The choice is clear for out-of-work journalists: pay £2,750 or… less than £100

Even employing me as a freelancer, £2,750 would get you not only a WordPress installation bolstered by a bunch of security features to tighten up the out-of-the-box setup, but a completely custom theme designed by a professional web designer and a good chunk of custom development work.

Having taken a look at euvue.co.uk it looks very simple and something I’d probably charge less than £500 for. Having said that, the exact same site could be placed on my Journal Local platform (also built on WordPress) for a small monthly fee which wouldn’t even approach £500 over 12 months.

So what are Super Local Sites charging for?

The sales page mentions training. That would sound good, if it weren’t for a system that, once you get clicking around, is very easy to get used to and even if you struggle there are a wealth of tutorials, including videos, on the web for free.

I still can’t figure out where that £2,750 is going…. maybe into revenue generation tools?

“Unlock your earning potential with the built-in advertising management system, including sliding banner, 4×4 blocks and classified ads with full AdSense compatibility (Google advertising). You could expect to pay thousands for this unique system however we have taken a sensible approach to pricing that won’t break the bank!” (my highlighting)

Let’s just discredit one thing for a start: no one in their right mind will consider Google AdSense to be a credible revenue generation tool for a sustainable web site. I’d love to know what’s unique about the ability to use WordPress’ built-in Text widget to paste Google AdSense code into your sidebar (here’s a free online tutorial showing you how in 9 steps), or even one of the many advertising plugins already available. I wonder which classifieds plugin they’ve installed (that takes less than a minute to do, by the way, thanks to WordPress’ built-in plugin search and installer).

No, I’m still stumped. Once you get past the features that are standard in WordPress anyway Super Local Sites appears to be charging for something that could easily be created in a day without hardly spending a penny.

I actually find it offensive that anyone can charge that amount for something so simple and that’s built mostly on freely available tools and resources. The fact they’re charging £2,750 to out-of-work journalists is even worse – my fear is that many journalists taking the risky plunge into entrepreneurship will get burned by the unnecessarily high overheads and fail in their first year.