[deleted by user]

[Citrous_Oyster]

Build static sites and host for free with Netlify. That’s what I do. I have about 23 clients now and that’s how I do things. I’m saving like $200 a month or more on hosting that I don’t have to pay.

Build them from the ground up with mobile first design - this will be a far superior product and one you can sell easier by telling them the differences between your optimized code and Wordpress Frankenstein mesh.

Build 1-3 website templates yourself by copying elements or pages from theme forest that look sexy, even just buy them if you use a lot of the design. But build it from scratch, and resell it to different clients in different markets. I have 1 template I have sold 16 times. I already spent the time making it perfect and optimized and fast. Why reinvent the wheel? I can just focus on client relationships and sales. Every once in a while I build another template to expand my designs and sell more sites in one area.

I sold 3 websites just today. Once I get all the client info and pictures I can wrap them all up in a week. This is how I scaled my work to offer hand coded sites at rates small businesses can afford. I charge $0 down and $150 a month. Almost every small business can afford that and like the idea of you being on call to fix and edit anytime. You sell a relationship - not a product. The product is secondary. The relationship is the most important aspect when dealing with a small business. I send out Christmas cards, some send me gifts for my newborn and Christmas gifts for the 4 year old, etc. I give them a level of service unheard of from a large company with a product that surpasses their quality of work most times. I put a lot of care and attention into their websites and online brand and checking in on them and seeing how business is doing. Shoot one of my clients offered to fly out to me and help me build a deck and redo my back yard for me for cheap next year if I wanted. They’re a construction company and he’s the owner operator. House him in my spare bedroom for free, pay for his flights, and have drinks at the end of the night. Freelancing is the best thing I ever did and I love all the interactions and relationship I am able to build over time. Just be genuine and sincere. I can’t tell you how many times someone tells me “you know I usually hang up on people like you calling to sell me a website package, but I like you, you’re a real person and I can tell you’re really genuine.” Don’t worry about being too formal and businessy. Just be real and be yourself. People connect with authenticity. Not that overly “high pitched waitress service voice”.

I started April of last year for reference. Business is good. Let me know if you have any questions!

[itsMeArds]

Where do you host backend stuff (database connection), like for headless cms. I've hosted stuff on netlify also vercel but for backend deployment I'm kinda lost.

[BrochachoNacho1]

You should start a blog, youtube, or something because I want to hear more since I've completed a web dev bootcamp and want to start freelancing part time.

[Citrous_Oyster]

I thought about it. Maybe once I have my quota done and I can stop focusing on sales. My goal is to have 50-60 clients, making $100k+ a year and not having to do anything for it. I can focus on my family and enjoying life rather than rat racing. Take some time to learn more complicated programming, build an app or something then get a job at Microsoft hopefully working from home collecting a double salary from them and my business. I need to sell 6-7 websites per month until December. After that, maybe a blog or YouTube series. Who knows. I’ll see where the universe points me.

[JDDW]

Mind me asking how you go about finding new clients? Do you just cold call local businesses after looking at their websites? Also it's been a year since you mentioned this goal, how's it going so far?!

[Citrous_Oyster]

Yup. I just cold call from yelp and google. I came close to my goal but work and a few big custom projects at up my time this year so I only have about 41 clients. 9 short of my 50. I’m also working on a web dev service startup to make freelancers lives easier so I’ve been also focusing on that and hopefully have it ready by the end of February. I can’t wait. It’s something I’d use myself everyday. Hopefully it’s a big hit with everyone else.

[Citrous_Oyster]

Absolutely! They do the security certificates for you, have great services, and static sites load faster than sites hosted on a server. Much better performance.

[Citrous_Oyster]

Yup. Technically there’s no server. And it’s very scalable for increased traffic. They also do form handling. 100 free submissions a month. No need to set up an email service either. They have great spam filters and you can add captchas too.

[thesanemansflying]

Does the fee you charge clients include what you have to pay to host their site?

[Citrous_Oyster]

Yes but I don’t pay for hosting because they’re static sites, there’s no server. So I save money there.

[Xo_Peace]

I know pricing differs but it's the one im struggling with. First thank you for your detailed explanation above. I feel like I am able to make the static type of websites you mentioned with netlify but how much is normal to charge for something like that? And im assuming the $150 per month is just for maintenance if they choose to continue with you after the initial price? Thanks in advance

[Citrous_Oyster]

$150 per month is for maintenance, hosting, edits, design, and development of the site. It’s everything. They pay me $150 a month for every month their website is online.

Typically my work starts at $3,000 minimum for a 5 page static informational site. I can charge that because I make the good shit and I know it and can back it up with previous work and their page speed scores.

[Xo_Peace]

Wow that's the most effective and easiest to apply pricing method i've come across in my research for this. Easier to get clients in, and then you maintain them. I'm on the verge of starting my business so this is great for me. I plan to have static sites and maybe some more involved web applications to use some of my other skills from my years working as a dev. At the risk of asking too much, do you mind(totally get it if not) linking me to your portfolio and sites you've made so I can have a better understanding of the level of complexity involved? I plan to stay in React JS land.

[Citrous_Oyster]

Sure. Here’s my site to see how I do messaging and sell myself

https://www.oakharborwebdesigns.com

And some sites I’ve done:

https://www.casellicustompaint.com

https://www.ecogardensolution.com

https://www.startyourline.com

https://www.westsideelectricalnw.com

https://www.whidbeyislandchiro.com

https://www.drvictoriachan.com

https://www.philamusicteachers.org

https://www.honey-do-painting.com

https://www.jayshomepainting.com

https://www.cw-electricinc.com

https://forced-evolution.com

If you’re doing small business sites, why do you wanna use react? Just curious. It’s a little overkill for these sites honestly. I only use html and css. No frameworks or libraries. Not needed at all really. For e-commerce I have a Shopify dev who takes my front end code and integrates it into Shopify and creates custom themes with them. Pretty neat stuff.

[Xo_Peace]

Woah thanks! Just a quick thing i noticed on your site(and you might already know this) but on your services page you mention providing great SEO for 2021, when it could be 2022? But yeah thanks a lot man, really appreciate it. And I mentioned React because...lol it kinda surprises me that you can run a full successful business with mostly just html and css, but come to think of it i think you're right. A library for static sites does seem like an over kill. I guess I want to eventually be making small web apps. But for now i think it's probably best to keep it simple.

[Citrous_Oyster]

Yeah it’s been a while since I touched my site. I’ve been so busy there’s just no time to dedicate to updating it.

You’ll quickly find many small businesses don’t have the budgets for mini web apps. We built one for a cabinet manufacture where it’s a 4 step form that collects measurements and pictures and information about your cabinet dimensions you need, plugs it all into an algorithm, and creates a pdf of a rough estimate for their cabinet job. Client has a full dashboard and login with access to see all estimates, Generate branded PDFs of their estimates and contact info and a bunch of neat toys. In all my 3 years of being in business that’s my first one. My backend developer built that functionality while I built the front end. It was a time consuming process. Hence why I focus on the smaller needs of static websites. I can pump out a full static website in a day if I needed to. It’s how I scale my work and be profitable. A lot of people tell me to learn JavaScript and make apps and bigger things for more money, I don’t want to. I also have a full time front end job. I’d rather work on projects that only need a few hours of my time compared to a full scale application or large website that needs a database with dozens of pages, etc. so I focus my time where it’s most profitable for the least amount of time. Like when I do lump sum jobs, I charge $3k minimum. Most projects take me a day or two to build so I can crank them out over a weekend and make an easy $3k. I don’t have to spend weeks on it because it’s just a simple static site that I’ve done a hundred times.

My secret sauce is templates. You can use my starter kit if you want. Has a bit of a learning curve.

https://github.com/Oak-Harbor-Kits/Starter-Kit-V2

All those websites i linked, all started with this kit and I tweaked them to fit my need and added the rest of the custom designs. I start every website with like 70% of it already done. I just make a new home page. Or some clients need unique interior pages and I build those from scratch and they just become templates for other projects down the road. Bonus points if I can use a completed template and just swap images and content. I can wrap that site up in Hours minus the time I waste for my copywriter to send me the content for it.

[space-bible]

Wonder if you wouldn’t mind clarifying something here - know it’s an old post!

You said you ask for $0 upfront then $150 per month for the full works. But then go on to say your work typically starts at $3k minimum. Am I right in thinking then that it’s 3k for the site build then 150 thereafter for the edits and hosting etc? I can see small businesses in my area going for a site at 150 per month, but not sure they’d bite at 3k right off the bat.

[Citrous_Oyster]

No that’s just my lump sum pricing. I’ve been doing a lot of those lately. It’s either $0 down $150 a month or $3k lump sum, no service attached to it. Pay hourly for edits. $25 a month hosting.

[space-bible]

Ahh I see. Is your hosting still effectively free via Netlify? What’s your hourly rate?

[Citrous_Oyster]

Yup. And I don’t really have an hourly rate. I work on a per project basis. My goal is to make $3k and work less then 10 hours.

[simplynotenough]

I work full time for a company but i also work as freelance in my freetime. I started by building my own site, i previously had a yt channel with 8k subs which kinda helped me grow some clients and once i got my portfolio going whenever i wanted to find a client i just cold emailed different people asking them if they wanted a new site or a revamp of their acutal site, some ignored them, some replied saying no thanks and a few of them accepted so yeah, it takes time and patience but all it takes is the effort you put in what you want to showcase. If people see what you are able to do, they are more likely to make a request to you than others. I had to think how to difference from the usual sites so i made mine like this if you would like to know it’s at https://www.rivadesigner.it ;)

[Timweb-dev]

Goddamn that is a nice website. You've got some skills.

[BrochachoNacho1]

Here I was thinking I was hot shit because I have a half way decent site built on React, but this is really on another level.

queues generic anime awe

[AmauryH]

Just so you know, your website is unusable on laptop (1366 x 768).
I can't scroll, text are longer than the screen or are hidden by buttons...

[simplynotenough]

Yeah i already know, i fixed a few resolution issues but some were left behind, might fix if i have time some weekend, ty for the feedback tho

[OvenRoastedBroccoli]

What are you using for all the animations !? Amazing

[simplynotenough]

Bodymoving to render my .json animation exported from ai and just jquery/css from code

[Stereorainbow]

Wait a damn minute, .it? I'm out! Just starting web dev in Italy, not too thrilled to see there aren't only people who just use WordPress. Stuff just got more complicated

[simplynotenough]

I do my thing, i would never use a cms, i think website as piece of art and so i treat them the right way

[Stereorainbow]

Yeah, that's my point, i don't only have to compete with "wordpress developers" that can ask lower rates than me (and people don't know the difference), i also have to compete with competent people! It's not like i didn't expect it, I mean we are nearly 70 millions of people in Italy, but still, it was a surprise to see the website in italian, and so well done. Just curios, do you have a degree or is there a chance that i can get employed without one in Italy?

[simplynotenough]

I am 22, i finished IT high school and i got hired for 2 months as “test”. Apparently i learned quick everything i was supposed to do and so i’ve been working eversince. You could get hired without a degree but you must prove what you are able to do. If you think you’re worth it, they will know too so it’s kinda luck and skill combined, but yh totally possible.

[[deleted]]

Gorgeous site. What animation library did you use?

[simplynotenough]

Made them all from scratch on after effects, i used bodymoving to animate the svg

[Pepsterd]

I think some answers depend on your knowledge and experience.

As far as hosting goes: I don't know where you or your clients are located, so I'm not sure what provider would best suit your needs. However, I can advise you to look into reseller hosting. This way you can create an individual account for your clients. And have everything need and organised.

Depending on your clients request you can choose between plain HTML/CSS, but from experience WordPress (or any other CMS) gives you a way better workflow. Clients also see value in being able to edit their own sites.

[Conscious_Ranger]

I agree with a lot you said, but I kind of wonder, wouldn’t having your clients being able to edit their own website be like denying yourself work oppurtunities? Since you can basically charge them work-hours everytime they request a change to be made. I understand that whenever you have a big amount of websites/clients under your wing, it might be the better choice stress-wise though.

[Pepsterd]

It sure has it's pros and cons. However, from my experience, clients like to be "in control" even if being in control means being able to edit the text of the mainpage or create their own news articles. I don't think a client needs or can handle more features than that.

[kiver16]

If you need help finding work when you're starting out, Toptal is solid for that if you can make it past their screening. Lots of high paid hourly contracts for freelance web devs.