Posted
November 14, 2008 02:24
by
David
Tags: open source, 2009 ideas, house plan pricing, q&a blog, built work gallery, new virtual tour, remodeling
Hello All,
Well, as the always pervasive Christmas decorations are showing up in retail stores, we felt it was time to release our plans for 2009. If you are reading this you have probably just received our 2009 survey newsletter. If so, thanks so much for being part of our community in 2008, and we look forward bettering our service in 2009. Per the survey newsletter, please see below for our current 2009 plans, and we look forward to hearing and reacting to your 2009 requests as well. FYI, this is a long post so be ready to read:
Open Source
We know you have heard a lot about this, but it is finally coming! In summation FreeGreen Open Source will just like Apple Apps Store for Green House Plans. As you may know the original plan for Open Source was to allow designers and Architects around the world to post their own designs to FreeGreen allowing you the user to download them for free. The Architect would get exposure and leads, and you our users would get a hugely expanded design set. To see if this would work we interviewed many of our Architect users. What we found was that some were willing to post free designs for notoriety, but many others (especially due to the economy) were not. To solve this we looked to our favorite company Apple. On the I-Phone you can download Apps. Some are for free, many cost money. It is up to you, "the market", to decide what is worth paying for. This is what Open Source will be. Architects and designers will be able to post their own green house plans to FreeGreen's Open Source section. They will then be able to name (and update) their own price for their house plans. All house plan posts will be reviewed by FreeGreen Staff, and we will not let any plan be posted that does not meet our own standards. Plans can be posted for free downloading or for a price, it is up to the designer. We feel that this is a great compromise (from our original idea) and will hugely expand our design selection for you the users. We of course will be continuing to develop Official (always free) FreeGreen designs as well which you will always have access to. The new message for the site will be: "Download Official FreeGreen House Plans and find Green Builders, or if you don't find anything you like there, Surf Open Source where Architects name thier own price."
For the Architects and designers they will also be able to upload a profile including contact info., experience, certifications, work portfolios, etc. Users will always see these portfolios associated with each design the designer has posted. We at FreeGreen fully encourage our users to directly contact Open Source Architects and designers for customizations and new commissions. This way users can work with original creators, and even find local designers for construction help. The cost for Architects and designers to post plans to "other" house plan sites is huge. Most house plan sites take around 60% of all sales revenue away from the Architect and make the Architect pay for all printing and fulfillment. FreeGreen costs to the Architect will be minimal (no where near the costs of other sites) allowing designers to keep almost all revenue generated, which in turn will create lower prices (if they don't post for free) for our users. We apologize for secretive nature of our pricing to Architects but it is game changing and we know the competitors read this blog (we will share details with our Architect house plan posters). As you would expect FreeGreen will also surf the Open Source network looking for new talent to contract with and help design our Official FreeGreen House Plans.
We feel that Open Source is going to be a great service allowing Green Design to become virally pervasive in the home building community. It is exactly in line with our singular mission of "Bringing Green Design to Everyone".
House Plan Pricing
At FreeGreen we are always willing to make mistakes and learn from them. What we have learned is that asking our FreeGreen Builders to Price Out Our House Plans on the site was a mistake. For many reasons (changing prices of materials, time it takes to do this, competitive issues) this did not work for our community. To solve this we will be implement two new ideas:
- We (FreeGreen) will release RS Means pricing data for all of our plans (for free of course) in 2009. RS Means is a cost estimating tool which uses national material and labor rates to help estimate the cost of building homes. This is the tool used (and charged for) by our competitors to "Cost Out" their plans. For all of our plans we will release detailed reports with national and regional estimated costs for our plans. It should be noted that RS Means is only a high level estimating tool. To get a "real" price you always need to work with a local builder.
- We will be adding new functionality which allows users to contact a builder to have a FreeGreen Plan priced for them. Users will have to give builders some data about themselves and thier future project to submit a request, but this is fair as pricing a plan is a lot of work. Through this new mechanism we will increase interactions between our FreeGreen Builders and our users, allowing connections to be made more easily.
Site Interaction
One thing we pride ourselves on at FreeGreen is building a community. In 2009 we are planning to add a number of features to build on this concept:
- Q&A Blog - This is a pretty unique idea (if we say so ourselves). The concept of "ask a builder" is amazingly popular on the web, TV, etc. We plan to implement this concept on the site in our own FreeGreen way. Our FreeGreen builders will get a button on their profile called "ask me a question". Users will be able to submit a form asking our builders various building\remodeling questions. These questions will go to the builders dashboard where they can answer them at their own pace. Once a question is answered it will be categorized and placed onto the FreeGreen Q&A Blog. Then users can search this blog for answers to their various questions, or comment on original Q&A sessions. This new section will become a repository of FreeGreen knowledge. We may also extend this capability to the Open Source network so that users can ask Architects and Designers, green design questions.
- Built Work Gallery - Here users will be able to post (and comment on) actual build photos of FreeGreen designs. This new section will become the home of picture surfing, idea generation, and inspiration.
Virtual Tour Re-make
Not to be secretive, but rather because it is too hard to describe, we will be brief. Early in 2009 you can expect a Virtual Tour re-make that will blow you away!
Remodeling
We know that we need to do a better job addressing the remodeling community (especially considering the economy). We are researching a number of options here, but it looks like our solution will come through partnerships. We are open to ideas here, so if you have them, bring 'em on.
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