many things described in the above article, I agree, but you should not raise prices as soon as possible, as Niyaz advises. This is a good market, even better than many people think.

Look at the TOP 100leading Russian studios. If you make a filter at a price, then we will see that most work with budgets of 300,000 rubles. And where do you think the highest demand is? Of course in the segment up to 50 thousand.

Surprisingly, out of the TOP-100, only 7 companies work in the range of up to 50 thousand. Why? After all, this is the highest demand and that means you can earn the most. It turns out that there are no large companies, and therefore there is no serious competition.

Why do people go to the expensive segment and raise prices ahead of time? In the first two years, developers argue like this: than taking 5 small customers, it is better to take one big one. ZP is growing rapidly, it is necessary to provide ongoing support, a good office. Raise the price tag and go. Someone who survives faster and more talented, and those who do not have time - write letters to Niyaz :)

It does not immediately come to understand that big money requires a lot of attention: lengthy negotiations, trips to meetings, discussing projects, beautiful presentations - all this is an essential part of projects and your resources (up to 70%). Here, by the way, it doesn’t matter where you do business: a restaurant, apartment renovation or website development.

As a result, we cannot serve a large number of customers with such requirements, and our business becomes dependent on several customers. What happens if these customers stop working with us? We will have nothing to pay wages, not to mention profit. Do you recognize the letter to Niyaz? It was not once when I worked in Moscow in one of the expensive studios.

With a large number of customers, the business will not be shaken if some of them do not pay or delay payments, as is often the case. And surprisingly, my experience shows that profitability, in both cases, is about the same.

But when the webmasters got the black belt, you can look at big budgets) But not necessarily. You can work in any segment where you are comfortable.

Here are 15 WebCanape tips for building a conveyor belt and learning how to make money in a highly competitive market. I am arranging in chronological order with which I came to them.

1. You will have to start competing at the expense of price, be prepared to lower prices to be the cheapest on the market. Have to hold out for at least a year.
2. Make a business plan. You will have to achieve the planned indicators at all costs. This is your promise to yourself. If you do not comply with an accuracy of 20% and do not see how to do this, you need to change the business model.
3. Find out people's expectations and formulate a business plan not only in accordance with your expectations, but also with the expectations of the team. If it seems unrealistic for you to meet people's expectations, change the team that will meet the expectations or think about how to rebuild the business plan.
4. There should always be more customers than you can handle. Is always. Only in this case will you be able to think about improving efficiency. Soon it will be a key advantage in your business. Let sales people flood you with customers. Do not refuse, but think what to do with the flow. Give them the freedom to compete at the expense of price, and think about performance and quality yourself. Learn to work with small budgets, then you can think about big ones.
5. Sell ​​only to "your" customers. If the client does not match your typical trend - refuse him, despite the heap of money offered. You cannot earn on it. You only delay your development for several months.
6. Always look for bottlenecks and start optimizing only with them. Only bottlenecks. Your bandwidth is equal to the bandwidth of the narrow link, and throughout the system.
7. Thoroughly regulate the work, introduce standards and constantly analyze the results.
8. Robots can do almost everything except creative, analytical work. Do not spare money for automation. Soon it will be your main advantage.
9. Grow employees from scratch. A person more quickly accepts your values ​​and requirements if he is just starting a professional career.
10. Make strategic decisions first, and then think in detail how to implement them. It is possible to achieve everything (or almost everything). If you act the other way around, then you will not move.
11. Formulate your strategy and explain it to the team. Not everyone is ready to understand why you are not raising prices, why you are working on a stream and what it gives.
12. Come up with a system that is more profitable to execute than to deceive. A person will always think how to deceive the system. Do not let this happen. For example, the more hours a programmer works, the greater the bonus. But at the same time, the more hours the programmer works, the less profitable the projects and the lower the bonus for managers. Managers will always control that programmers work more efficiently.
13. Listen to people who are constantly grumbling and can systematically tell you their vision of problems. These are people who can develop the company. Give them a chance to try it.
14. In the budget segment, they earn on the flow not on new customers, but on regular ones. Come up with subscription services and pay special attention to them.
15. Be able to explain to everyone that the conveyor and flow are good and do not affect quality in any way, except for the better.

These are intermediate conclusions that I have come to from my own experience.

But not everything is so fabulous. With stable operation of the conveyor on the stream, it is necessary to constantly maintain a high stable stream of orders, pump marketing, develop a school of programmers, managers, and others. We are covered by a new wave.

Vasily Churanov and WebCanape team