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A Problem with Print

The current business model for the print design industry has a problem. And I have no idea how to solve it.

The print design business is based off customized, one-off pieces of work that have no use outside of it’s intended purpose of promotion the message of the client. 

A designer must charge a high price for such work because that’s all the money they’re ever going to get for pouring out their knowledge and experience onto a piece of work that will go on to make money for someone else. The only hope for potential repeat business is if the client wants another highly customized piece to be designed for another purpose.

So, what can be done? Let’s look a a similar industry and how they’ve overcome this same issue. The web design industry aligned itself early on with an extremely familiar method of payment. Folks like things that are familiar because they are comfortable. The method of which I speak is of course, the subscription based payment method.

Subscription based payments are nothing new. They’ve been around since municipalities started charging monthly fees for water and trash pick-up services. They’ve been around since power companies charged monthly fees for running electricity to your home. They’ve been around since cable companies start pumping out premium channels to your TV and so on.

What’s great about this particular business model (for web designers) is it’s deceptively low monthly price of just $49.99 a month. This low payment buys you the services of a professional web designer who will personally update and maintain your companies website as well as set up your professional email address and offer free tech support for the life of your contract.

Subscription based payments are repeat business (steady bursts of monthly income) that the service providers don’t need to hunt down, pray/beg for.

What’s also interesting is that folks never stop to think about the price they’re actually paying for this kind of service because they never plan how long they’re going to be in business. If their business fails, they may last a year and struggle for one more before they close the doors. In which case they will have spent $1,199.76 on their web site design and service. But what if they’re successful? What if they’re open for 20 years? See how the cost of service follows the business throughout it’s life span?

This is great news for web designers, not so much for print designers. Folks won’t want to rent their professional customized logo. They want to buy it outright, right then and there. But, why? I blame it on years of marketplace conditioning. But that’s okay, it’s simply proof that conditioning works. Something designers have known since the time of cave drawings.

So where does that leave the state of the print design business. I’m not sure. I’m stuck there too. Perhaps print designers will not longer charge for the pieces they create and instead charge a small monthly fee over a defined amount of time to create custom design pieces of work that are attached to service agreements billed at a lower rate ad infinitum. Thus creating a way for print designers to continue to pay their mortgage, heath care, insurance, vehicle maintenance, light and cable bills. Maybe even have a little something left over for groceries :)

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please post your helpful comments and let me know what you think. Thanks for reading, and thank you for your time.

Posted via email from Eye Say • The Web Log

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