Has anyone ever started a web design business?

[Twiizlar]

I am planning on starting my own web design business. While i cant design i am going to partner up or hire someone that can. I know there are hundreds of other web design companies but i will be using a different/unique approach. I have also thought of marketing ideas i can use that web design companies arnt using right now.

 

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[alexanderkjones]

@Twiizlar I'm just going to be honest here that post has trouble written all over it. Don't go into business in something you don't know anything about, that's a lot of risk. I'm all about mitigating risk and what it sounds like is that you've got some unique skills as a marketer. Pitch your marketing skills and partner with existing web companies that have paying clients since they should already know what they are doing but most don't have market savvy and they can use that as a competitive advantage. Don't partner with some joe shmo designer work with established companies and bring them value. Always work business to business when you're starting out even if that means you have to be consultant. You can learn the business and spin off your own online marketing/design company after you've learned the ropes.

I have started a web design company and dropped it. It's competitive, mostly outsourced to india, and clients are a pain in the a$$.

 

[Gale4rc]

I think most members here have tried figured out, that idea has been beatin to death.

 

[odihost]

Well I'm in the web development business. I think for a start try find reliable cheap company. That means you need to find in Asia and sell in Australia, Europe and US.

 

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[JasonR]

Web Design businesses usually not "Fastlane."

I use it do it on the side for people. Hated it. Realized it's a higher paying "job."

Not that there aren't some really successful ones out there (99Designs, etc) but they are usually based on a massively different model than grinding away for hours and billing on your time.

Sort of like being a Lawyer...

 

[Erik Heyl]

I am planning on starting my own web design business. While i cant design i am going to partner up or hire someone that can. I know there are hundreds of other web design companies but i will be using a different/unique approach. I have also thought of marketing ideas i can use that web design companies arnt using right now.

Yup I did. Right when I got out of university in 2001. Did it til 2005 and decided I needed a change. It became all about price, not value. I also went and did the marketing and SEO and door-to-door selling...mom helped with the books, Dad helped kick me in the a$$ every so often. Even went to the local business centre and took a course on getting business started. All in all, it was quite the ride. I still do it from time to time (heck I love Wordpress) and marketing has become a LOT easier with the internet.

 

[odihost]

Yup I did. Right when I got out of university in 2001. Did it til 2005 and decided I needed a change. It became all about price, not value. I also went and did the marketing and SEO and door-to-door selling...mom helped with the books, Dad helped kick me in the a$$ every so often. Even went to the local business centre and took a course on getting business started. All in all, it was quite the ride. I still do it from time to time (heck I love Wordpress) and marketing has become a LOT easier with the internet.

That's true, price is a very important part, but quality is also important. If you have low price and good quality people will come again and basically trust you and willing to pay more. Key to price is to get good low paid staff $4/hour or $700 a month that will get a very good developer, you can sell 4 simple sites each for $300 = $1200

 

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[blaksol]

I am planning on starting my own web design business. While i cant design i am going to partner up or hire someone that can. I know there are hundreds of other web design companies but i will be using a different/unique approach. I have also thought of marketing ideas i can use that web design companies arnt using right now.

There is still real money to be made in this space. I am a developer and great at local seo. If you are good at selling I think we could make a perfect partnership. Message me if you're interested.

 

[smarty]

Not fastlane. Stressful. Jail. Repeatable shit. If you can code software, build some sort of business management subscription service.

 

[fuller]

I do it on the side on referrals only. Like everyone else has said, it's not a fastlane business by any means. Competition is fierce and based on the cheapest price, not value. My USP is the fact that I'm their friend, and that's not really scale-able.

 

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[ddzc]

Like the others mentioned...plus Wix is killing it for every web designer and developer out there right now.

 

[TheSilverSpoon]

There's a company local to me who just outsources all the work to another domestic company who does all the actual content creation.

They make $100 or so on the front end and ~$50 / mo recurring on each new acquisition.

Expenses are minimal. One member pays the cost for another ten or so members.
Risk is low. They don't start outsourcing until they get paid.

And those numbers are for the most hands-off, cheapest design package. The more high-touch it is the higher the price.

They very advertise heavily and I'm imagine do quite well.

But that kind of success isn't going to come from banging away on a keyboard all day. Think bigger.

 

[Bandy]

Im currently doing this, but not the "traditional" way.
I am using wordpress as a basis and have developed a distribution system in which users can sign up, pay on a monthly basis, and get their own business website ready within 5 minutes. They can choose between 5 premium themes and are able to configure everything themselves. We do offer instructions on how to do the most common things.
If they want premium plugings/themes they will have to buy this as an addon.
Basically its a premium wordpress hosting business targeting to small/medium sized business owners who dont want to spend thousands for a premium website. They more or less get the website for free and pay for hosting/support and functionality.
If they want they can buy different services (like unique webdesign/ let us do the website for them), SEO, Logo and print,etc. for a fixed price.
The whole distribution process (signup,billing,invoicing,wordpress website creation, domain registration) is completely automated.
They even get reminders/auto shutdown when they haven´t paid in certain time period.
They monthly fee varies depending on disk space, plugins/themes available, traffic, emails, and support level.
They can cancel and up/downgrade anytime.
I´m currently into late developing stage but have got some very satisfied paying customers and have many prospects who are very interested in this.

If you have any questions regarding this, I will try to answer your question as precise as possible.

Regards from Germany

 

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[odihost]

Im currently doing this, but not the "traditional" way.
I am using wordpress as a basis and have developed a distribution system in which users can sign up, pay on a monthly basis, and get their own business website ready within 5 minutes. They can choose between 5 premium themes and are able to configure everything themselves. We do offer instructions on how to do the most common things.
If they want premium plugings/themes they will have to buy this as an addon.
Basically its a premium wordpress hosting business targeting to small/medium sized business owners who dont want to spend thousands for a premium website. They more or less get the website for free and pay for hosting/support and functionality.
If they want they can buy different services (like unique webdesign/ let us do the website for them), SEO, Logo and print,etc. for a fixed price.
The whole distribution process (signup,billing,invoicing,wordpress website creation, domain registration) is completely automated.
They even get reminders/auto shutdown when they haven´t paid in certain time period.
They monthly fee varies depending on disk space, plugins/themes available, traffic, emails, and support level.
They can cancel and up/downgrade anytime.
I´m currently into late developing stage but have got some very satisfied paying customers and have many prospects who are very interested in this.

If you have any questions regarding this, I will try to answer your question as precise as possible.

Regards from Germany

Interesting. So this is basically a hosting business? not a web development business? How do you promote the business?

 

[Bandy]

It´s basically both. I started the traditional way. Doing webdesign for customers on wordpress basis. This can be quick/good money but wont make you rich and like many others said is not really fastlane.
I´m running my own server and that way I got them to host their site on my sever.
(Which would bring me further jobs over the time when their needs/focus shifted).

I didn´t see the opportunity back then when I first started since I only wanted to make some money on the side.
But all these steps (setting wordpress up, installing a theme, configuring it, dns settings, domain registration, writing invoices, etc...) they where so time consuming and unefficient and this got me thinking. Can´t this be automated in some way (like many hosting business do) and still offer all the advantaged of wordpress? So I thought of a process to automate this and found different solutions.
Wix is basically doing the same. You can host your website on their platform and create a good looking website within minutes.
All this for a small monthly fe.

So its a bit of both worlds. In the end the customer doesn´t even care how you call your business since most of them can´t tell the difference between hosting, domain registras, web design, wordpress etc.. They just want a solution that works out of the box and does everything for them.

That is what we are offering: flexible & premium Websolutions for small/medium sized business.

Big advantage of wordpress here: has many seo, social media etc. plugins integrated.
I am currently talking to some other business owners who offer local seo and adwords campaign so I can connect them via my service and get xx % profit share.
Same goes for logo/printing stuff and legal issues. (legal issues are huge here in germany)
So in the end you get everything you need from just one business: US

This way the customers can more or less "configure" his package of what he really needs.

 

[stranger]

Since 2014, I started my own freelance agency which provides a web design and etc. First of all, you should know where and how you'll reach your clients. It's not an easy business, but why it can't become a Fastlane stuff?

 

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[stranger]

@Twiizlar

I have started a web design company and dropped it. It's competitive, mostly outsourced to india, and clients are a pain in the a$$.

However, sometimes, it's a headache to work with outsourced guys from India. I do have nothing against India.

You said you had run a web design company. How long time did you do this business? It's very interesting for me because I've been running my own freelance agency since 2014. And we offer a web design too.

 

[Bandy]

Since 2014, I started my own freelance agency which provides a web design and etc. First of all, you should know where and how you'll reach your clients. It's not an easy business, but why it can't become a Fastlane stuff?

Only scalable to a certain amount.

 

[damiandabcom]

I've been working for many years as web designer, created websites with joomla, drupal and wordpress. It's not a fastlane business, very stressful, you need be always available for your clients. You get money only if you work, if you want to outsource it you need to be a good project manager, but it also take a lot of time. In my opinion this business model is not a money tree
Regards,
Damian

 

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[stranger]

if you want to outsource it you need to be a good project manager, but it also take a lot of time. In my opinion this business model is not a money tree
Regards,
Damian

I think when you start any new business it always takes a lot of time. Just my opinion.

 

[stranger]

Only scalable to a certain amount.

And what's a certain among on your view?

 

[damiandabcom]

I think when you start any new business it always takes a lot of time. Just my opinion.

I didn't mean it takes a lot of time to start, but to manage your clients projects. In web design every project is a custom project, every client has different wishes and they very often change the project specification or need additional features or want to change the design or many other things... As alexanderkjones has already mentioned "clients are a pain in the a$$."

 

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[stranger]

I didn't mean it takes a lot of time to start, but to manage your clients projects. In web design every project is a custom project, every client has different wishes and they very often change the project specification or need additional features or want to change the design or many other things... As alexanderkjones has already mentioned "clients are a pain in the a$$."

I want "a pain in the a$$" if a client has money to pay for this.
Any freelance business is "a pain in the a$$".

 

[Bandy]

And what's a certain among on your view?

Doing custom projects (aka freelance webdesign) means: you only have 24 hours a day to work. even if you worked for 100$/hour, your income is limited by the hours you are working.-> Your income increases linear to your workload.

VS.

Some kind of automated product: Your product has a fixed priced and can be distributed thousands upon thousands. There is no physical limit (looking at it ideally!). -> Your income increases exponentially to your workload. Highly scalable!

 

[damiandabcom]

I've been working as freelancer many years, I had my system and I was able to make even few websites a day, but there was always a time limit and finally I created a web application, where the users can create a website himself in seconds. This app can handle tausends of websites, I can always upgrade the server to offer even more, so there is no limitation. If someone would like to test it, here the link: http://getfruittree.com
Regards,
Damian

 

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[stranger]

Doing custom projects (aka freelance webdesign) means: you only have 24 hours a day to work. even if you worked for 100$/hour, your income is limited by the hours you are working.-> Your income increases linear to your workload.

VS.

Some kind of automated product: Your product has a fixed priced and can be distributed thousands upon thousands. There is no physical limit (looking at it ideally!). -> Your income increases exponentially to your workload. Highly scalable!

You find/hire a few skilled designers, a few copywriters and etc and run your business. I meant you created a team of skillful guys to do this business. It's a daily job for them but a fastlane business for you. Of course, if you'll be able to drive a sea of clients. The key word is "IF".
No doubt, it's just a daily job if you're alone web designer without a team.