Last week, Brightegg announced a private label CMS option. Last month I had the chance to speak with Brightegg CEO Jim Kieffer who provided some background on what Brightegg is. Below are my notes.
Brightegg provides templates and hosting to easily create a Web site. It appears to target small businesses where the owner isn’t ready to hire a Web developer and/or designer but is looking for a cookie-cutter approach and a few clicks and they are live online.
Jim noted that they are building a strong designer community by allowing designers to earn a revenue share on any of the “premier” themes purchased on Brightegg. The share is 50/50 and there are free designs to select from as well. If you select a premier theme, you can select exclusivity as well. The exclusive custom themes start at $699 with non-exclusive starting at $199.
They launched the service in January 2008 and so far they have 100 customers in the trial period with ~10 paying customers. They are marketing the service using Google AdWords and a lot of local networking to get the ball rolling. The app is built using PHP and Cake.
When we ended the interview Jim said that, “Brightegg is perfect for people who want custom designs but don’t want to manage it.”
To be honest there are a million Web theme sites where you can buy a theme for a few dollars. Typically the themes are used on so many sites that you can always tell when the site is from a cheap, packaged theme. What I like about Brightegg is that they are offering something that doesn’t look like a typical theme and are also offering the backend support.
I still believe that nearly all businesses should hire a consultant to help on the strategy side no matter how the design and development is handled.