I have been self-employed since around 92, I have more failed startups under my belt than some you have had sex. My current business is 13 years old but it still makes me just a living,
I grew it from me and one bloke to 13 employees. Now here is the thing, when I had all those employees I earned less than I did when it was just 2 of us.
I didn’t get to do much except sales, admin and fixing stuff those 13 Guys fucked up. After doing some sums I let attrition do the job and reduced back to a solo outfit.
Now I am tired before I start my day, my back hurts and lifting stuff that just two years ago was a breeze is no longer as easy. This is an age thing, I realised the other day that my pension plan is good for just about 3 hours. https://dustfactory.co.za You can look at my website here and until about 3 years ago it was supplying too many leads for me to reply to. COVID broke that., but I am tired more than not getting enough work. .
I ran a web dev company before this one in a small town in Africa and clients were limited, too much competition, people offering work at stupid low prices and I got tired of counting cents, so I went back to my trade.
I used my skills developed during that period to out perform all my opposition on the web for the woodworking business. The most important thing that I learned in the business was saying no, or even fuck off. You cannot offer value and quality if you are too cheap.
I have moved to a big city, reduced overheads and can now retire about 3 hours before I kick the bucket. I really don’t want to get back in the death spiral competing with people charging too little for their service, mainly because I am convinced that a website that doesn’t bring results is not an investment for any business.
I have started updating my skills again, updating the CMS that I built and have been using. also have registered a few domains to build sites on as test beds.
The numbers below are based on exchange rates and are in no way accurate, they are just an example. My question is as follows, let’s say the cheap blokes are selling web sites for $100 and they place them, charge for hosting about $7 a month, but are doing no SEO, no forward planning, just put it up and forget it, How much should I be charging a month for full service?
Would you be willing to pay $250 a month for a site that includes all the SEO stuff like semantics, includes me sorting out your local SEO stuff, creating content regularly or would that seem like too much of a difference. I am assuming small businesses as clients.
Next check out my website and tell me if it creates confidence. Note not all the content is complete yet, but check out these pages please.
https://centuriondesign.co.za/
https://centuriondesign.co.za/pages/SEO.html
https://centuriondesign.co.za/pages/web-design.html
Tell me how I could improve them, What could I do that would help you make a decision?
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You need an irresistible offer, higher paying clients arbicharge contractor
I’ll be willing to pay $250 if you promise to make me $2500 . Read $100M offer by Alex Hormozi
Hi, I hear your pain and struggle. You seem to be in a very tough position financially and mentally. First of all, get a big hug from you (I’m a hugger). Can I ask you what you’re passionate about in the jobs and businesses that you run? I believe that having a passion for what you do is one of the most important things when running a business. Your customers will smell when you’re not passionate about it and will run away.
To your questions:
- The pricing. I don’t even know yet what you’re selling me. You seem to be selling a product (the website) instead of results that I get from paying you (e.g. ease of mind, constant influx of customers, etc.). So if you’re not clear about your value proposition, sit down and figure this out first. Before that, you don’t need to do anything else because they will only waste your time and money.
- On the websites: My honest answer is that I wouldn’t hire you if that is your best work.
- The design is completely outdated. My eyes are offended, and I don’t know where to look. Things are hard to read, and images are in a bad resolution so everything is pixelated on my screen.
- Spacing and wireframe aid in my confusion, as they don’t lead me through the page. I recommend learning the basics of UI/UX design before offering this as a product. Start with things like the Gestalt Principles, and the 60/30/10 rule of color palettes.
- Way too much text. Why do I need to read so much to understand what you’re offering? Be clear, precise, and concise in your copywriting. “If you confuse you lose.” Make it as easy for me as you can to say yes to whatever you’re offering.
- No clear CTAs (call to action): you got a button in the hero section…that is not recognizable as such. Follow the design principle of affordance. Something needs to look like I can do the action with it that I want to do (e.g. a button looks like you can press it).
My recommendations in general are:
- Figure out what your vision for your life is.
- If you know that, think of ways how to achieve this vision.
- Then create an action plan in detail that leads you towards your vision and execute it.
- Find someone who did what you want to do and learn from them. u/General-Lobster-4837 recommended Alex Hormozi for example. If your goal is to build businesses with the sole purpose of returning more money and getting very rich, this is a great spot to start. If your vision is another one find someone that aligns with your vision.
- Learn everything you can about the path you chose and that can help you reach your goal faster. Learning is a thing you do for your whole life not just when you’re young. It is awesome that you reach out to this community to improve on what you’re doing. You’re doing great!
I’m open to chatting more if you’d like to get more input. :)
a) Thanks for your input, I really appreciate it.
OK I get that, Selling websites bad idea, selling results good idea.
Explain what you mean by outdated, may point me at a couple of sites that are not outdated.
From an SEO perspective text gets results, It has done so for me for a few years. My wood working site has given me results because I supplied better information than any other local woodworking business. I am moving on from that purely because my body is no longer as co operative with the heavy lifting and stuff.
I will make changes to that get started button tomorrow, that is a must obviously.
I will look for some UX training and see what the latest ideas are, I have always felt that
Ex: https://stripe.com/
Toolkit that gets you there: webflow.comNote - not affiliated, just have a student account that I putz around on. Like it way better than anything else I’ve used.
Honestly, and I say this respectfully, I think it’s a little too late to the game… your sites use outdated formats and code. Nowadays it’s all about frameworks like Laravel, codeignitor, vue.js, etc with dynamic view frameworks like bootstrap
Past this I don’t think anyone is going to pay a monthly subscription like that for SEO when people sell SEO for a onetime flat fee of usually dirt cheap (whether it works or not). Also, SEO is only half of the battle nowadays. Gone are the days where you’d rank high with the right keywords… It’s more than that like engagement/clicks, and even payments to Google ads or whomever you want to be high on
I’m sorry I just wanted to be honest about this
There is money to be made in buying and selling domain names though, unfortunately that’s also out the window as most places snatch and hold for over $1,500+ that people just aren’t gonna pay…
Woodguy used to be my site some years ago, I let it go because “the brand was not serious enough” Dumbest advice I ever got. When it was mine it ranked on Google, now it does not.
I aim to please business owners not web designers. I would take down the woodguy site and take away all that flashy crap. It impresses designers, looks impressive but delivers no results.
Just as a matter of interest are you seriously suggesting that using Laravel, Bootstrap et al to code php is better option than coding by hand and that websites not using those tools are inferior, I suppose you think WordPress is great as well?
The html extension makes no difference to the operation of the site, I use .htaccess to fetch the php file.
People selling SEO services for a flat fee are charlatans, Websites need to evolve because the rules are changing, My website may look like it was designed in 1996 but the content as been updated many many times,
I could also use Joomla, Drupal, WordPress like all my opposition but here is the thing My site uses 1/10th of the code that Wordpress does that is why I scored 97% on the SEO ranker tool, My site hasn’t been up for a month and already I have had a couple visit attributed to the SERPs.
I am currently using a heatmap app to test where the pain points are and will be making some changes once I have enough data.
Data driven development is the future not some arbitrary development platform.
I’m sorry but you’re just not understanding the situation here, and unfortunately that will severely limit your idea of becoming what you desire. It’s like a car mechanic never switching their knowledge from carburetor to electric fuel ignition…
It’s also not about the amount of code that’s being used. You’re overthinking it like I used to, and severely limiting growth. If you ever had a website take off, you’ll be screwed because it’ll only be you who understands it #1 (keeping others from helping), and #2 you’ll be scrambling all over files and folders trying to add, fix, and remove things - that again only you will know
I know this because I was like you. Exactly like you. And I tried hiring other devs to help me fix issues I couldn’t learn (website was outgrowing my spaghetti code), and I had no choice but to start from scratch and go with Laravel + Bootstrap. Now it’s so standardized, I could literally hire any random person who knows Laravel, and they can do whatever I need them to without anything being broken or changed, or having to spend hours figuring out what the heck I did
For comparison, my litter management website project that uses Laravel + Bootstrap, with many Composer components (that’s another thing you’ll want to learn), is over 300MB in size total with 15,644 files and 1,314 folders and still loads faster and looks better than your websites with high scores on Google pagespeed… And that’s not even including the database
I wish you luck though
I’m not entirely sure what your ask is in this post. I’m sorry to say but as a business owner your designs aren’t up to modern standards. If I were in the market for web designers I’d spend about 5 seconds on your site before moving on. Others are echoing the same sentiment so maybe take a good hard look at what’s going on.
I would have absolutely 0 confidence in you building a professional looking website that converts customers. The designs are awful, and you clearly aren’t converting if you can’t sell. Perhaps reevaluate your skill set?
I hope I don’t encounter this that I see many people post where the business grows but they actually start earning less with added stress :(
To be honest, your site looks a bit dated. If someone visits your site and are not happy with it, they won’t be confident in having you manage their website.
Some of the images are not high quality.
There’s too much white space.
The sample sites you share also don’t look very modern.
When I got to the bridal images, I was a little confused.
Overall, the site needs better structure, clearer images and a more modern look.
The good news is, if you can get it to a better place, you can make MUCH more than $250 a month for everything you described above with SEO services. Much more. If you could market yourself internally, that would bring you more clients.
I hope this helps.
Honestly, and I say this respectfully, I think it’s a little too late to the game… your sites use outdated formats and code. Nowadays it’s all about frameworks like Laravel, codeignitor, vue.js, etc with dynamic view frameworks like bootstrap
The navigation is completely outdated as well and doesn’t float down with the page as you scroll like typical sites do now. I would look into bootstrap websites and see how they look, as an example of where things are now
It’s also Mobile First, Desktop Second nowadays. Your websites are heavily Desktop First
The .html extension shows another layer of older technology. Nowadays it’s .php and you never show that at the end (using .htaccess to remove the extension)
When you click the links at the top, it’s using some kinda iframe / accordian switch and doesn’t give the user much confirmation that the page changed other than having to check and see… Bad practice. If you’re not going to visually/completely reload the page on click, then it should all be on one page and at most take you down to the different content, or have page titles at the top of each page so they know what page it’s on. OR highlight the page in the navigation links. Switching dynamically without much visual cue like it is now, is bad practice unfortunately. Either reload the whole website, or show something more uniform to signify the change (like highlighting in navbar, or having page titles)
I see you have another website, woodguy.co.za? That site is actually updated. Looks like maybe a Shopify site or something, but that’s the type of look at a minimum that you should go for (especially on a phone device)
Past this I don’t think anyone is going to pay a monthly subscription like that for SEO when people sell SEO for a onetime flat fee of usually dirt cheap (whether it works or not). Also, SEO is only half of the battle nowadays. Gone are the days where you’d rank high with the right keywords… It’s more than that like engagement/clicks, and even payments to Google ads or whomever you want to be high on
I’m sorry I just wanted to be honest about this
There is money to be made in buying and selling domain names though, unfortunately that’s also out the window as most places snatch and hold for over $1,500+ that people just aren’t gonna pay…
As for your current business, they always say that you need $350,000 in revenue before hiring another “head”. If you don’t, you’re at risk majorly… You likely got too many heads and spread yourself too thin. It happens to the best of us unfortunately.
Don’t be discouraged though. Coding/websites just evolve very fast/quick. My recommendation would be to do what I did… Get rid of the “spaghetti code” and switch to Laravel, and use Bootstrap themes to start out with. Obviously it’ll take a lot of learning but YouTube is at your disposal. I converted all of my sites from situations like yours to Laravel and Bootstrap and never looked back. It keeps things structured, easy to update/change, and more. You probably think it’s eays now… I did too… Until you start learning and figuring out that dang, there’s a much better (mostly structured/standardized) way to do these things
Best of luck to you :)