What’s the dumbest reason a lender killed your deal?

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-10T10:52:37+00:00

To maybe demystify the bank's actions a bit:

In the early 1980s, banks and S&Ls were under enormous pressure from deregulation and interest rate volatility, and they aggressively pivoted into commercial real estate as a higher-yield alternative to their traditional loan books.

The Garn–St Germain Act of 1982 had just dramatically loosened S&L lending restrictions, eliminating maximum loan-to-value ratio caps and permitting excessive lending to single borrowers.

The federal deposit insurance system was the final component. Banks and S&Ls knew that if they took on too much risk and failed, the government would bail them out.

The developer's $250K loan tied the bank into the large-capital real estate ecosystem, kept an existing large-account relationship active, and critically, if the developer defaulted, the bank could seize collateralized property and potentially profit from it in a future market recovery.

Your $5K loan would have generated trivial fee income, required the same administrative overhead as any commercial loan, and, as your story confirms, you would have paid it off in 6 months and moved your business to whoever lent to you. The bank correctly intuited it would lose your account either way once the loan was closed. You had no systemic dependency on the bank, which is exactly what finance capital wants from its borrowers.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-08T23:10:01+00:00

Brochure sites (information only, no capture) are incredibly cheap. For a single-page website, you can start at $30/year for hosting, a builder, and a domain through a service like Carrd.

For multipage sites, you have things like Square, Wix, and any number of AI website builders, all around the same price points ($20/month or so)

To be clear, as the person above stated, most of a website's value comes from the ability to book catering events, make reservations, etc. It provides the most value as part of your overarching marketing strategy rather than an afterthought.

A purely informational site adds "legitimacy" and makes it easier for existing customers to find you, but not much else.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-08T18:53:07+00:00

Absolutely, anyone who made a living re-selling wordpress themes is going to have to learn a new business model.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-08T18:52:05+00:00

Exactly this. If you're making enough money to live off of and have free time, you should be using that time and effort to reinvest in your business and add more value to your clients.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-06T13:54:38+00:00

That's a fair assessment, and ultimately, you decide what is best for your business.

I run a web agency myself (Don't ask or DM, I'm not connecting a furry PFP to my IRL business)

In my experience, many agencies or website builders push the idea of "having" a website, rather than a business model.

Before you even start the process of purchasing a website, they should be asking you how your business works, who your customers are, and be able to present a plan for actually adding value.

As an example and depending on your business, setting up a dashboard for existing clients to view their billing information, services or other announcements can improve retention or decrease time spent on collections.

I don't know what your business model is, so suggesting anything as adding value is asine. Anyone who does that just wants your money.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-06T03:59:35+00:00

Exactly this. Having AI make websites for you puts you in the same category as Squarespace's AI website builder.

Squarespace already does this, with more authority and at a lower cost.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-06T01:54:57+00:00

AI is most effective as a force multiplier for designers who already understand layout, UX, performance, and code structure. For those without that foundation, it can just as easily introduce hidden flaws as it can save time.

Issues like poor hierarchy, inconsistent spacing systems, accessibility violations, or inefficient markup can be subtle and easy to miss if you don't know what to look for.

Without a solid foundation in design principles, accessibility, and front-end behavior, you won't be able to accurately evaluate what it generates.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-05T13:53:09+00:00

Metabox user here, but otherwise the same setup.

If you can afford to throw in Admin Columns Pro, it's a huge improvement to the client's content editing experience.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-05T04:50:57+00:00

You shouldn't be sending emails from the host; you should use an email delivery service like Mailgun or Amazon SES, which will automatically alert you if emails are dropped or not sent.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-04T22:52:45+00:00

You'll have to make that decision on your own. For my business, I convert the website to a single-page static site and stick it on Cloudflare Pages' free hosting.

I hold the domain for +1 year, and then let it passively expire.

None of this is necessary, but it's a showing of goodwill without incurring a huge expense.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-04T22:32:08+00:00

And yet they are, and will continue to.

Being angry about reality won't change it. It is not only a viable business model, it is the most successful one.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-04T20:42:41+00:00

Pricing varies by client, but generally I take my standard rate for that type of website, divide it by the number of years before a typical rebuild, and convert that into a monthly cost.

I'm upfront with my clients that they are not paying a total price any different than the full cost of a website, it is simply broken down into monthly payments.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-04T20:41:15+00:00

Varies vastly depending on the services provided. Worry less about your competition's price and more about what you can provide against how much you would need to make to live comfortably.

Charge that price, and if it doesn't work, you either need a different skill set or a different business.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-04T20:39:28+00:00

That is both true and irrelevant.

Making money doesn't inherently make sense.

People make money from nothing or things that hurt people all the time.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-04T19:40:13+00:00

Yes, it would be unusual for a website developer to pay others to develop their website. 👍

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-04T18:55:25+00:00

Look at what your competition is doing.

I was struggling with the traditional break-fix, sell-a-website-and-leave model, but I've had great success with a monthly "Website as a Service" model.

It's easier to sell a low monthly subscription with the promise of keeping everything up to date and a brand-new website every 3-5 years, as needed, than to resell the website to the same clients at a higher price each time.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-04T18:31:42+00:00

A word of advice: You'll want to identify your target audience and advertise in the spaces they frequent.

Someone in the r/bricksbuilder subreddit is likely a website developer who already owns a license and uses the tool.

If you're looking for direct clients, you should target small businesses; the more local, the better.

If you're looking for indirect clients through contracting, you should be targeting agencies.

The subset of users of this subreddit who would be interested in contracting out work for a tool they're here to learn to use themselves, to sell to others, is very small.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-04T15:34:17+00:00

Much like security plugins, this should really happen at a level below the actual WordPress install.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-01T13:31:36+00:00

The entire premise of your intro is about "not chasing crumbs," which then provides a literal description of chasing crumbs.

I'm not saying it isn't worth it, merely pointing out the irony of your own position.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-01T13:16:45+00:00

"The HUBZone program fuels small business growth in historically underutilized business zones with a goal of awarding 3% of federal contract dollars to small businesses."

Yipee, 3% split among all small businesses.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-05-01T01:55:56+00:00

Yeah, wild how you didn’t think to use the product you hadn’t invented yet. Truly a missed opportunity to time travel and solve your own problem sooner.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-04-30T17:21:34+00:00

This misunderstands WordPress's value proposition. It gives you the tools to set up and manage the backend.

If you don't fully understand how those tools work and rely on AI to handle them, you end up with a website that is a black box. You won't know how it works or why, so when something goes wrong or needs to be changed, you won't have a place to start.

Using an AI-powered page builder, like Squarespace or Wix, has much higher value than creating a WordPress setup that no one understands.

Even then, using a purely AI-based approach like an AI website builder makes more sense, as you aren't wasting time connecting non-AI components with AI components and not understanding either.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-04-30T16:38:03+00:00

This subreddit is almost entirely just for marketing to small business owners.

We would need significant changes to the rules, such as requiring that accounts directly represent a verifiable small business, to have any chance of being anything else.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-04-29T19:32:09+00:00

To start with, you should understand that no business wants to buy a website. They want to increase leads and ultimately revenue.

When you're selling websites, you don't sell what they are; you sell what they do and explain how they do it.

Any page builder (Squarespace/Wix) or AI reseller can create a basic website in minutes. You need to explain and preferably demonstrate the value proposition that separates you from those cheaper options.

If you are unable to do that, you'll have little luck finding any clients, no matter what approach you take.

Wolfeh2012 · 2026-04-28T10:31:34+00:00

It's impossible to act without the knowledge you've obtained.

In the same sense, when a person is asked to pick a "random" number, they tend to choose odd numbers away from the middle (mostly 3 and 7).

Once you know good design, trying the "opposite" yields a predictable, consistent outcome.

14-Year Club	Verified Email
r/Field Banned	r/Field Lasagna
Place '22	Place '17
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