Growing A Web Design Business From Zero

[dawp]

Any updates, @dmichaelmccann ?
How is it going with your new business?
And more important, how is it going with your web design services?

 

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[Santiaggo]

Any updates, @dmichaelmccann ?
How is it going with your new business?
And more important, how is it going with your web design services?

From what I've seen, he was going to start a new thread about his new business in the INSIDERS forum. As for his web design services, I think he stopped doing it since he already had 2 things to focus on (College & his new business).

 

[dmichaelmccann]

Any updates, @dmichaelmccann ?
How is it going with your new business?
And more important, how is it going with your web design services?

Hey thanks for the reply and curiosity about the business! Honestly it is nice to hear that people on the forum are still wondering what I'm up to, as I've been suffering from a bit of a lack of motivation lately.

To answer your question, yes I did shut down the web design business to move on and start something new. Right now it is moving very slowly due to minimal time and lack of capital (I'm working a full time job this summer along with working on the business to make some extra money), along with the fact that I didn't really get started until I returned home from school for the summer in May.

I have not created a new progress thread yet but yes I am still working on my entrepreneurial goals and I hope that I'll have something interesting to share again soon!

 

[dawp]

I'm working a full time job this summe

Full time job? Wouldn't be better to get this extra money by doing web design?

 

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[Fox]

Hey thanks for the reply and curiosity about the business! Honestly it is nice to hear that people on the forum are still wondering what I'm up to, as I've been suffering from a bit of a lack of motivation lately.

To answer your question, yes I did shut down the web design business to move on and start something new. Right now it is moving very slowly due to minimal time and lack of capital (I'm working a full time job this summer along with working on the business to make some extra money), along with the fact that I didn't really get started until I returned home from school for the summer in May.

I have not created a new progress thread yet but yes I am still working on my entrepreneurial goals and I hope that I'll have something interesting to share again soon!

Damn sorry to hear that.

Can you share what you think went wrong or what could have been done differently?

Hit me up if you want a quick talk.

 

[dmichaelmccann]

Damn sorry to hear that.

Can you share what you think went wrong or what could have been done differently?

Hit me up if you want a quick talk.

Yeah, sure thing. I'm super busy this week but I'll message you to talk sometime soon. I'll try to give as detailed an answer as possible of why I think it didn't work out here on the thread though.

From the time I first started the business, I'd always had trouble getting a consistent stream of prospects coming in. I struggled with cold calls and was never confident enough to do in person cold sales (being 18 at the time), although I realize now that this shouldn't have been a barrier to me. When I did get potential clients coming in, this led to me drastically undervaluing my services, making it so that I barely broke even on most of the jobs I had.

When the summer ended and I got to college, the schoolwork and my social life distracted me and drew away my time, and I was pretty much only able to handle one client at a time during this period. At this point, I had been building websites for nearly a year but was still only managing to get $500 jobs that would drag on for weeks and months at a time.

Eventually I just got frustrated and started kicking around some other business ideas, and then I finally shut it down for good when I got a summer job offer that would pay me much more than I was making with web design, and would give me several connections that I could leverage for a future career in finance (my college major).

For what I could have done differently, I think if I had just done a few things (listed below) better, then I'd still be running the web design business today.

1. Had more confidence. This was by far my number one issue. I was afraid to make cold calls, go to networking events, quote fair prices on websites, and just generally put myself in a vulnerable position. I thought that as a high school student no one would take me seriously, and that fear consumed me. If you want to succeed in any business, you have to take risks and let yourself get burned a few times, and this was something I tried to avoid and I paid the price.

2. Picked better clients to build my portfolio sites for. Although I built some very nice free sites for my portfolio clients, none of them ended up getting many page views, which seriously hamstrung my ability to sell 4 and 5 figure sites as I grew my business. How could I confidently claim to potential clients that I could get them results when I had portfolio sites in similar industries that had yet to generate much extra revenue? I needed to target companies that already had some web traffic but a weak website.

3. Had a stronger focus and "why". Although I enjoyed running the web design business, I never felt that burning need to put everything I had into the business to make it work or else I would die or something. I never had an "FTE" to dial me in and push me out of the comfortable life I was living. Especially once I got to college, I would often take several days to a week off at a time that I could have spent trying to bring in prospective clients. If I was truly doing everything I could to make it work, I would not have done this.

Anyway, I tried to be as transparent as possible with what went wrong here and I hope this stops others from making the same mistakes in the future. Just to reiterate if it isn't clear, the failure of this business is 100% on me, and I'm going to take these lessons with me for all of my future ventures. Even though it didn't end up working out @Fox, your web design resources and the web school taught me so much about how to run a successful business, and I have no regrets about anything that happened in this whole process.

 

[Barry_M]

Hi - I skimmed over most of the posts to see how you got on and I wasn't surprised to see you had given up. I was in the same boat around 18 years ago when I started my web design business. I was crap at cold calling (still am). I got in to SEO and got to the top of the search engines and this is still where I get 95% of my work from. I also noticed very quickly that underselling my self got me less jobs so I doubles the price of all websites and I got more and more clients - bigger prices installed confidence in me and my abilities fromthe point of view of prospect customers, plus the SEO rankings I was getting were all first page which really helps!

My advice. Get good at SEO as people want to see them selves up in lights (top of Google) and when you go to talk to your prospects tell them about the results and tell them "no point having a fancy website if no one can find it". Double your prices and do not undersell your services. The best looking websites on page 10 of Google are not making money. Decent enough websites on page one of Google are making all the money for businesses.

If your not at the top, your website will be a flop (Copyright Barry_M 2019 lol)
I just made that up btw so dont rip it off!

If you want any advice please feel free to post back here. Ive made around 400 websites to date, built my own CMS from scratch and I am still at the top of Google for all the best local search terms which is where I get the majority of my clients.

 

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[Funky Monkey]

Larger business libraries have the reference book "Bankable Business Plans" from the Risk Management Association. It provides specifics on typical company sizes, operating expenses, profit margins etc. by industry. You'll find exactly what you need in there to make an informed go/no go decision about which types of businesses can afford a lot of marketing.

Are you refering to this book? Bankable Business Plans: Second Edition (Bankable Business Plans) | Edward G. Rogoff | download
which contains info on how to get to the RMA Annual Statement Studies Statement Studies | Risk Management Association | RMA because its quite pricy even for just the pdf
Are there any alternatives?

 

[Funky Monkey]

Hi - I skimmed over most of the posts to see how you got on and I wasn't surprised to see you had given up. I was in the same boat around 18 years ago when I started my web design business. I was crap at cold calling (still am). I got in to SEO and got to the top of the search engines and this is still where I get 95% of my work from. I also noticed very quickly that underselling my self got me less jobs so I doubles the price of all websites and I got more and more clients - bigger prices installed confidence in me and my abilities fromthe point of view of prospect customers, plus the SEO rankings I was getting were all first page which really helps!

My advice. Get good at SEO as people want to see them selves up in lights (top of Google) and when you go to talk to your prospects tell them about the results and tell them "no point having a fancy website if no one can find it". Double your prices and do not undersell your services. The best looking websites on page 10 of Google are not making money. Decent enough websites on page one of Google are making all the money for businesses.

If your not at the top, your website will be a flop (Copyright Barry_M 2019 lol)
I just made that up btw so dont rip it off!

If you want any advice please feel free to post back here. Ive made around 400 websites to date, built my own CMS from scratch and I am still at the top of Google for all the best local search terms which is where I get the majority of my clients.

I'm in a similar position as he was. I can't really network in person atm but Im looking into remote networking,cold calls/emails,craigslist,and fb groups. Would you recommend just getting local SEO in a decently popular city (my city already has three web design agencies and not many businesses to work with imo}
Are there any alternatives?