Idea for an offline web design business, need advise and honest opinion.

[thomnel53]

I was thinking of a web design business that targets small businesses. ( new idea, i know) The thing is that I would offer a full service, design, hosting, and management for a flat yearly rate. The thing is that I don't know how to design a site from scratch with coding or anything. I can build a pretty decent site with site builders, and they are so easy I don't know if coding is really necessary to build sites anymore.

I was thinking I could just sign up as a reseller with hostgator, go daddy, and whoever else then just use their site builders or dreamweaver and completely manage the websites for my customers. Now I'm not talking about taking over wal marts I.T. just small sites for people who can't afford a full time I.T. guy.

Anybody think this could be something worth while?

 

[NawtyAtNight]

I have been doing this for the past year with decent success , its a good source of second income. I have not had time to advertise as much as I wanted, I charge for 4 different packages, 1 - Business, the business can choose to pay monthly or flat fee with first year hosting free. I charge a setup fee of $125 and once the site goes live a monthly charge of $60/Month for 1 year, totaling $845/ year, or they have the option of paying it off al at once with an incentive price of $600 including setup price waved. I also offer online catalogs for car dealerships, real estate listings, and any other business that wants to list their items online but dont want to sell trough their site but just list items and have a location and contact info listed. That I sell for $139/month for 1 year plus $175 stup fee. or flat fee of $1500. 3rd is an eStore, a basic shopping website with out customer registration and paypal integration for a monthly fee of $175/Month for 1 year plus $200 setup, or a flat fee of $2000. and last but not least a full eCommerce website for $275 a month for 1 year and $250 setup fee or a flat rate of $3000. If they are paying the full rate I ask for half down and the other half once the site goes up.

For those businesses that have small budgets I offer a business starter package for only $250 flat plus I trow a twist with an affiliate program so i can get extra money.

I have a merchants account that charges them monthly automatically so i wont have to chase my money , so far this year I have added almost 10k to my yearly income, I'm hoping when I'm finished with school I can focus more on the business and do more advertising.

Plus I offer all these services with out knowing any webdesign programing. Where are you located maybe we can partner up.

 

[thomnel53]

Thanks for the reply to my post it really gave a starting point for prices. I was wondering if you can do all of this using places like go daddy and hostgator or do you have your own server and everything. Also if you don't know programing what do you do? Contract the design work out or just use site builders? I'm in lubbock tx by the way.

 

[workinclasshero]

I am also doing this but I want to know how to design any site, mostly because I really enjoy it. Im actually taking some classes from Ed2go right now, just finished Intro to css+xhtml and I can recommend the learning experience for a meesly 79 bucks is worth it. I start learning php in about a week and Im pumped. The only problem with just using site builders like wordpress/drupal/joomla is the lack of ability to give yourt client exactly what they want. You can always outsource it ,but that's less money in your pocket for work you could have done yourself. Plenty of people do it though and if you don't wanna learn all the web design/development just hit me up with a PM and I'll hook you up with some valuable resources and people that can help you make it work. Cheers

 

[NawtyAtNight]

Hey hows it going workinclass hero, thats really good that you are taking the steps to learning, Im teaching my self as i go, with the help of PDF e-books and youtube video tutorials , also the lynda tutorials work good, but since you have a leg up you should go for it.
I do use CMS systems and when a client wants something specific I either use the firebug plugin for firefox or the built in plug in on chrome and right click the area that the client wants changed and I figure out how to change it and on what file to change it. For example I had a client that is really specific and wanted the background of the website gone plus get a picture background and add a border to the body of the website, i told him I will work on it and i used firebug and google to google how to create a CSS border and I used the CSS tags boarder, border right , made background white and added a background image to the body article he was using, so far I have not ran into any major problems, but the rule of thumb is to make sure the client knows how many free rounds of revision you will do for free before you start charging, also limit the amount of revision, because you do not want to have a revision where the work involved makes you redesign the entire website. limit it to around 3-4 hours of "work", Most of the clients are clueless to the webdesign world , and will accept your business plan. But chrome web browser is what really helps me out when get into a customer that wants to change stuff around.

thomnel53 I will send you a PM

 

[NawtyAtNight]

I need 5 post to PM so I hope since this is my 5th post I will be able to PM you thomnel53

 

[thomnel53]

I got your pm and replied, thanks.

 

[brightice]

I bet you'd make a killing doing this. Let me know how it works out as I'm still trying to pick a focus for IM

 

[wacked]

Do you mean that you can go into any ones website to edit with these plugins or do you need a password for the site from the owner?

 

[NawtyAtNight]

Let me try to explain, you can do on the fly changes to any ones website but the changes are temporary and only visible to you, until you refresh the page. This plug in is only helpful if you want to see how the change affects the site yours or anyone's, and if you do want to change any of the css properties it will show you the files to change and the exact line of code to do it in.

 

[Joshua_M]

I like this thread... I think it is more better to learn Xhtml, CSS and PHP - for Newbie web design.

 

[hellboy99]

I'm planning on doing the same!! tell me if it works out!

 

[yowis]

Well I'm a newbie freelance web developer, and still learning by doing,
Believe it or not I'm looking forward to reach what you've done thomnel53.
I've planned it but still haven't free to learn or boost my promotion, coz I'm still a student and have limited amount of funds and resources. If you don't mind can you tell me how you reach that point, what service and tools you used? It will help me a lot to take the right steps to follow your lead and reach my own goals.

And I can recommend you a tool, well maybe this isn't much helping your design but it can cut your coding time for sure, it called artisteer, easy to use to design the basic website, and then from there you can use your css skill, and maybe change some image, and you'll have unique design in couple of hours

Regards
YoWis

 

[stye]

I am in the same boat, trying to set up own business, offering the services such as a, web designing, blogs, IT services, social marketing help and SEO, in all this i am 50/50, any major requirements come then obviously you can look for help and outsources job can be done, thats what i think. The main thing is getting client, how do you approach in your local area, do you do cold calling, email marketing or referral? as i mention, i havent started this but i have this goal and wanted to be in this business and eventually more... in order to complete all this, have you set it up, nice looking decent website, Business card, Business name and Business address? how have done all this. Please share.... what's the budget?
anyone interested to share and talk you can add me also yahoo messanger smileface214 AT yahooooo

Please continue in this topic as we can learn more and share more... naughtyatnight you doing great man!

 

[Darkside Six]

Hey guys, I do this for a living and it is a 5 figure business. Get a reseller account and use wordpress.
Keep the custom work to a minimum and tell them you use themes to get their site up.
Focus on local search and you can stomp the search engine quite easily.
I focus on private limited companies and small businesses charging up to 4 figures per site.

Of course, the amount you charge depends on which part of the world you are.
I sell them the marketing aspect of the work rather than the technical side.
Ask them which they prefer, a flashy site or one that ranks on the 1st page for their industry.
I've been doing it full time for 1 year and it is still going well.

 

[JimD]

First off I must agree with Darkside regarding working with Wordpress. That really is a no brainer and there are plenty of good tutorials on this and other IM forums. You can load up 100 themes for the business to choose and get a custom header made on fiverr. Most decent hosts have fantastico for one click installs as well.
Then there are 2 ways to go for the beginner: 1. Use a reseller account and charge 10-20 bucks a month hosting. 2. Let them have the website for a big discount if they sign up for hosting with your Hostgator, or other hosting, referal link.

You need to judge how much to charge based on the type and size of business, you need to test this for your area. You should be able to make some decent residual income providing SEO/backlinking services.

good luck...

 

[Juanle455]

If you want to offer a complete solution, my advice is to setup a shopping cart that includes hosting and domain.
To automate that, the best way is to use a PHP web hosting script. Here you have a list:

PHP Web Hosting Tool Scripts | Search & Download Software Free

Hhttp://www.hotscripts.com/category/php/scripts-programs/web-hosting-tools/ope that helps

 

[Darkside Six]

@Juanle455, offer an ecommerce site using wordpress, using a theme like shopperpress or templatic.
With wordpress, doing nothing will get your website ranked well on SERP.
You can also create article directories, membership sites, coupon sites or business directories for your clients. Directories and ecommerce sites are high ticket items. And you can get your clients to pay your every month to update and maintain the sites.

 

[samlim]

what plugins will u use with wordpress ??

i try the most popular one wp ecommerce, its very limited on the free version...
and i do not want the spend 40 dollar on something i find hard to customize..

those theme you mention they work on their own with plugins ???

 

[erakor]

Hey guys, I do this for a living and it is a 5 figure business. Get a reseller account and use wordpress.
Keep the custom work to a minimum and tell them you use themes to get their site up.
Focus on local search and you can stomp the search engine quite easily.
I focus on private limited companies and small businesses charging up to 4 figures per site.

Of course, the amount you charge depends on which part of the world you are.
I sell them the marketing aspect of the work rather than the technical side.
Ask them which they prefer, a flashy site or one that ranks on the 1st page for their industry.
I've been doing it full time for 1 year and it is still going well.

Good stuff I have been quietly plugging away doing something similar...Most people don't care what you use they just want results and with Wordpress and some good themes you can have them up and running in no time and if it's local we have been pretty successful with seo without really being experts yet just using some plugins and the little knowledge we've picked up along the way...clients are happy and that's all that matters...