Growing a web dev and integrated services agency from scratch with SEO in 2023/2024; focus on AI

[Choate]

The goal is to revamp one of my current websites into something worthwhile that provides value. This website has never generated a lead, or really provided anything of value. It's sort of just there so when family/friends ask me what I do, I can point to it as a general "yeah, that!"

My background is in frontend web development/design/WordPress, previously copywriting. Currently work with around 40 clients annually, maybe 10-20 on any given month. This consists of the usual small tasks: maintenance, content updates, fixing stuff, etc and some bigger ones like creating new sites. None of this is standardized. They are mix of referrals, clients met in cafes (yes, get out there), Upwork, and cold outreach. The vast majority of my time is spent contracting for a couple of larger startups as a frontend developer and often find myself in the position of a liaison between the marketing folks and the rest of the much more skilled than I engineering teams.

This thread will document my efforts to standardize and grow one industry of my clients through productization. All of this is going to be pretty cookie cutter, so don't expect to see any groundbreaking innovation here.

 

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[Choate]

With the intro out of the way, here's some more succinct details/ideas:

• Target industry: real estate agents, brokers, etc.
• Offering: combination of web hosting, design, maintenance, and AI-powered services
• Productize the above into 2-3 packages, determine what's included, price points

As for the "AI-powered services", I'm just a frontend dev, so I don't have the skills right now to easily create this SaaS style, but that could be a long term play to fastlane this. For now, the idea is to use basic commercial AI to help with the product offerings and help the client themselves provide more value to their end user. Literally just talking about ChatGPT and Midjourney here.

The packages would entail the basics for a regular WordPress site: hosting, support, maintenance, etc. This is usually in the realm of $100 to $300 per month.

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The AI spin would be something like:

• 5-10 unique stock images per month via Midjourney
• 3-5 prompts from ChatGPT: content assistance ranging from blog post ideas, blog outlines, or full posts; could potentially expand this to email marketing; depends on package
• Other integrations standard within real estate market

So for example, let's say you work real estate within Colorado Springs. You'd get 5-10 images per month similar to below, which were generated from Midjourney.



And you'd also get 3-5 things from ChatGPT, which for example might be:

1. "The Future of Mortgages: How Tech Trends of 2023 Are Reshaping the Loan Process"
2. "Colorado Springs' Housing Boom: Navigating Mortgage Options in a Rapidly Growing Market (2024 Edition)"
3. "Eco-Friendly Housing and Mortgages: Colorado Springs Leads the Way"
4. "Adapting to the Post-Pandemic Mortgage Landscape: Lessons from 2023 and What to Expect in 2024"
5. "The Millennial and Gen Z Homeownership Wave: Tailoring Mortgage Solutions for Young Colorado Springs Residents"

Either along with full outlines or even full posts. Ideally, it goes through a quick edit process in-house and then the client further edits it to their needs.

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On the web development side of things, things should be well handled. I have a method of quickly building WordPress websites, both custom and templated. Also partnered with WP Engine so can offer referrals there or just bulk purchase hosting. 10 websites is $1200/year through them, while 100 websites is $3,000 per year. That's where economies of scale really quicks in, and they have offerings that go beyond that as well. Of course, this can definitely be done cheaper elsewhere, like SiteGround where you can probably host 30-50 cookie cutter websites with all of the same features for $500/year.

The long term play will be to build out a number of custom templates that can be reused and sold, or even licensed. That way, there's no large upfront web design cost to my clients, which means more easy onboarding to the services, a product they can see and trust which takes out a lot of the unknowns from the web design process.

Ideally, customers should be able to purchase templates and stock photos right from the website, and eventually could turn this into a subscription alongside the existing packages.

 

[Choate]

Immediate goals:

• Map out new website architecture, keeping in mind scalability/growth, adding content silos
• Research other value-adding tools that real estate brokers and agents need, like IDX listings; figure out ways to possibly compete with this via customizable templates that look better
• Brief website style guide
• Create basic 5-10 pages (home, about, services, contact, blog, privacy policy)
• Think about product offerings

 

[Choate]

Crazy to look back at this and think I posted this in August, and here it is November.

I'm a WP Engine agency partner and just had a coffee hour chat with around 10 other agency owners, which was super useful. To become an agency partner, all you have to do is have your own domain (eg thewebsitedesigncrew295.com) and apply - pretty much automatically accepted. After that, they give you free premium hosting for your agency, a sales partner, a ton of virtual resources, and access to a Slack channel. You also get a hosting referral link to give your clients. I can't recommend this enough for someone starting out, as it not only takes care of your hosting (and gives you a free staging and development environment as well), but gives you a product to sell.

The coffee hour chat was super helpful, gleaned a lot of insights into billing, sales, etc. My biggest takeaway from one of the more successful agency owners was:

"New website projects are to grow the business, retainers are the business."

I need to shift hard into retainer work. EG - $200/$400/$600 per month, which would include website hosting, maintenance, and a slew of other things depending on client needs. EG - 1 hour of dev work per month, content creation, etc. This is where my AI thoughts originally were coming in from, but I'm pivoting away from the idea of selling the value of AI. Why? Well, it just doesn't matter. In fact, it might even be detrimental. How you get the results doesn't matter, you just need the results. Clients would probably rather hear about human-based work than AI as it's currently seen as a shortcut (and raises a lot of questions). I think there's still value in packaging AI-generated images in one of those retainer packages, but will figure it out when I build them.

Bringing things up to current:

• Grossing around $10k/month through non-standardized contract work - 40 hours / week and some project-based billing
• Still hands-on for a lot of the very little things for most clients (eg client requests adding a new downloadable PDF to the website, or needs to update their restaurant menu)
• Began outsourcing help for smaller clients that I can't focus on as much but need more help (regular new blog posts, new pages, etc)
• Began outsourcing help for actually building new websites as this is something I dislike (non-standardized creative process is a blocker for me, even though I have all the tools and templates needed to succeed here)

Immediate next steps:

• Quickly create retainer packages
• Actually finish the website
• Shift clients over from doing business with myself to doing business with the company
  • Onboard clients onto retainer packages
• Legal BS (privacy policy, add company as a DBA to my existing LLC, etc.)

Overall, it's been a successful 3 months, maybe not so much for the goals listed in this thread (aka working *on* the business, not in), but for getting very consistent work and having work available to do anytime that I can find the time. Now I really just need to standardize, bring in consistent help, and refine my processes to make things easier. In other words, the next ~3 month goal isn't to necessarily grow from $10k/month but stay at this level, still deliver the same (if not more) value, but do it more easily and free up more time. Also need to set better boundaries with some clients and to stop taking on "need this done in 3-4 days" type of work, even if the pay is good.

 

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[Choate]

Just some random thoughts for readers in this niche:

You should not be in web design for one-off projects without having a plan for long term work for your clients.

It could be:

- Annual hosting
- Monthly website maintenance (updating themes/plugins/etc)
- Content creation (non social media related)
- SEO work
- etc.

99% of your income can come from this type of follow-up work, whether it's retainer based or not. A client that needs a website built also needs a ton of other things. If they don't know what these things are, it's your job to help them (aka, sell).

 

[Crissco]

This is my EXACT idea I have for my business. I have a website and for it haha I thought of this back in June. Great minds think alike.

Only thing is I charge $297 a month for websites, SEO, hosting and maintenance. I have zero clients right now since I went through some stuff recently but the website is still online. I need to work on getting clients now. Which has always been tough for me

 

[Hitch-hiker]

You should not be in web design for one-off projects without having a plan for long term work for your clients.

Hi Choate!
Can I ask how do you generate new Leeds? And how do you sell WP maintenance? What do you tell clients, so they pay you monthly instead of going for one time payment option?

 

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