The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Making Money Building Websites

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

magicmike

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
183%
Jun 22, 2020
12
22
United Kingdom
My Background

I've just finished a postgrad course. During the whole time I learnt how to build websites. Now I am fully equipped to build websites and web apps. I am torn between finding a job as a developer and going freelance.

I would rather go freelance because I would rather have the flexibility both of location (I can work freelance anywhere in the world) and of time (I can work at 2AM if I want to). On top of this, the scope of work (in terms of how much money I can make, how interesting the work I do will be and how much I will learn), is far higher if I decide to work as a freelancer from the start.

The main challenge for me is finding clients. I have accepted that I will have to do a lot of cold calling to find clients. For some inexplicable reason I find myself resistant to call anyone. I'm not even that afraid of rejection, I think I'm very used to rejection in my life. I think I'm more afraid that my decision to be a freelancer is not viable and I will have to just accept that I will have to work for someone else. Ultimately, I'm afraid of being wrong and failing (failing in the macro scale not the micro scale).

I also have the intuition that with my technical skills (both frontend and backend development), I have the skills to solve many different types of business solutions. Unfortunately there are many businesses out there whose problems I am not aware of and businesses that are not aware of people like me who can help them with their business goals.

I don't think it is helpful for me to set arbitrary monetary goals here because I have no idea what to expect. But I think it will help to log my activity here. In the past I logged my activity on the internet for fitness and I made massive progress when I did.

The self-awareness and accountability is very powerful for me, I think. However to try and be accountable with people I know in real life is unhelpful because: (1) people aren't gonna hold me as accountable as I want them to and (2) there is no written log of my activity for me to look at.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Odysseus M Jones

[B...{r<°∆°>}--O--{<°∆°>k}...E]
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
X MODERATED X
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
170%
Feb 2, 2020
916
1,559
60
Ok, I've bought my ticket for this ride.
Looking forward to thrills spills and chills.
Good luck!
 

magicmike

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
183%
Jun 22, 2020
12
22
United Kingdom
7 July 2020

I made one call today. I wanna take things slow and ease myself into making calls. It was to a chiropractor (I may have to target different businesses to sell to).

I rang and hung up at first, then rang again. I went through to the receptionist who took my name and number. She asked me for the name of the company I'm with, I'm not sure whether I should make up a company name to seem more reputable or just say I'm a freelancer (I said I'm a freelancer in this case).

I will try to make two calls tomorrow. It's difficult because between lockdown, being so unsure of the future and not knowing if I can genuinely provide value to these businesses, generating motivation is very difficult. But I would definitely kick myself if I never find out if I can pull this off.
 

minivanman

Platinum Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
265%
Mar 16, 2017
1,722
4,562
54
DFW
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing that you need to target different businesses but did you figure this out after 1 call?
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Fox

Legendary Contributor
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
Forum Sponsor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
690%
Aug 19, 2015
3,881
26,766
Europe
7 July 2020

I made one call today. I wanna take things slow and ease myself into making calls. It was to a chiropractor (I may have to target different businesses to sell to).

I rang and hung up at first, then rang again. I went through to the receptionist who took my name and number. She asked me for the name of the company I'm with, I'm not sure whether I should make up a company name to seem more reputable or just say I'm a freelancer (I said I'm a freelancer in this case).

I will try to make two calls tomorrow. It's difficult because between lockdown, being so unsure of the future and not knowing if I can genuinely provide value to these businesses, generating motivation is very difficult. But I would definitely kick myself if I never find out if I can pull this off.

I highly recommend doing at least one project for someone you know or are connected with first.

Having some results will get the focus off you personally and on to how you can help. Cold calling without past results is not very high ROI.

But fair play for taking action and hope it goes well.
 

Tourmaline

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
120%
Jun 4, 2019
898
1,082
Texas
What did you do your postgrad in?
 

magicmike

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
183%
Jun 22, 2020
12
22
United Kingdom
I highly recommend doing at least one project for someone you know or are connected with first.

Having some results will get the focus off you personally and on to how you can help. Cold calling without past results is not very high ROI.

But fair play for taking action and hope it goes well.

Fair play, I'll take a look for anyone I know who I can do a website for in the meantime. Thanks for the advice Fox!
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

magicmike

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
183%
Jun 22, 2020
12
22
United Kingdom
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing that you need to target different businesses but did you figure this out after 1 call?

I want to target different businesses because there are companies out there with bigger margins than chiropractors. Has nothing to do with the difficulty of selling them.
 

magicmike

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
183%
Jun 22, 2020
12
22
United Kingdom
13 July 2020

Update. Made 4 calls today. I'm warming up to making cold calls, I can see myself making 40-50 calls a day at max capacity. I'll attempt 8 tomorrow. The 4 calls were all Electricians, all rejections so far.

As Fox said earlier it is best to reach out to my network and try start getting work that way. I have already sent a message for a friend of a friend who was looking for a developer a few weeks ago but haven't heard anything back.
 

minivanman

Platinum Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
265%
Mar 16, 2017
1,722
4,562
54
DFW
Are you showing them some of the cool websites that you have built and how they are ranking near the top of the 1st page of Google? How does your own business website look and rank? Do you also offer them SEO or just to build the site?
 

magicmike

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
183%
Jun 22, 2020
12
22
United Kingdom
Are you showing them some of the cool websites that you have built and how they are ranking near the top of the 1st page of Google? How does your own business website look and rank? Do you also offer them SEO or just to build the site?

I am indeed offering SEO as well as site building.

I don’t currently have a site ranking high on google, yet. But that’s a great idea, I’ll build one within the fortnight.

The plan is to show them what I’ve done once I get a meeting, yes.
 

magicmike

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
183%
Jun 22, 2020
12
22
United Kingdom
Tuesday 14th July

Feeling very tired today for no real reason, haven’t made any calls. Will use today to build a long list of leads (100-200 or so).

Gonna work on building a web scraper to make building the lead list much more efficient.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

magicmike

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
183%
Jun 22, 2020
12
22
United Kingdom
Update: Mon Aug 31.
I got a client from my network a few weeks ago. $1k for a weeks worth of work. I’m working in tandem with a graphic designer so much of my time right now is waiting for the designs to be finished before coding the front end.
There is also work in the future worth a lot more (both website and app work), depending on how well I do on this project.

I think the app work will be in the region of $12-15k.

I’m still on the lookout for other clients and will resume cold calling in the coming weeks. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of which industries to target and what my main selling point is.

At this point on phone calls I think I will present my services as “software to help speed business processes and automation” or along these lines.

I think this will make prospective clients more interested. Then I can give concrete examples of the kind of work I can produce, which should further interest.

Instead of just saying “I sell websites, durrr”.
 
Last edited:

minivanman

Platinum Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
265%
Mar 16, 2017
1,722
4,562
54
DFW
1. "so much of my time right now is waiting for the designs to be finished before coding the front end"

2. "will resume cold calling in the coming weeks"

3. "I’ve spent a lot of time thinking"

These are your BIG weaknesses. You should work on them.

Personally,
1. While waiting for the designs to be finished, I'd be on that phone ever second that I have free.

2. No time to wait weeks, I would have never stopped calling. Why aren't you on that phone right now?

3. If you must think, I try not to, make a call, think for 3 minutes.... make a call, think for 3 minutes.....
 

magicmike

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
183%
Jun 22, 2020
12
22
United Kingdom
1. "so much of my time right now is waiting for the designs to be finished before coding the front end"

2. "will resume cold calling in the coming weeks"

3. "I’ve spent a lot of time thinking"

These are your BIG weaknesses. You should work on them.

Personally,
1. While waiting for the designs to be finished, I'd be on that phone ever second that I have free.

2. No time to wait weeks, I would have never stopped calling. Why aren't you on that phone right now?

3. If you must think, I try not to, make a call, think for 3 minutes.... make a call, think for 3 minutes.....

Hahaha thanks for the kick up the butt. Rest assured I plan to make many more calls moving forward.

I did 20 today and will continue to increase the call volume. I was going through some psychological issues I needed to work through.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

Latest Posts

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top