How to Learn Code, Start a Web Company, $15k+ per month within 9 months

[Fox]

Thanks again, Fox. You have inspired so many people. I am in your Facebook group, but haven't contributed much other than a few likes here and there.

I'm still sort of wrapping my head around how to approach a business that I think has a terrible website. I can feel the fear and anxiety creeping in knowing that I'm going to have to make a phone call.

I was talking to my mom today who is starting a charitable organization. I offered to build the site for her and she agreed. She has the domain, but never pursued developing it yet. This will give me the opportunity to get started at my own pace (since she's not in a hurry to have a website yet) and get a site for my portfolio!

I have a question. She is using iPower for her domain and hosting. Their FileManager isn't like the FileManager I have seen before. I use NameCheap. When I try to upload the FTP through Brackets, it's not grabbing the files. It will only grab the folders. They suggest FTP through FileZilla. I was going to contact support, but their live chat took forever so I canceled it. Any thoughts? I'm considering just looking at how to transfer her somewhere else.

Secondly, let's say I just want to develop the site and "host" it so she can see it without it actually going out to the internet. How would I privately "host" it only for her so that it doesn't get indexed?

I use filezilla to upload, you should only need the IP, FTP username and password.

As for the second question I believe its a robots.txt file bit this is not something I have much experience in - my customers want the exact opposite!

http://www.inmotionhosting.com/supp...top-search-engines-from-crawling-your-website

 

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[InspireHD]

I use filezilla to upload, you should only need the IP, FTP username and password.

As for the second question I believe its a robots.txt file bit this is not something I have much experience in - my customers want the exact opposite!

I don't live with my parents so I was just thinking of a way to share the design with her. Eventually, I would just build and then upload to launch. I was trying to use the Brackets plugin to upload via FTP. On Namecheap it was working just fine. With iPower, it's just grabbing empty folders. I'll probably have to try FileZilla and see if it works.

And thanks for the recommendation with the robots.txt. I didn't even think of that.

 

[Fox]

I don't live with my parents so I was just thinking of a way to share the design with her. Eventually, I would just build and then upload to launch. I was trying to use the Brackets plugin to upload via FTP. On Namecheap it was working just fine. With iPower, it's just grabbing empty folders. I'll probably have to try FileZilla and see if it works.

And thanks for the recommendation with the robots.txt. I didn't even think of that.

Just a test domain. If you ahve a personal account with shared hosting you can make easy test domains. They look like testdomain.personalsite.com.
Super handy for actual clients and testing builds.

 

[vshetty.vs]

Did you guys get a job on by simply editing the HTML templates.
Most of the jobs on upwork are about editng a wordpress page or with some login pages. A lot of these guys want their pages a specific way, how do you handle that.

 

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[Fox]

Did you guys get a job on by simply editing the HTML templates.
Most of the jobs on upwork are about editng a wordpress page or with some login pages. A lot of these guys want their pages a specific way, how do you handle that.

Hi
- I don't do wordpress unless its part of a HTML site
- Stay off UpWork
- I work with clients who hire me to design, not who want someone to build their specific design. Big difference.

 

[vshetty.vs]

How do you suggest I get started then, to get something on my portfolio.

I am currently emailing and trying to through LinkedIn to some clients.
I maybe even cold call some local guys here in India

But no success so far

 

[Fox]

How do you suggest I get started then, to get something on my portfolio.

I am currently emailing and trying to through LinkedIn to some clients.
I maybe even cold call some local guys here in India

But no success so far

No offense but I have covered this multiple times in the last 30 pages.

 

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[vshetty.vs]

No offense but I have covered this multiple times in the last 30 pages.

Cool,sorry for the trouble. I read the first 15 pages and some where you had recommended doing a couple of upwork jobs I wanted to take some action then so i started searching for a job before reading the rest of the thread

 

[Fox]

Cool,sorry for the trouble. I read the first 15 pages and some where you had recommended doing a couple of upwork jobs I wanted to take some action then so i started searching for a job before reading the rest of the thread

I wouldn't go the UpWork route, approach the right type of client directly and do great work underpriced. Use this to secure more work until you have reached a point where you are confident in your value and capabilities. Then start charging more and aiming for bigger projects.
That is the short version.

 

[Sbshields]

How do you like bluehost? I have hostgator and am planning on switching. I got a malware attack and I'm still in beta. Not even live. I was on spamhaus blacklist, got a reputable freelancer on upwork and got the malware cleaned. Hostgator won't remove the suspension on my domain unless I hire a professional service they are partners with sitelock or a "professional" third party.

I love Bluehost. Whenever there's a problem, I pick up the phone, get someone on the line and we fix it. They offer one price for unlimited domains and unlimited data storage. When one of my sites got attacked I thought I'd have to build it from scratch. I called Bluehost and they were able to retrieve files that weren't affected. After some minor PHP work I was able to get the site up and going again.

I'm sure there are a lot of companies that offer the same products. For me peace of mind is paramount. I've been with Bluehost since 2009? 2010ish? And every time we had an issue, we were able to resolve it quickly. A company that consistently offers high value service has my business.

 

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[InspireHD]

It's generally best to stay away from any hosting that is a part of the EIG Network.

I used to have a Bluehost account, and my wordpress site was incredibly slow. I am now with Namecheap and don't have any problems. A few days ago I was trying to login to my cpanel, but I couldn't remember my username or password. I went to LiveChat and was talking to someone within seconds. The first girl couldn't figure it out so she connected me with a guy. He sent me an email within a couple minutes, and then tried a few different things with me when it wasn't working.

Anyway, the point of this post is to say that you should generally stay away from the EIG Network hosting companies. HostGator and Bluehost are both on there.

 

[vshetty.vs]

Why do oil,steel,industrial services companies really need a website. Do people really search for "oil in XYZ" and select the company they see or is there some other reason

Edit:Happy new year guys

 

[fishgodeep]

How do you suggest I get started then, to get something on my portfolio.

I am currently emailing and trying to through LinkedIn to some clients.
I maybe even cold call some local guys here in India

But no success so far

As has already been stated, getting started in this space has been discussed multiple times throughout the thread. But for your benefit I will repeat it, at least from my perspective.

- Think local, I'm sure there are many small businesses in your area with less than satisfactory websites. Plumbers, personal trainers, dry cleaners etc. Check out there websites, find specific pain points you believe you could correct and approach them with your solution.

- Avoid emails, the phone is fine invention use it, or approach in person.

- Family, some people will avoid this approach and it's understandable. But it might prove easier to approach someone you know rather than cold calling.

- Be honest, tell the person you have no experience in this field and this is your first time at the dance. Which is why you'll do it for free, this leads to my next point

- Do it for free!

I chose to go the incestuous route and keep it in the family. I have two relatives with personal training businesses one with no website and the other has a website, but it's a great big bag of *insert poo emoji*.

I'm sure if you think about it you know countless people with businesses with terrible websites or no online presence at all that you could help, that's the easy part.

Monetising however..............I'll have to get back to you on that one

Hope this helps

 

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[vshetty.vs]

Why do oil,steel,industrial services companies really need a website. Do people really search for "oil in XYZ" and select the company they see or is there some other reason
Edit:Happy new year guys

For others who might have the same question. The reason for a website will be specific for each company. Some might want it to spread their name, some might want it to sell their products or get clients to contact them, some companies might even want a website because that's what everyone else is doing.

The bottom line is .......

There is no way of knowing unless you actually talk to them. Try to understand their pains and needs.

 

[Michael Chiciak]

Im a 10 year web dev veteran. I have massive technical knowledge, but I cannot design at all.

The design part was the only thing holding me back from doing this as a side business. Thanks so much for making this thread, it did not even dawn on me that I could just outsource 90 percent of the design work.

Are you up front with your customers about how you use premade themes?

 

[Javin]

Just did an hour Skype with someone just getting started. Really nice to pass on all the info that will save the weeks/months I spent figuring it out for myself.

If @MJ DeMarco can make it happen I would like to do an INSIDERS call for this. Its not mega millions but I think 1-2 hours will be enough to get anyone interested started towards a 5-10k monthly income after a few months.

If people are interested in something like this let me know. I have gotten a lot of PMs and while I try my best its not going to be possible to Skype everyone for an hour.

Would love to see this aswell

 

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[Michael Chiciak]

Would love to see this aswell

I will pay for that.

 

[Sahil Kashyap]

It has taken me a long time to have time to create this thread and for that I apologize. I have been getting PMs for months and while I helped a lot of you out with detailed responses I wanted to start a thread so everyone would have access to the same information.

*** This isn't exact Fastlane, at least not in the beginning, but its a great way to earn 5 figures a month, learn the skills to create and run your own FL business while building a network of top business people***

Back at the beginning of the year I packed up everything I owned in Canada and moved to South America. I was keen to make enough income to stay down there while also building my own Fastlane business. Problem was I had no online skills, no idea what to do and have never ran a successful business before.

I just launched my business last week and I am still down here living happily so I guess I could say things have gone very well. Hopefully this information helps others achieve similar success and allows them to start pursuing their dreams.


So first things first:

- I started with zero coding knowledge in January of this year. I didn't know how to host a website, I didn't know what HTML or CSS was, I made a tonne of really basic mistakes and figured it all out by myself. I didn't take any expensive courses, had no mentors and probably only spent a few hundred dollars getting set up.

It took me a while to refine my niche but what I now focus on is building simple yet powerful websites that get huge results. No crazy interactive code, no fancy graphics, just simple, clean, professional websites that add huge value to the clients who hire me.

In the last few months I have
- built a website that landed a $1 million pus contract for the guys who hired me (they hadn't worked in over 8 months - oil company)
- built a website that helped get a pro athlete into a world tournament and increased pay from his sponsors (social media profile increase)
- Built a website that has a lawyer making over 1k a week on consultations

While I made good money on these websites its nice to know that the value I added is many times more and all my clients have been very satisfied.

I am still in the early stages of figuring this all out though so as this thread goes along I will still update with what I am learning and what has changed. Right now my problem is scaling, I need more top sales people on the ground selling websites for me. I will come back to this in another post maybe.


So how to begin:

So todays lesson is on how to get started at the very start. You know nothing and you want to get in on this action too. Some quick notes - I build "custom" HTML websites 99% of the time, I don't use wordpress except in some rare cases for add on blog/news sections to my sites. Why? Most of my clients are very busy, non tech people. They don't want or have time to update their websites. They want it built well and they want it to run itself. HTML is a lot better for this and when done right looks way more professional.

How to begin with HTML:

Take the HTML and CSS lessons on Learn to code.

You can also do the JS section but I didn't and have been just fine.


Next take the following UDEMY course:

Build Responsive Real World Websites with HTML5 and CSS3


After this you will now know how to edit and work with HTML themes. What does that mean?

Well there is no point creating a website from scratch. That takes years of coding experience and a lot of time for each new clients. Luckily enough people have gone and created HTML themes - its an already coded website where you just rearrange, switch out the pictures and text and add in a few extra bits (I will show how to do all of this at a later stage).

An example of a theme is here...

Foundry Multipurpose HTML + Variant Page Builder by medium_rare | ThemeForest

It just a blank slate with a certain style that you work with. While this may seem like strange or cheating (I thought this was how to learn to build websites!??) its not. Anyone with an internet can create a website these days so that is not where we will be adding value. We add value by building a website with a purpose. We want to build websites that get results and make money, or whatever they are trying to achieve, for the owner.

So how do you build a website that gets great results?

Good question.

As @Andy Black would say you want sales not a website. I am going to meet him half way with you want to build a website that gets sales. Not a website that looks amazing, has cool videos and sections, talks about the companies recent gold tournament or how they really wanted to do X since they were 5. Now it might do one or all of these things but only IF it helps gets sales.

Every page, link, click and action on the website is to help facilitate the growth of the company and sales.

Lets take for example an immigration lawyer website...

Is the goal of the site to teach you about immigration law?
Is it to show you stats of work, trade and education within the country?
Is it to teach you about what to do when you first arrive, what to pack, what to expect?

No.

The whole purpose of that website is for the user to either book a consultation or contact them regarding their services. Which both lead to that person hiring them as their immigration lawyer.

Now it might use some of the above to help with that goal but it only has one main purpose. Everything we do for that client must help with that goal or if it doesn't help... be removed.


You are going to learn to take the value of threads of here regarding copywriting, sales and the Fastlane Mindset and apply it other peoples businesses to help them achieve massive results. This just happens to take the form of a website. You are really selling sales and results.

Once you sell results there is no limit to what you can charge and achieve.


If you have read all this and want to start follow the above links, compete them fully and then follow along with the next stages. There will be a lot to cover but I will outline everything you need to know to be making over $10,000 a month with 6 months*.

*Assumes actual work ethic, being able to do some learning by yourself and filling in the gaps. I will give advice but I won't be holding anyones hand step-by-step.

Next lesson... Client selection.

Thanks for the guidelines. I get that your website need to have or able to generate sales but I'm trying to build a website for my college which will help me in future to contact as web devloper. As I'll be showcasing my skills. It is a website to help students. But I'm going to build this website for free for the college. So I'll get some exposure. And the tips you shared I'm going to apply them and filter it.

 

[Fox]

Question 1:

Lots of reasons. Some big companies might want to increase their image, some might be actively bidding on new jobs and want a website to back up those bids, others might indeed want inbound sales or just have a terribly outdated website. An oil company can be spending several 100,000s a day and a new contract could be worth 7 figures easily. It is in their interests to give themselves the best chance possible.

Question2:

The design part was the only thing holding me back from doing this as a side business. Thanks so much for making this thread, it did not even dawn on me that I could just outsource 90 percent of the design work.

Are you up front with your customers about how you use premade themes?[/QUOTE]

I just launched a whole course on design here...

Marketplace - Fox Mini Web Design Course

I don't need to mention that I use themes, I edit them a lot and then end result is completely different from just filling out a generic theme. If they did ask directly I would tell them the exact same. These people are focused on their businesses and don;t even know what a theme is, its unnecessary.

 

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[Fox]

Test

I can't seen to quote people or the forum crashes for me!!?

 

[Deleted44974]

I can't seen to quote people or the forum crashes for me!!?

Hmm, apparently it works for me...

But anyways, killer post, Fox!

I was so motivated to jump into action after reading a couple of pages that I looked for a type of business that I know a thing or two about and tried cold-calling. I'm up to four numbers now.

(These bizes are making more than $200K I'd guess, and have free themes on Wordpress with horrible copy and no lead-gen going on.)

I was literally lectured by the last guy I called. He said, and I quote:

"You know how many calls like these I get per day? I don't need to call people and offer my services to them, they come to me, you know what I mean? And also, there's a reason why you're calling with an unknown number [it's because I was using Skype to call him...] -- it's because you know I wouldn't pick up [or some shit like that]. Don't ever call me again."

I'm not sure I chose the correct niche. I'm going for the top guys in a niche where there are mostly 6-figures business. I'm just looking to land my $2-3K website and is so much easier to get hold of the decision maker targeting those. But then I don't think they need a website to land new leads.

Maybe I should target mid-guys. First time cold-calling though, I might just plain suck at it. How does your cold-call template look like?

EDIT: I'd expect not a lot of people cold-calling since it's harder than email. I like email more because I can email my portfolio right then. Do we have data on what is more effective for closing costumers?

 

[JDx]

Hmm, apparently it works for me...

But anyways, killer post, Fox!

I was so motivated to jump into action after reading a couple of pages that I looked for a type of business that I know a thing or two about and tried cold-calling. I'm up to four numbers now.

(These bizes are making more than $200K I'd guess, and have free themes on Wordpress with horrible copy and no lead-gen going on.)

I was literally lectured by the last guy I called. He said, and I quote:

"You know how many calls like these I get per day? I don't need to call people and offer my services to them, they come to me, you know what I mean? And also, there's a reason why you're calling with an unknown number [it's because I was using Skype to call him...] -- it's because you know I wouldn't pick up [or some shit like that]. Don't ever call me again."

I'm not sure I chose the correct niche. I'm going for the top guys in a niche where there are mostly 6-figures business. I'm just looking to land my $2-3K website and is so much easier to get hold of the decision maker targeting those. But then I don't think they need a website to land new leads.

Maybe I should target mid-guys. First time cold-calling though, I might just plain suck at it. How does your cold-call template look like?

EDIT: I'd expect not a lot of people cold-calling since it's harder than email. I like email more because I can email my portfolio right then. Do we have data on what is more effective for closing costumers?

Sounds like he really needs an update, considering he's getting spammed and is sick of all the calls, haha.

What I can tell you from my own experience so far; emailing does not close sales. Maybe you'll get that one business who will respond, but actually close you a deal directly? Don't rely on it. People get emails by the boat load every day. Only the ones that really stand out, or they are familiar with, they read.
And even if they read, they only do it for a split second.
Calling works. Email and then call can be a great way to first create some top-of-mind awareness, then call to discuss more info, if you can get past the gatekeeper that is.

It's not easy. I'll even say its hard. very hard. I think, if you expect to be rejected 100 times, you'll find it's not so bad. But if you expect better results, you might get frustrated and quit (I'm mentioning this cause I just dealt with a lot of frustration after putting in a lot of effort into making proper mails with videos and calling, only to be ignored, mails not read, calls not answered, etc.)

There is a reddit cold calling script in this thread somewhere. The post on reddit has someones script in a google doc file. I'm sure you'll find it looking for reddit and script.

 

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[Deleted44974]

Haha, great way of reframing it! I was feeling like shit after that and making excuses not to call anymore, really.

Yeah, I mean cold-emailing just as the first point of contact and then scheduling a call. I'll stick with calling for now, though. Even though I might get responses like that, at least I get immediate feedback of what's worth going after and what isn't.

Back to smiling and dialing ;/

EDIT: Oh, yes, his website looked outrageous.

 

[dave@brown]

I would like to learn from you


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Chimp]

I would like to learn from you


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

then read the thread

 

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[Deleted44974]

F*ck, this is hard! I just finished another call in the sloppiest way ever imaginable, I completely ignored the script and couldn't stop stuttering, but this time the guy was so lovable... haha

He said they already had someone handling their website update, but said the he had another projects and said to send him an email with my portfolio, etc (that doesn't exist, just a mock-up) and that he'd look warmly.

Any tips on how present myself on the email and not to look like a bummer given everything? Come up with several other mock-ups before sending the email would be a good one?

 

[lifeNchoices]

Disclaimer "Been in the IT consulting space as a slowlaner for a while"

First off thanks to everyone who's contributed in this thread!

I finished the HTML course and the web developer bootcamp course(been at it since August, but this thread got me pumped).

I showed a few of the HTML sites to some business friends and they are going to let me build there websites for their app launch. These are pretty easy sites which will just be a few pages and a contact form.

I hope in the next 60 days to get into more business as the friends/family business can only go so long, but it should give me 3-4 good sites to have in my portfolio.

I've also decided not to touch anything, but HTML/CSS for the next 30-45 days to make sure I'm solid at it. Will report back in the next 60 days on what happened.

 

[Longinus]

F*ck, this is hard! I just finished another call in the sloppiest way ever imaginable, I completely ignored the script and couldn't stop stuttering, but this time the guy was so lovable... haha

He said they already had someone handling their website update, but said the he had another projects and said to send him an email with my portfolio, etc (that doesn't exist, just a mock-up) and that he'd look warmly.

Any tips on how present myself on the email and not to look like a bummer given everything? Come up with several other mock-ups before sending the email would be a good one?

On my day job, I also get emails daily. Most companies send emails that's just copy paste, which is easily recognizable and they all end in the trash after reading it for 400 milliseconds.
Like @JDx says: make it stand out. Prove that you really investigated their website. Next thing you do is to call them a few days later.

It's really no big deal if they say "no". It's their loss actually.

 

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[TheDutch]

"You know how many calls like these I get per day? I don't need to call people and offer my services to them, they come to me, you know what I mean?

Don't know what he does for a living, but he if never had to approach people, while having his own business.. He didn't start it itself, outsourced the work, or took over a business from someone. (B2B)

Can't imagine ANYONE that has its own company never having to put in effort in cold calling/visiting or emailing.

You'll have to be on the map first, before companies can find you.

Correct me if i'm wrong: Adepting ways you tackle obstacles is good, but make sure the ways really dont work before you throw change them. You might have the golden ticket in your hand, and you just throw it away, because it did't fit in the first few companies.






Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G920F met Tapatalk

 

[vshetty.vs]

F*ck, this is hard! I just finished another call in the sloppiest way ever imaginable, I completely ignored the script and couldn't stop stuttering, but this time the guy was so lovable... haha

He said they already had someone handling their website update, but said the he had another projects and said to send him an email with my portfolio, etc (that doesn't exist, just a mock-up) and that he'd look warmly.

Any tips on how present myself on the email and not to look like a bummer given everything? Come up with several other mock-ups before sending the email would be a good one?

My first cold call went like that, I was so nervous to talk to a complete stranger totally lost my cool.

Anyway for your email show them how you will help their company and increase their revenue or get them clients. Show them things that could be improved.
Your email could go something like this

eg:
I noticed that your website gets an around 12,000 visitors per year and even a 1% increase in conversion rate can get you 120 interested prospects and over (120*profit of 1 sale*.1)$

I have worked with xyz.com and got them over XXX$ in profit within a year.

I also noticed that your web page is not responsive, a responsive web page is ranked higher in google's rankings and will get you discovered by more people .... etc etc
. .. ..