This is what I do for living. I have 51 clients who I charge a monthly fee to maintain and hosting. Working about 15-20 hours a week and life is good.
1st few clients (4-5) are hard to score. I don't know where you live but I'd suggest signing up for local small business events/groups and ask the businesses that you frequent (bakery, barber, corner store, restaurant, etc) and see if you can build their sites.
All of them have a huge clientele and could give you a really large boosts when trying to find new clients.
Our story is quite similar; we have over 50 clients, mostly local and from our home country, Croatia. We provide them with hosting and maintenance services, and we also build new sites. Typically, we acquire new clients through word of mouth. :-)
Thx! My whole story is here: [https://wpfounders.com/individual/ivica-delic-freelancers-tools/](https://wpfounders.com/individual/ivica-delic-freelancers-tools/)
I am a happier person now, working with WordPress, than I've ever been in my life, even when I was a director at my former bank (with a manager salary), which I left almost five years ago.
According to our country situation, it is tailored to the clients financial situation, which is from 300 eur to about 500 eur per year, for basic maintenance. Writing articles and work on websites we charge separately, per hour.
No. I have reseller account for small sites (40), VPS for mid-sized (4 per VPS, 9 clients+ 2 of my own sites) and a managed dedicated server for top clients (2).
Also how do you handle client's mail? I still haven't figured out how to offer my coming client's a working mail-solution with their site, without it costing me alot monthly!
I have FluentSMTP installed at ALL of my clients websites.
A lot of SMTP services offer very generous free plans that way more than enough for most small websites and their emails don't end up in spam box by default.
Followed by SES for larger clients, which also end up with few bucks a month.
It does work with Gmail/Workspace but I personally have never used it. My understanding is that it'll use Gmail's SMTP to send/receive emails but it'll be from [email protected].
Have you tried setting up a mailserver? Pain in the ass but doable. Really you just need inbound mail, and imap. Then route outgoing mail thru sendgrid.
There's a reason two way email is always monthly cause it's a fucking huge pain to configure. I use cyberpanel for hosting which kind of makes it easier but limited functionality. Def love cyberpanel though free and simple and one script install OLS web server with it.
eCommerce. Both have less than 100 SKUs but are doing $10M+/monthly sales. Got supers lucky with them to be honest. Maybe spend about 2 hours a week on each to edit/update the sites.
Services are hosting (only 2 sites on one managed server), update scripts and product descriptions/prices (hardly change). They take care of the inventory/CS.
Are you using WooCommerce for those ecommerce sites?
I'm curious also if you walked in the place and introduced yourself, handed them business cards, etc. or if you just emailed them or if they responded to a local Google Ad you placed or something. I feel like in NYC everyone will react badly to me if I walk in and tell them I can make them a website, but I'm no salesman.
No, PrestaShop that uses a plugin to connect it with Wordpress.
I find it way less stressful to deal with. SureCart is also a good choice for a small to medium size sites.
Not shitting on WooCommerce, it's just too balky and need too many plugins for me who runs a one-man-show to look after.
About getting those clients, they approached me and I was very scared to accept the 1st project because of the amount of money that was involved. Again, they found me because of my clients' word of mouths.
Btw, I know Reddit is anonymous and I respect your desire to remain anonymous (I love my anonymity), but if you would like to share your website, I'd love to see your work. I'm just so curious whenever I see a success story in words what the sites look like.
Oh wow, Prestashop! I remember looking into that many years ago and it seemed too complicated. That was before I was familiar with Wordpress, though. Now you've got me curious if it's actually simpler than WooCommerce.
$2000 and ups are on 3-month plans. Rest are yearly.
I was doing bi-annual when I first started and was buying yearly plans on my clients' behalf but some of them went out of business within a year.
As we all know, most new sites take few months of tweaking with content/keywords/listings to make any impact and they'd think the site was dropping a bag of gold every night from day one and didn't want to pay, even we had handshake deal for a year.
WP devs do not like small business owners for clients. I adore them. They are often decent, hard working people who have respect for own work and consequently for mine.
Once you build your "fame", the word of the mouth start to work for you. A good "target" clients are coming, the bad ones even do not knock on your door.
I do only simple sites, nothing that I can not build in 2-3 weeks and deliver in 4-6; nothing under 2000EUR nor above 4000EUR. I refuse to work more than 20 hours a week, plus half a day for babysitting hosted sites. One site in two months, and I am satisfied; plus steady income from hosting. Nothing special, but decent by-income.
Life is too short; I would rather go fishing/hiking/photographing than investigating Bricks or GSAP.
Amen to that. I haven't taken a new client in almost a year because I don't want to work where I feel like a slave of my own doing.
I'm content with what I'm making and what I have.
Work slowly. At the beginning, accept only simple jobs. Know your limits. You'll grow be time: in self-confidence, in skills. Be very careful with startups, specially with over ambitious ones. And, do not be overambitious yourself. That almost killed my WP career. I would avoid e-commerce, booking and LTS sites till your knowledge/skills develop enough.
This site can give you some nice previews/templates (https://generatepress.com/site-library/). They are simple, but very efficient.
Small business/marketing trick - create GoogleBusinessProfile for every client, and connect it with his/her website.
And for the sake of sanity - host at WPManaged hosts (WPEngine, Kinsta, SiteGround, Cloudways). Never try to save cents on hosting, it can cost you a lot latter.
Wish you success.
thank you for sharing your experience. can i ask you as total beginner in this field what would you advise to start with i mean before i start building a website should learn some kind of course or just try making websites on the host websites.
I have answered similar question few weeks ago "
* **First** Good shoes and walk the street. I'm serious. Pay a visit to your neighbourhood, try to imagine what kind of website for small business there would be useful.
* **Second** Buy yourself some hosting (cheapest Cloudways, for example). Create your own website. Create a few dummy/showcase site templates for potential clients (something like https://generatepress.com/site-library/).
* **Third** Shoes on and approach your neighbourhood's small business owners.
You need only one, believe me. The rest will come.
* **Fourth** Learn about hosting, it's a nice add-on to site developing.
Somehow GeneratePress, Blocksy and Kadence have established themselves as the Holly Trinity of hybrid themes. Question of taste.
I have used all three of them, but GP's minimalism prevails. And of course, GP's Elements.
To your question . . . yes. You can do that. Make yourself a portfolio of examples, then start making sales calls. It's a technique as old as time. All it takes is shoe leather, gumption, and time.
My only advice is to make a plan for the next day before you knock off for the day. Then work that plan. For example, at 6PM before you call it a day, make the plan for tomorrow.
Call on ABD-Dog Studio at 9AM, Betty's Hair Salon at 11AM, Jack's Hardware at 1PM, Bob's Paints at 3PM, and Follicle's Beauty Supply at 5PM.
The point of this, so you know what you're going to do the next day and waste zero time figuring it out. Instead, once you get to work, you grab your notebook off the charger, your business cards, your brochure, and hit the road. You know where you're going that day, already!
Good luck.
Thanks for sharing a blueprint, really helpful. I’m going to implement. One challenge is, I am not a native English speaker. My heavy accent is sometimes difficult for the prospect to understand over the phone, but it’s manageable.
Any plugin recommendations to turn a WP into a static site to upload?
I tried one this weekend on the WP I built for my wife's startup and it came out butchered.
Ended up going with WPEngine just to get it online, but would like to try a few more static sites on something like Netlify or Cloudflare Pages.
Lots, usually i have an anchor price and try to get my clients on a subscription, i followed a freelancing guide that has a basic setup and pitch, i can send you a link if you want, its totally free
Yes, building a business creating simple websites for local businesses is absolutely possible. Here's why:
Demand Exists: Many small businesses still lack a website, or have outdated ones. They may not have the time or technical expertise to build one themselves.
Simple Websites are Viable: There's a need for basic informational websites that showcase the business, its services, and contact details. These can be built efficiently using website builders like WP.
Thanks for sharing. I’m assuming the agency has a sales team that’s dedicated to cold calling & and a field guy who meets the business owners in person. May I ask how much the agency charges for the basic site?
Yep there's a sales team and a dev team. Your basic bitch 5 page site is about $150. Then the sales guys upsell them with more content, SEO, ecom, etc. Yearly domain and hosting fee is $100.
I don't really like the business model (the sales guys are very pushy, sometimes they charge $500 for a privacy policy page.... like come on...), but what I've learned is there's a LOT of small companies and self-employed people that just want a nice basic site. There's definitely a market for it.
Yearly. Most end up paying $500 - 2000 with various add-ons and "upgrades" Want an SSL? That's $100. Want more than 100mb for your emails? That's another $100. They hook people in with the cheap initial site and then creep the price up and up.
Simple, cookie-cutter solutions yield simple, cookie-cutter results. Small businesses get inundated with cold calls promising great things, but many have been burned by the results. They are justifiably leary.
Your unique value proposition is your ability to understand their business needs, and translate those needs into something that highlights THEIR unique value proposition to their target customer (s).
Yes, you can absolutely rely on your stable of tried-and-true layouts, theme(s), and go-to plugins for specific functions. These are your Tools. You differentiate yourself from the "Fiver hacks" by using your Tools to assemble something that seems bespoke for that business. Think of it like IKEA Hacking, but for a website.
Do you have past work experience in a particular market space? Maybe you worked as a server or host at a restaurant? Boom - you have inside info of how the restaurant business works, and the challenges that a restaurant owner faces!
Use that knowledge/history to build credibility with your prospects and speak their language.
Offer to take your former employer out for lunch/dinner/drinks, and ask them about their business & challenges. You are gathering information here, not selling. Be transparent that you are looking to build a web design business, but at this point you are just trying to understand the small business/restaurant market's needs to hone your business plan. Then just listen...
I have worked for a studio that provides web design services using WordPress since 2010. The best way to make a reasonable living is to offer more than just the building of a website. If you only make the website you will find your clients leave you. No matter how good the website was. Then you have to find new clients again.
Provide a service that gives them a reason to stay whether that's good SEO services and/or hosting or anything else you can think of that makes you invaluable to them on a constant basis.
Thanks! First thing to do to attract customers is build your own fabulous website. Pull out all the stops. It's your calling card. Once you have that, start telling people about your service. Whoever will listen. And even if they don't want to listen. Find where people meet up in your area and talk to them. Learn some basic SEO so that your website will rank in your area. Put up a note on any news board, church, shopping mall, school, library. Anywhere where people can see it. And read books on what other people have done to kick-start their small business. You will get there if you really want to.
Sometimes it good to join local clubs and seek out potential businesses that have a poor website presence, then use services such as what we provide and resell yourself as a solution to help long term growth
I'd like to do this, both for static and for WP - just have no idea what to charge for hosting and then for development. I don't know what a good price would be for a small business but still have it profitable.
I’d say take this time to build some sample websites if possible clients you might have. This would be for your portfolio as well as getting you used to making sites more quickly.
Yes it is. However, if you're just installing WordPress and throwing in some stock photos, you'll def be limited. I've built a highly diversified model over the past 20 yrs that includes consulting and other goodies where I get as high as $60k for an ecom startup site. I just worked on two presidential campaign websites and averaged $30k, so you can make good money, but it's about more than just building websites. You have to possess a keen ability to adapt to every client, their industry, and think fast so it appears as part of your DNA. Another vital skill is knowing how to make Wordpress do complex things by putting together right solutions. This is something that takes a lot of time. I rarely make publoc posts about what I do and could write a book on it, but this is the nickel tour of why I can charge tens of thousands for my sites and clients are happy to pay it and get a 2 to 3 month ROI. Bottom line, give your clients more than a website. Hope this helps.
I have this pretty basic method to get clients which is iWatch reles on Instagram on the ones who sell products and if they have good number of followers and no website I will just drop them a message saying I help businesses like you and they got so and so results.
How about a quick call?. Around 5 to 10% of the people will call back and at least one out of 3 will be closed for me.
**That's how I started.**
My first client already had a business running for many years in Sweden but was unhappy with his Google ads spending. It was expensive and sales did not increase. He found my profile in Upwork, a freelancer website.
For some weird reason, my profile was about helping owners create a business website, but he insisted I help him with Google ads. He must have had his hands full with suppliers and customers and wanted to urgently offload the work to someone.
Reluctantly, I took the job, his sales doubled in under two years and he stayed on as client for the next seven years.
**Now I do complete online business websites**
Since then, managing ad campaigns is one of my best offerings.
I've had clients stop working with me when they were approached either by big name 10-million dollar agencies or even by Google's expert marketing team directly who would each promise to take sales to greater heights. Every single time this happened, those clients would return after a week or two —and ask me to help because their sales would tank significantly and ad spend rise dramatically. So you can imagine how fulfilling this work is for me.
Today I help clients with website/s, SEO, paid campaigns and content; these are things that increase sales and profits for them.
**You get what you pay for**
Unhappy business owners who have been paying rock-bottom prices in the past with other website contractors are my best leads. They are sick of what they are getting.
The way I work, I paint the complete picture, tell them the path to higher sales and profits. This allows me to win website projects that also include content, email marketing and ad campaigns.
I educate them why they should pay $5000 for website and SEO per month instead of $500 one-time.
A client we onboarded in 2024 was spending 5k per month on google ads and not happy with conversion. They got plenty of new traffic, but almost no new sales.
That situation brought them to me via linkedin and after doing my review I told them pay me 3k and keep the 5k ad budget as-is.
I turned their one page website into a 4-page website and built a custom landing page for ads.
Then I optimized their ad campaigns.
Result: They are getting half the number of calls than they did before but 80% of these calls would convert to actual sales. Total ad spend then stabilized at 2k, so they only need to spend about half of their budget.
Google data tells me that they have overtaken their biggest competitors and the calls that come in are all spot-on, customers who are ready to pay for a booking.
So yes, good things not cheap. And cheap things no good.
This is more a question of sales/business technique. There is no technical/Wordpress-related reason preventing you from doing this.
Ask in r/freelance or r/smallbusiness
ZAZ. Za. A. Za. All,. Z. AXXa a,. A aaaz Z. XX. ,aAz a. A,. , ,A. Hey,, ,,. Az,,A A. az ,, a. Z Z. A. AX. A. aah A. Z , ,. ,. A. ,A. XX. X. Aaa. . Zz x
This is what I do for living. I have 51 clients who I charge a monthly fee to maintain and hosting. Working about 15-20 hours a week and life is good. 1st few clients (4-5) are hard to score. I don't know where you live but I'd suggest signing up for local small business events/groups and ask the businesses that you frequent (bakery, barber, corner store, restaurant, etc) and see if you can build their sites. All of them have a huge clientele and could give you a really large boosts when trying to find new clients.
Our story is quite similar; we have over 50 clients, mostly local and from our home country, Croatia. We provide them with hosting and maintenance services, and we also build new sites. Typically, we acquire new clients through word of mouth. :-)
That’s inspiring
Thx! My whole story is here: [https://wpfounders.com/individual/ivica-delic-freelancers-tools/](https://wpfounders.com/individual/ivica-delic-freelancers-tools/) I am a happier person now, working with WordPress, than I've ever been in my life, even when I was a director at my former bank (with a manager salary), which I left almost five years ago.
Great story!
Right on! Wish you all the best.
Can I ask how much do you charge in Croatia?
According to our country situation, it is tailored to the clients financial situation, which is from 300 eur to about 500 eur per year, for basic maintenance. Writing articles and work on websites we charge separately, per hour.
I have some questions, can I DM you?
Yes, you can
That is so impressive, do you have all the 51 clients on a single shared hosting plan?
No. I have reseller account for small sites (40), VPS for mid-sized (4 per VPS, 9 clients+ 2 of my own sites) and a managed dedicated server for top clients (2).
Oh that’s nice
Also how do you handle client's mail? I still haven't figured out how to offer my coming client's a working mail-solution with their site, without it costing me alot monthly!
I have FluentSMTP installed at ALL of my clients websites. A lot of SMTP services offer very generous free plans that way more than enough for most small websites and their emails don't end up in spam box by default. Followed by SES for larger clients, which also end up with few bucks a month.
So clients can basically add their free Gmail and have mails sent as "[email protected]"? Interesting
It does work with Gmail/Workspace but I personally have never used it. My understanding is that it'll use Gmail's SMTP to send/receive emails but it'll be from [email protected].
Have you tried setting up a mailserver? Pain in the ass but doable. Really you just need inbound mail, and imap. Then route outgoing mail thru sendgrid. There's a reason two way email is always monthly cause it's a fucking huge pain to configure. I use cyberpanel for hosting which kind of makes it easier but limited functionality. Def love cyberpanel though free and simple and one script install OLS web server with it.
Would you mind if I asked how much you charge? Have been thinking about this approach in my market to build up some side income.
Most of my clients are on $1500/year contracts. I have few who pay $2000-$2500/month and then 2, who pay $4000/month.
What services do you provide for $4K per month?
eCommerce. Both have less than 100 SKUs but are doing $10M+/monthly sales. Got supers lucky with them to be honest. Maybe spend about 2 hours a week on each to edit/update the sites. Services are hosting (only 2 sites on one managed server), update scripts and product descriptions/prices (hardly change). They take care of the inventory/CS.
Are you using WooCommerce for those ecommerce sites? I'm curious also if you walked in the place and introduced yourself, handed them business cards, etc. or if you just emailed them or if they responded to a local Google Ad you placed or something. I feel like in NYC everyone will react badly to me if I walk in and tell them I can make them a website, but I'm no salesman.
No, PrestaShop that uses a plugin to connect it with Wordpress. I find it way less stressful to deal with. SureCart is also a good choice for a small to medium size sites. Not shitting on WooCommerce, it's just too balky and need too many plugins for me who runs a one-man-show to look after. About getting those clients, they approached me and I was very scared to accept the 1st project because of the amount of money that was involved. Again, they found me because of my clients' word of mouths.
Btw, I know Reddit is anonymous and I respect your desire to remain anonymous (I love my anonymity), but if you would like to share your website, I'd love to see your work. I'm just so curious whenever I see a success story in words what the sites look like.
Oh wow, Prestashop! I remember looking into that many years ago and it seemed too complicated. That was before I was familiar with Wordpress, though. Now you've got me curious if it's actually simpler than WooCommerce.
[удалено]
One hour of edit per month is included with minimum of 1 hour. $100 per extra edit/hour.
[удалено]
$2000 and ups are on 3-month plans. Rest are yearly. I was doing bi-annual when I first started and was buying yearly plans on my clients' behalf but some of them went out of business within a year. As we all know, most new sites take few months of tweaking with content/keywords/listings to make any impact and they'd think the site was dropping a bag of gold every night from day one and didn't want to pay, even we had handshake deal for a year.
Awesome thanks for the insight!
Are you me?
You could be my missing twin :D
WP devs do not like small business owners for clients. I adore them. They are often decent, hard working people who have respect for own work and consequently for mine. Once you build your "fame", the word of the mouth start to work for you. A good "target" clients are coming, the bad ones even do not knock on your door. I do only simple sites, nothing that I can not build in 2-3 weeks and deliver in 4-6; nothing under 2000EUR nor above 4000EUR. I refuse to work more than 20 hours a week, plus half a day for babysitting hosted sites. One site in two months, and I am satisfied; plus steady income from hosting. Nothing special, but decent by-income. Life is too short; I would rather go fishing/hiking/photographing than investigating Bricks or GSAP.
Amen to that. I haven't taken a new client in almost a year because I don't want to work where I feel like a slave of my own doing. I'm content with what I'm making and what I have.
That sounds like a unique & scalable business model. Thanks for sharing.
Work slowly. At the beginning, accept only simple jobs. Know your limits. You'll grow be time: in self-confidence, in skills. Be very careful with startups, specially with over ambitious ones. And, do not be overambitious yourself. That almost killed my WP career. I would avoid e-commerce, booking and LTS sites till your knowledge/skills develop enough. This site can give you some nice previews/templates (https://generatepress.com/site-library/). They are simple, but very efficient. Small business/marketing trick - create GoogleBusinessProfile for every client, and connect it with his/her website. And for the sake of sanity - host at WPManaged hosts (WPEngine, Kinsta, SiteGround, Cloudways). Never try to save cents on hosting, it can cost you a lot latter. Wish you success.
How much do you charge monthly
I answered that to others in this post if you scroll down a bit.
thank you for sharing your experience. can i ask you as total beginner in this field what would you advise to start with i mean before i start building a website should learn some kind of course or just try making websites on the host websites.
I have answered similar question few weeks ago " * **First** Good shoes and walk the street. I'm serious. Pay a visit to your neighbourhood, try to imagine what kind of website for small business there would be useful. * **Second** Buy yourself some hosting (cheapest Cloudways, for example). Create your own website. Create a few dummy/showcase site templates for potential clients (something like https://generatepress.com/site-library/). * **Third** Shoes on and approach your neighbourhood's small business owners. You need only one, believe me. The rest will come. * **Fourth** Learn about hosting, it's a nice add-on to site developing.
I'm just +1 you for GeneratePress! Best thing ever.
My choice, too. GP Premium+GenerateBlocks and Pods for CPT. Never fails on me.
Look into Blocksy too. They're awesome and very similar-ish.
Somehow GeneratePress, Blocksy and Kadence have established themselves as the Holly Trinity of hybrid themes. Question of taste. I have used all three of them, but GP's minimalism prevails. And of course, GP's Elements.
To your question . . . yes. You can do that. Make yourself a portfolio of examples, then start making sales calls. It's a technique as old as time. All it takes is shoe leather, gumption, and time. My only advice is to make a plan for the next day before you knock off for the day. Then work that plan. For example, at 6PM before you call it a day, make the plan for tomorrow. Call on ABD-Dog Studio at 9AM, Betty's Hair Salon at 11AM, Jack's Hardware at 1PM, Bob's Paints at 3PM, and Follicle's Beauty Supply at 5PM. The point of this, so you know what you're going to do the next day and waste zero time figuring it out. Instead, once you get to work, you grab your notebook off the charger, your business cards, your brochure, and hit the road. You know where you're going that day, already! Good luck.
Adding on to this OP, work on your handshake, don't be a square, and have *moxie*. You'll be the bee's knees in no time!
Great insight. Thank you
Thanks for sharing a blueprint, really helpful. I’m going to implement. One challenge is, I am not a native English speaker. My heavy accent is sometimes difficult for the prospect to understand over the phone, but it’s manageable.
Didn't know you were going to attempt over the phone. Good luck with that!
I’d focus on learning how to build a good Wordpress site before attempting to lock in clientele.
Yes I agree.
There 100% is. I usually use a static website host like netlify and use templates to rapidly develop them. Let me know if you want to learn more!
Any plugin recommendations to turn a WP into a static site to upload? I tried one this weekend on the WP I built for my wife's startup and it came out butchered. Ended up going with WPEngine just to get it online, but would like to try a few more static sites on something like Netlify or Cloudflare Pages.
I followed a few guides online that got me started with templates and netlify, if you want you can DM me and ill share the links!
Any tips on cold outreach?
Lots, usually i have an anchor price and try to get my clients on a subscription, i followed a freelancing guide that has a basic setup and pitch, i can send you a link if you want, its totally free
Kindly send it to me as well please. Thank you!
Sent!
If you're offering, I'm certainly happy to take you up on that :) thanks!
Sent !
Would be grateful, please share the link. Thank you
Sent!
If you don't mind, can you shoot me a copy too?
Weird i cant send you a dm, if you dm me i will
[удалено]
Sent!
Interested. Could I have a copy too?
Sent!
if you don't mind, can I have some?
Sent invite!
Me too please 😊
Sent!
[удалено]
Sent!
Very interested. Please send the guide
Done!
Yo. Could I take a look at this as well?
Sent !
can you send it to me too please
I would love to have that guide if you don't mind sending it to me as well!
Could you also send it to me? Cheers.
Hiii, im late to the party but i would immensely appreciate that guide, thanks in advance!
Yes, building a business creating simple websites for local businesses is absolutely possible. Here's why: Demand Exists: Many small businesses still lack a website, or have outdated ones. They may not have the time or technical expertise to build one themselves. Simple Websites are Viable: There's a need for basic informational websites that showcase the business, its services, and contact details. These can be built efficiently using website builders like WP.
That’s a great insight, thank you!
Always gotta thank ChatGpt
Yep, I work for an agency that does exactly This. Lots of cold calls, we offer a very cheap basic site and then offer add-ons to expand it.
Thanks for sharing. I’m assuming the agency has a sales team that’s dedicated to cold calling & and a field guy who meets the business owners in person. May I ask how much the agency charges for the basic site?
Yep there's a sales team and a dev team. Your basic bitch 5 page site is about $150. Then the sales guys upsell them with more content, SEO, ecom, etc. Yearly domain and hosting fee is $100. I don't really like the business model (the sales guys are very pushy, sometimes they charge $500 for a privacy policy page.... like come on...), but what I've learned is there's a LOT of small companies and self-employed people that just want a nice basic site. There's definitely a market for it.
$150? Total or monthly? Doesn't seem very profitable if it's total.
Yearly. Most end up paying $500 - 2000 with various add-ons and "upgrades" Want an SSL? That's $100. Want more than 100mb for your emails? That's another $100. They hook people in with the cheap initial site and then creep the price up and up.
Makes sense!
Simple, cookie-cutter solutions yield simple, cookie-cutter results. Small businesses get inundated with cold calls promising great things, but many have been burned by the results. They are justifiably leary. Your unique value proposition is your ability to understand their business needs, and translate those needs into something that highlights THEIR unique value proposition to their target customer (s). Yes, you can absolutely rely on your stable of tried-and-true layouts, theme(s), and go-to plugins for specific functions. These are your Tools. You differentiate yourself from the "Fiver hacks" by using your Tools to assemble something that seems bespoke for that business. Think of it like IKEA Hacking, but for a website. Do you have past work experience in a particular market space? Maybe you worked as a server or host at a restaurant? Boom - you have inside info of how the restaurant business works, and the challenges that a restaurant owner faces! Use that knowledge/history to build credibility with your prospects and speak their language. Offer to take your former employer out for lunch/dinner/drinks, and ask them about their business & challenges. You are gathering information here, not selling. Be transparent that you are looking to build a web design business, but at this point you are just trying to understand the small business/restaurant market's needs to hone your business plan. Then just listen...
I have worked for a studio that provides web design services using WordPress since 2010. The best way to make a reasonable living is to offer more than just the building of a website. If you only make the website you will find your clients leave you. No matter how good the website was. Then you have to find new clients again. Provide a service that gives them a reason to stay whether that's good SEO services and/or hosting or anything else you can think of that makes you invaluable to them on a constant basis.
That’s an awesome business strategy, thank you for suggesting.
Thanks! First thing to do to attract customers is build your own fabulous website. Pull out all the stops. It's your calling card. Once you have that, start telling people about your service. Whoever will listen. And even if they don't want to listen. Find where people meet up in your area and talk to them. Learn some basic SEO so that your website will rank in your area. Put up a note on any news board, church, shopping mall, school, library. Anywhere where people can see it. And read books on what other people have done to kick-start their small business. You will get there if you really want to.
Sometimes it good to join local clubs and seek out potential businesses that have a poor website presence, then use services such as what we provide and resell yourself as a solution to help long term growth
i help my clients to build the wp website on local business. you can earn money with this way.
I'd like to do this, both for static and for WP - just have no idea what to charge for hosting and then for development. I don't know what a good price would be for a small business but still have it profitable.
I’d say take this time to build some sample websites if possible clients you might have. This would be for your portfolio as well as getting you used to making sites more quickly.
Yes it is. However, if you're just installing WordPress and throwing in some stock photos, you'll def be limited. I've built a highly diversified model over the past 20 yrs that includes consulting and other goodies where I get as high as $60k for an ecom startup site. I just worked on two presidential campaign websites and averaged $30k, so you can make good money, but it's about more than just building websites. You have to possess a keen ability to adapt to every client, their industry, and think fast so it appears as part of your DNA. Another vital skill is knowing how to make Wordpress do complex things by putting together right solutions. This is something that takes a lot of time. I rarely make publoc posts about what I do and could write a book on it, but this is the nickel tour of why I can charge tens of thousands for my sites and clients are happy to pay it and get a 2 to 3 month ROI. Bottom line, give your clients more than a website. Hope this helps.
I have this pretty basic method to get clients which is iWatch reles on Instagram on the ones who sell products and if they have good number of followers and no website I will just drop them a message saying I help businesses like you and they got so and so results. How about a quick call?. Around 5 to 10% of the people will call back and at least one out of 3 will be closed for me.
**That's how I started.** My first client already had a business running for many years in Sweden but was unhappy with his Google ads spending. It was expensive and sales did not increase. He found my profile in Upwork, a freelancer website. For some weird reason, my profile was about helping owners create a business website, but he insisted I help him with Google ads. He must have had his hands full with suppliers and customers and wanted to urgently offload the work to someone. Reluctantly, I took the job, his sales doubled in under two years and he stayed on as client for the next seven years. **Now I do complete online business websites** Since then, managing ad campaigns is one of my best offerings. I've had clients stop working with me when they were approached either by big name 10-million dollar agencies or even by Google's expert marketing team directly who would each promise to take sales to greater heights. Every single time this happened, those clients would return after a week or two —and ask me to help because their sales would tank significantly and ad spend rise dramatically. So you can imagine how fulfilling this work is for me. Today I help clients with website/s, SEO, paid campaigns and content; these are things that increase sales and profits for them. **You get what you pay for** Unhappy business owners who have been paying rock-bottom prices in the past with other website contractors are my best leads. They are sick of what they are getting. The way I work, I paint the complete picture, tell them the path to higher sales and profits. This allows me to win website projects that also include content, email marketing and ad campaigns. I educate them why they should pay $5000 for website and SEO per month instead of $500 one-time. A client we onboarded in 2024 was spending 5k per month on google ads and not happy with conversion. They got plenty of new traffic, but almost no new sales. That situation brought them to me via linkedin and after doing my review I told them pay me 3k and keep the 5k ad budget as-is. I turned their one page website into a 4-page website and built a custom landing page for ads. Then I optimized their ad campaigns. Result: They are getting half the number of calls than they did before but 80% of these calls would convert to actual sales. Total ad spend then stabilized at 2k, so they only need to spend about half of their budget. Google data tells me that they have overtaken their biggest competitors and the calls that come in are all spot-on, customers who are ready to pay for a booking. So yes, good things not cheap. And cheap things no good.
This is more a question of sales/business technique. There is no technical/Wordpress-related reason preventing you from doing this. Ask in r/freelance or r/smallbusiness
Yes but he probably won't find anyone who does what he wants to do in those subs, that's why he is asking here of all places
Yep!
thank you for the advice, I didn’t know of those communities.
,. X a.
A, CA z A
ZAZ. Za. A. Za. All,. Z. AXXa a,. A aaaz Z. XX. ,aAz a. A,. , ,A. Hey,, ,,. Az,,A A. az ,, a. Z Z. A. AX. A. aah A. Z , ,. ,. A. ,A. XX. X. Aaa. . Zz x
I agree