I am sorry… I couldn’t help myself when I saw this on Freelancer.com.

Screen Shot 2014-05-01 at 11.15.05

I assumed the project budget must be an error…. 250M-750M must be what he meant, so I put in a provisional bid of $277,777,777 although I would need to get the other shareholders to agree before I started the work…

If it was indeed a budget of $250, I have some questions for “Deadovation” which I think is the handle for the guy that wants it built.

  • Is the power supply for computers like these a chargeable extra? That picture was posted in 2010 by the way… we have grown quite a bit since then.
  • In an average day, Twitter says there are 500,000 million Tweets. In the same 24 hour period, Majestic typically crawls FOUR TIMES as many web pages and then does a calculation on about 700 billion pages. Do I need to also build the crawlers and the data centers for the distributed crawlers for $250 or is that a chargeable extra?
  • So far, Majestic has crawled 53,110,348,345 MB of data. Which hard drive would he suggest I put the data on when I build it for him? How would he like the data delivered? Container lorry?
  • Is this project asking me to copy another project, or are the “few extra bells and whistles” going to be enough to stop the lawyers?
  • Is PHP the right software language for interrogating a data set of this size?

If you are going to build something on the Internet, I have two honest to god bits of advice. The first is to innovate, not replicate. The second is to understand at least the basics of the technical challenge you hope to overcome.

In the meantime – if you want the REAL THING, it costs from £30/$50 a month per user. I think that is probably the wiser option.

Categories: Commentary

Dixon Jones

An award-winning Search and Internet Marketer. Search Personality of the year Lifetime achievement award Outstanding technology individual of the year International public speaker for 20 years in the field of SEO and Internet Marketing, including: Pubcon; Search Engine Strategies (SMX); Brighton SEO; Ungagged; Search Leeds; State of Search; RIMC and many more.

32 Comments

Gordon Campbell · 1st May 2014 at 11:36 am

I’d quite like a ripoff of Google, budget is £1000.

Geoff Jackson · 1st May 2014 at 11:36 am

I’ve seen worse, once someone wanted a clone of eBay for $500. There are many other ‘as ridiculous’ jobs on these low quality freelancing websites I’ve come across before.

The worrying thing is, plenty of “freelancers” will bid on this, one will even win the job. Suffice to say, Majestic hasn’t got anything to worry about of course.

Dean Cruddace · 1st May 2014 at 12:29 pm

Can I have a replica of Google+ please?

After alcohol & utility bills I am left with £7.38p/month, will that cover it?

Great response Dixon.

jamesfx2 · 1st May 2014 at 12:58 pm

You want a replica of eBay? AuctionPress, WP-Auction. You want a replica of Google+? BuddyPress and tons of other WordPress themes/plugins.

Are they any good? You’d have to pay a severe amount of money to get anything better and can be modified/enriched. But they’re okay.

I wanted to setup a dating site for SEOs for April Fools but no-one fancied spending $55 on Sweet Date.

Sadly there is no WordPress theme that replicates either Majestic or Google.

    admin · 1st May 2014 at 1:29 pm

    Hehe. An SEO Dating site! Do it… do it now James! We can match buyer’s expectations with SEO ability! Then we can report any match below a quality threshold to Google 🙂

Peter Nikolow · 1st May 2014 at 1:24 pm

Typical bid for Freelancer.com site.

I saw before few years ago quote for Yahoo.com (whole site and all services for $1000) and i can’t be impressed anymore.

    admin · 1st May 2014 at 1:27 pm

    Haha 🙂
    That’s funny Peter. Now I see it, one of my dev guys says it is not the first time someone has asked for a clone of us. I figure that May Day is a big Spring Fever festival in many parts of the world. That must have been what started it 🙂

admin · 2nd May 2014 at 7:27 am

Update: The project is cancelled. Probably wise.

Robert · 6th May 2014 at 3:29 pm

Forget about the budget, see the delivery time! 10h hours? really? Someone actually believes they can do it in 10 hours? lol!

Jay Patel · 12th May 2014 at 7:25 am

Glad to see the project is cancelled. You may often find such silly projects on elance and other freelancer platform. In fact, I also posted a stupid project like this (a small one though) and quickly realized that it’s impossible to get the project done at such a low price.
Surprisingly, many people bid for the project. #sarcasm

Atamyrat Hangeldiyev · 29th May 2014 at 8:03 pm

Hahaha, funny post dear Dixon 😀

Alex Zacharov · 6th March 2015 at 1:23 am

that is indeed hilarious!

KafeinCo · 27th May 2015 at 3:58 pm

Hehehe ! (Y)

Hasan Günal · 29th May 2015 at 5:28 am

haha very good :d

Mustafa · 28th June 2015 at 9:29 pm

Hahaha 🙂 Funny.

Plan A Link Web Design · 24th July 2015 at 8:18 pm

Haha this is very funny post. It goes to show the level that people mis understand when it comes to creating websites! Keep up the good work 🙂

Berat BAK · 21st August 2015 at 1:08 pm

hahahaha 😀 if you sell this script to 250 or 750$ i want this 8)

come on thats laugh 🙂

Seo Danismani · 3rd October 2015 at 12:59 pm

Thanks for article dixon, we love you.

seo paketleri · 8th November 2015 at 3:23 pm

thanks for this great article 🙂

vodafone fiber internet · 15th December 2015 at 11:00 am

hahah very good 😀

resim kursu · 31st December 2015 at 4:14 pm

happy 😀

hafif beton · 12th February 2016 at 10:17 am

thanks 🙂

Kollu sandalyeler · 12th February 2016 at 10:18 am

beatiful verry good

Skrotpræmie · 10th March 2016 at 12:09 am

that is indeed hilarious!

Skrotpræmie · 10th March 2016 at 12:10 am

thanks for this great article 🙂

instagram takipçi kasma · 18th April 2016 at 11:41 am

Really funny thanks for share 🙂

Matbaa Ankara · 10th May 2016 at 12:02 pm

Hahahaha 750$ its really ? 😀

Katalog Bask? · 10th May 2016 at 12:03 pm

This great. Because i can buy this script 😀

Matbaa · 10th June 2016 at 10:28 am

Hahaha, funny post thank 🙂

indirimx · 6th September 2016 at 10:34 pm

thanks for this great article

seo paketleri · 27th August 2017 at 6:48 pm

thank you great share

Link Love - April 2014 · 7th September 2015 at 1:01 pm

[…] Last of all lets finish on a funny… […]

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