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

[Nasdocs]

This was something I thought about... and had started to do couple years ago, but got extremely lazy.

This bundled with SMS marketing for some businesses.

 

[Darkside Six]

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 ???

@samlim, you mean the ecommerce? I use shopperpress theme if it's an store. It costs more but the entire theme is configured as a shopping cart. All you do is add your products...after you configure the backend. And the backend is a lot simpler than zencart. You can also build affiliate sites with shopperpress, and it will look like your own store. You can pull the category, with descriptions and price from Amazon. You realize how powerful this function is? Works to a lesser degree with ebay.

I prefer to use themes rather than plugins. It's a lot easier to change the theme than it is to figure out how to deliver the same look with a plugin. Take a look around this forum, plenty of themes and plugins you can use. I am also using The Client Machine. It impresses a lot of clients when they can access and approve their quotation online, sames with the invoices.

 

[syfer]

wow good services wow did not know that its that chaep wow

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.

 

[zumrywahid]

Guys i keep reading all the comments..well i would like to do the same. but i have only basic programming knowledge ..i need advise from a big guru..

 

[ShayER43]

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

 

[rajanikant]

can you provide your sample works for the four diff. type websites. please

 

[StheER43]

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

 

[NawtyAtNight]

wow good services wow did not know that its that chaep wow

Yeah, I kinda looked at the competition in my area, and got some formal quotes from competitors on craigslist and localy, I saw that I could compete locally with the pricing structure I setup, i reduced my monthly cycles from 1 year to 6 months to bring in the money faster.

But I focus mainly on the Joomla platform, I tried wordpress as it is more search engine friendly but Im just so use to Joomla now, they just got updated to 1.7 and virtumart shopping cart extension is now at 2.0 stable, alot of new improvements have been made for search engines.

I would recommend everyone getting the web design Business Kit v3 just for the documentation and paper work- this thread is being updated -
http://www.******************/blackhat-seo/member-downloads/326884-get-web-design-business-kit-3rd-edition-5.html
or else just google : "[GET]web design business kit v3" with out quotes, and change the search by either with in the last month or year in search tools to get latest links that are not broken or taken down.

if you cant find the business kit then you can download some PSD templates for you business proposal and webdesign briefing. from here:
Premium Proposal Template – w/ Contract & Invoice : CRShare.COMMediaLoot Professional Website Design Brief : CRShare.COMIdentity Set Templates – VandelayPremier : CRShare.COM
Proposal Kit Professional Bundle V12.0 : CRShare.COMWeb Business Collateral – Contract, Proposal : CRShare.COMSleek Business Stationery Pack – MediaLoot Print Templates : CRShare.COMProfessional Proposal Pack + Business Cards!! : CRShare.COM

I dont know if I mentioned this earlier, but you can download some nulled templates and set them up as a sub-domains from your main website, lets say look for a pizza joomla or wordpress template ( if you got a nulled template make note of where it is being sold at, you will need to get the original template once some ones buys the site from you) or you can create one yourself, either from an existing template or using Artisteer template maker for Joomla and wordpress. Create a site and polish off the main home page only. Make it look good. Then go on yelp and look for pizzerias in your local city, then start targeting these businesses, target all of them , even if they have a site already, the key is to make the site look better than theirs. there are around 35 pizzerias in my surrounding area, sell these sites cheap, say $375 bucks, include a new Google voice number and add the google voice widget to the website and show of the functionality of the website to the potential client, the reason I said only charge $375 is because you will sell the website design to a handful of other pizzerias, changing up only the logo and maybe preset colors and ofcorse general info, but the design aspect of the site will stay the same. just sell it to 10 pizzerias out of the 35-100 that are out there and you easily made $3,750 dollars out of a $30 dollar template and around 3-4 hours of work on each site.

Then rinse and repeat with Dentis, Contractors, plumbers, Attorneys, ect.


Hope this helps out some of you, I really hope some one dose not copy this and convert it into a WSO.

I encourage any one to share any other types of ways to create income streams. If some are shared I will post more on how to make money off ebay buy selling legitimate stuff, and if you live in Los Angeles , i'll show you where you can go to buy really inexpensive merchandise.

One quick tip, if you happen to come across any one interested in having an eCommerce site done and you feel that the products being sold will sell, try an do a partner ship. I did an eCommerce site for free, and only charge a percentage of each sale made on the website ( write up a contract for this) this will bring in residual income.

Of course this is an abridged version of the business model that i am currently using. tip: use different types of models. There are many types of clients out there, the main two are the clients that know exactly what they want and the ones that dont know anything and expect you to do everything including all the content writing aspects of the site. I find the second to be the easiest, this is usually the case with brick and mortar businesses that offer services or sales.

Another way to get an extra income stream from existing clients is to offer PPC Adwords management, sign up for the Google Engage for Agencies . Watch the videos and take the test, you will become Google Adwords Certified and will be getting $100 dollar vouchers for your clients. And just charge monthly for you to manage their Adwords campaigns.

 

[jujls]

what plugins will u use with wordpress ??Thanks fro this post. I will bookmark this one for sure.

 

[NawtyAtNight]

I mainly focus on Joomla instead of wordpress, I find joomla more flexible if any one ever wants any customization. Wordpress is a better platform for SEO( altho joomla has improved and has many new SEO extensions and plugins), and I feel like Joomla is better for front end webdesign ( no programming needed) . If you do ever need to customize parts of the template, I use google chrome and use its built in plugin to look at the source files and make any necessary changes.

Any one thats starting out, i suggest for you to get familiar with either wordpress or Joomla.

 

[rockstar73]

Take the time to learn how to use wordpress. It is well worth it and plenty of paid and free themes available to use. Some are even sold on the WF for like $9, Or you can go to themeforest and buy 1 or2 for like $10-$20.

You can pretty much learn anything you need from youtube. Thats how I did it

This is a good business but I would recommend coming up with some upsells and charging a monthly recurring fee so you are not always chasing a buck ;-)

Whether is be SEO, Maintenance, or even leasing the site to them where you own the domain, the hosting, and even the phone number so they cant cancel unless they want to lose the site.

 

[heartdragon]

Thanks for your help. I will try this. Good Bye

 

[boselecta]

Hi,
I have been doing this for a few years with a great deal of success. My advice is to not to do it yourself and instead to outsource it. There are many good web designers out there.
This will ultimately save you time.
I have found web designers who charge £350 for a website. I goto clients and charge them £800. I pocket the difference. I only take 2 clients a week.
I'm not looking to spend all my time working and once you do a good job, always ask for referrals.

 

[rajanikant]

Hi, I have been doing this for a few years with a great deal of success. My advice is to not to do it yourself and instead to outsource it. There are many good web designers out there. This will ultimately save you time. I have found web designers who charge £350 for a website. I goto clients and charge them £800. I pocket the difference. I only take 2 clients a week. I'm not looking to spend all my time working and once you do a good job, always ask for referrals.

Thanks for your advise. I am just planning to do the same thing. can you please tell me some links for outsourcing web designers with timeline and price you mentioned above. Thanks againshttp://www.moneymakerdiscussion.com/forum/images/smilies/bawling.gif

 

[boselecta]

I've just sent you a PM about this.
Its all part of a process.
Make sure you have done research on the niches you want to target (as opposed to just targetting any business) and then perfect your sales pitch and process and then get the site done by someone else.

 

[BuildMyLinks]

Even just a decent wordpress theme might work for many local businesses.

I would say most businesses have a website now, but most aren't good. But I think local businesses are more interested in new customers, so maybe offer local seo/ppc services instead.

 

[mikewashtm]

Maybe just start with a simple Wordpress site is good enough for start up. Later, we can just think about some customization.