Our company today launched the official website of the Menifee Valley Incorporation Committee (MVIC). http://www.mvic.org

It marks the first time we built a website for a client.

We're not normally in the business of building websites for clients, rather, we build them for ourselves. We're in the publishing business after all, not the design and hosting business. But we saw a unique opportunity here.

For starters, MVIC is an organization that's been in the local newspapers around the south-west portion of Riverside County, CA. They used to have a website, and they're website used to get mentioned in the papers, as well as linked from several other websites focusing on local issues.

But in the past year, they're website went down. I don't have the specifics on why it went down, most likely because the website design company that built it and hosted it probably didn't receive a renewed contract from MVIC.

I got to know one of the chairmen of MVIC and recommended he get the website back online. I offered to help him out by designing a new website, getting it online, and even incorporating a blog on the homepage to help them generate some local interest. To make it sound even better, I offered to do all this for free. The only consideration was that I could promote our "Menifee 24/7" blog from their website.

I met with MVIC's committee and gave them a proposal, along with a mock-up of the website design. While I offered to do all this work for them for free, I'd still have to charge them for the domain name renewal, which was to expire in a couple of months. I made it clear to them that I'd build a "simple" website designed solely to provide necessary and useful information to the public. They agreed, and our company became their newest webmaster on the spot.

Building the new website was easy, considering I've built many over the past 10 years I've been in this business. The only challenge was getting the previous website design company to transfer the domain name to our registrar. They required a letter from MVIC authorizing them to do so. After that, I received great cooperation from the other design company.

The advantage for doing all this for free is mainly to boost traffic to our Menifee 24/7 site...

1. The Google Page Rank value that our Menifee 24/7 site stands to receive from this could be significant over the next several months, mainly because many other websites in our local area had linked to MVIC, and many still do.



2. The Menifee cityhood effort should generate interest in our community finally reaching a pinnacle in the next couple of years when a ballot initiative reaches voters. The amount of "trickle down" traffic into Menifee 24/7 could double or triple our current audience.



3. Creating a positive image with the members of MVIC should help our efforts to publish quality content on Menifee 24/7, providing us with more avenues for insider information.



4. Our company is located in Menifee, and I own a home in Menifee, and hence doing all this work for MVIC, pro-bono, is our way of giving something to the cityhood effort.

One thing I was very cautious about was creating more work for our company. That is, when you build a website for a client, you expect the client to call you regularly for changes and updates. However, when I met with the committee, I explained my rationale, that I wanted to design a website that would require very little of my time...

1. I made heavy use of CSS, opting to put much of the design elements into a linked stylesheet.



2. I kept the number of pages small, stressing my point that the free service I offered applied to a "simple" website only.



3. I incorporated a blog on the homepage of the website, and taught their Publicity Chairman how to use Blogger. This way the Chairman can post announcements, news, meetings, etc., and not require my time.

This perhaps opens up a new business strategy for other website and blog publishers, building, designing, and hosting websites for free, in exchange for self-promotion. The word "free" is very powerful, to small organizations on tight budgets.