[Progress Thread] Teen Execution (17)

[Edgar King]

Ayeeeee, I'm proud of you bro! Earning at all can be quite a hurdle, but you put your head down and helped someone so the results followed.

Now that you've got your first customer. The next steps should be to build a produtocracy. You know the point where that same customer goes to his friends and recommends you and you grow organically? Yes, that one. One way I've heard to do just that is to lay out your value skews, what desirable qualities will you be a master of in your market? Speed? Design? SEO? Hit 2, 3,4+ and you should have yourself a home run!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Choate]

So I finished a site for one person and now I just need to figure how to get it on their hosting properly, been waiting for ages on the pool project that I got to give me content, waiting on content for the travel club project I took on. As for paid work the client that I talked about earlier from cold calls basically asked for a proposal (had a few hiccups with emails as he sometimes wouldn't respond and getting to know the context of what he was looking for). I sent him one for $500 (Low balling as I think this site will also provide lots of leverage). Somewhat odd to me, was the fact he needed a site for just displaying his works and actually didn't really care to much about getting clients via the web.
I also finished an SEO course.
On a sidenote I recently read seven figure agency roadmap by Josh Nelson and I will most likely change my strategy. I'm going to try to become proficient in PPC so I can start offering a online marketing package Web Design,SEO,PPC,and Social media mangement if needed for a specific niche. The package will build on itself basically the main offer will be the SEO+PPC but if they have not site and need social media management it will be added one. Once I become proficient in PPC and find a niche I should serve. I will start taking the action steps from the book.

Web design, SEO, PPC, and social media management is a lot to take on all at once - especially SEO and PPC. A lot of money is lost in PPC, and smaller budgets and inexperience are limiting factors here. Skip the PPC altogether. It's one thing to sell clients on a website, it's another thing entirely to sell them on a $500/month ad budget and $500/month retainer. And then you have to find clients where this is even worth it for them.

An easier way to create recurring revenue with clients is to offer maintenance packages. WordPress needs to be updated regularly. So does its themes and plugins. Stuff breaks, even in lightweight builds. Create backups, perform updates, help with employee onboarding, then add in other small content updates that the client wants and you can charge an easy $50/month recurring. It's worth it for most businesses to not have a website that breaks.

As for SEO, some of this should be part of your core website build: setting up proper HTML structure, tags, submitting sitemaps to Google, configuring Yoast or RankMath, etc. But honestly, and this is just my opinion, real growth oriented SEO is out of reach for a lot of small businesses and you won't have the resources or time to one man it yourself. For any serious amount of traffic you are talking about a dedicated SEO team, content management + writers, etc. What you can do is use the free version of Semrush, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console to create a consultative SEO service in addition to following best practices for your website builds.

For social media management, just helping get these profiles setup, looking good, and teaching the client how to use them should be sufficient for most. Some will want help but most can handle it on their own these days. Social media is sort of a never ending blackhole of content that you nor your client owns, so don't spend too much time here.

Keep practicing CSS, start learning JavaScript, and keep on with WordPress - majority of small businesses are on here and already using Elementor, and are looking for someone like you to help out after parting ways with their web developer, who may have just been a one time deal. Don't be a one time deal. Look for ways to add value and build relationships that will last years.

 

[Funky Monkey]

Web design, SEO, PPC, and social media management is a lot to take on all at once - especially SEO and PPC. A lot of money is lost in PPC, and smaller budgets and inexperience are limiting factors here. Skip the PPC altogether. It's one thing to sell clients on a website, it's another thing entirely to sell them on a $500/month ad budget and $500/month retainer. And then you have to find clients where this is even worth it for them.

An easier way to create recurring revenue with clients is to offer maintenance packages. WordPress needs to be updated regularly. So does its themes and plugins. Stuff breaks, even in lightweight builds. Create backups, perform updates, help with employee onboarding, then add in other small content updates that the client wants and you can charge an easy $50/month recurring. It's worth it for most businesses to not have a website that breaks.

As for SEO, some of this should be part of your core website build: setting up proper HTML structure, tags, submitting sitemaps to Google, configuring Yoast or RankMath, etc. But honestly, and this is just my opinion, real growth oriented SEO is out of reach for a lot of small businesses and you won't have the resources or time to one man it yourself. For any serious amount of traffic you are talking about a dedicated SEO team, content management + writers, etc. What you can do is use the free version of Semrush, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console to create a consultative SEO service in addition to following best practices for your website builds.

For social media management, just helping get these profiles setup, looking good, and teaching the client how to use them should be sufficient for most. Some will want help but most can handle it on their own these days. Social media is sort of a never ending blackhole of content that you nor your client owns, so don't spend too much time here.

Keep practicing CSS, start learning JavaScript, and keep on with WordPress - majority of small businesses are on here and already using Elementor, and are looking for someone like you to help out after parting ways with their web developer, who may have just been a one time deal. Don't be a one time deal. Look for ways to add value and build relationships that will last years.

Thanks for this long post. I planned to just become "proficient" enough so that I could be knowledgable enough to sell it then outsource the work to a white label or contractor. The reason I'm thinking of diveresifying is because web design is getting saturated along side many other digital marketing services. Really the only way to be different is to offer a full system that addresses a specific part of the market. An example would be a gohighlevel funnel build out that gets traffic from tik tok ads which then leads into a email re-activation to leverage both existing clientele and new. Doing so allows cost of replication to be quite low while providing massive value as its essentially just a plug n play for results.

 

[Choate]

Thanks for this long post. I planned to just become "proficient" enough so that I could be knowledgable enough to sell it then outsource the work to a white label or contractor. The reason I'm thinking of diveresifying is because web design is getting saturated along side many other digital marketing services. Really the only way to be different is to offer a full system that addresses a specific part of the market. An example would be a gohighlevel funnel build out that gets traffic from tik tok ads which then leads into a email re-activation to leverage both existing clientele and new. Doing so allows cost of replication to be quite low while providing massive value as its essentially just a plug n play for results.

Saturation is a myth. It doesn't effect long term clients that you cultivate and build a relationship with, and it doesn't effect your network. It's nonexistent for the guy getting steady work through Upwork with 15 job invites per week for web design even though every $200 job has over 50 proposals.

It just means the bar is raised a little bit when it comes to your sales process (perceived value) and the results you create (actual value). The further from that bar you are, the less saturation exists.

Diversifying for the sake of diversifying might not necessarily raise the bar. Full service agencies that do everything you listed are just as common as freelancers who only build websites - so this isn't doing much in terms of being different. And it's not about being different - it's about solving problems.

The yoga instructor might not want to drop $2500 on her new studio's website at Generic XYZ Web Design Agency that can do it all. But she might go to the agency (or freelancer) that specializes in websites just for fitness professionals and gyms and has a portfolio of 25 relevant websites she can look through and say, "I like that one!" Just throwing this out there as an alternative example of diversifying vs. niching down.

I'm not saying this to steer you away from productizing web design, SEO, PPC, and social media marketing all under one roof. It's just difficult to offer all of these things at a high level and provide actual value for small businesses without burning their cash. At a certain size, businesses are going to hire independently. They'll have an intern or two take care of social media, an in-house content team that collaborates with an outside SEO agency, etc. At some point, if you can solve all of these issues for a business, that's great - but that might not be step 1 of your journey.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Funky Monkey]

Mini update: So I kinda of pivoted to doing loom creation services. Basically I was in a FB community and discovered that making looms was a tedious process. So I set up a deal where I would get 25% of first months retainer for every landed deal from looms I made and currently their retainers are 4k. Currently haven't got paid yet as its a performance only deal but if my numebrs are correct I should be able to make profit within the next few weeks. The added benefit on my side is this takes significantly less time to produce than websites. ~10hrs/wk.

I pivoted because with the numbers I would need to do outreach with I would barely get anywhere and the original deal with construction guy feel apart after he ghosted me when I sent him the first draft. I tried to tell him its just a first draft and we could make updates but he was gone.

 

[radiximus]

Mini update: So I kinda of pivoted to doing loom creation services. Basically I was in a FB community and discovered that making looms was a tedious process. So I set up a deal where I would get 25% of first months retainer for every landed deal from looms I made and currently their retainers are 4k. Currently haven't got paid yet as its a performance only deal but if my numebrs are correct I should be able to make profit within the next few weeks. The added benefit on my side is this takes significantly less time to produce than websites. ~10hrs/wk.

I pivoted because with the numbers I would need to do outreach with I would barely get anywhere and the original deal with construction guy feel apart after he ghosted me when I sent him the first draft. I tried to tell him its just a first draft and we could make updates but he was gone.

read the entire thread just wanted to know how its going now? have you landed anymore contracts.
same age as you trying to replicate the same thing. with the $250 contract that you first landed was that just a basic website with a few pages? did you edit a template with html/css or use wordpress etc.
interested because to me wordpress and webflow feel harder than just altering a template to suit a businesses needs

 

[Funky Monkey]

read the entire thread just wanted to know how its going now? have you landed anymore contracts.
same age as you trying to replicate the same thing. with the $250 contract that you first landed was that just a basic website with a few pages? did you edit a template with html/css or use wordpress etc.
interested because to me wordpress and webflow feel harder than just altering a template to suit a businesses needs

Nope I had a few that would be similar but in order to get the good deals I would have to do outreach.
As for the 250 orginially the deal was for 500 for a basic 4 page website which probably should have been 1k but it was local so they didn't have much of a budget. I used a free templates and tools in wordpress but the thing that took the longest was he wanted a gallery of 250 images so I add to manually add each one. Tbh I would go with wordpress as you can use it for free (sorta you need a domain and a hosting platform so about $65 USD) then if you need or want to get more advanced you can use more advanced plugins,webflow,or hand coded templates. Good luck!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[radiximus]

Nope I had a few that would be similar but in order to get the good deals I would have to do outreach.
As for the 250 orginially the deal was for 500 for a basic 4 page website which probably should have been 1k but it was local so they didn't have much of a budget. I used a free templates and tools in wordpress but the thing that took the longest was he wanted a gallery of 250 images so I add to manually add each one. Tbh I would go with wordpress as you can use it for free (sorta you need a domain and a hosting platform so about $65 USD) then if you need or want to get more advanced you can use more advanced plugins,webflow,or hand coded templates. Good luck!

Ah i see, right now i dont really have much interest in wordpress as i have been learning the html/css basics for a while now. I know its quite a vague question but do you think its possible to start on these small local projects with just HTML/CSS? Is it just web design, links, a few elements and basic forms?

 

[Funky Monkey]

Ah i see, right now i dont really have much interest in wordpress as i have been learning the html/css basics for a while now. I know its quite a vague question but do you think its possible to start on these small local projects with just HTML/CSS? Is it just web design, links, a few elements and basic forms?

Yes but using wordpress will be much easier and will allow you to spend a lot less time.

 

[radiximus]

Yes but using wordpress will be much easier and will allow you to spend a lot less time.

okay thanks, after a bit of research decided that im settling on either wordpress or webflow instead of raw code. thanks for your input and best of luck

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Choate]

Hey there, checking in. What made you discontinue wanting to make websites? It sounded like one deal went bad and you pivoted. That's ok, but has the Loom videos been profitable yet?

There is a lot of potential with WordPress websites still. Tons of small businesses have existing WP sites that need updating, redesigns, or someone to just run a backup and update the plugins each month. Really easy to do while you're studying. Charge 2 hours per month for 15 minutes of work per website (unless client needs something more) and it's passive income lite.

You mentioned earlier in the thread you are on SiteGround, right? One website for $15/month. You can upgrade to their $25/month or $40/month plan and start hosting clients websites for $100-$150 per year + maintenance packages. Only takes a couple of clients to cover the cost, and with basic brochure sites, you can easily fit 20-25 clients on their servers (they limit you by inodes eventually).

Just throwing out some ideas. My agency has their $40/month plan and I put clients there that don't need WPEngine (more expensive solution).

 

[Funky Monkey]

Hey there, checking in. What made you discontinue wanting to make websites? It sounded like one deal went bad and you pivoted. That's ok, but has the Loom videos been profitable yet?

There is a lot of potential with WordPress websites still. Tons of small businesses have existing WP sites that need updating, redesigns, or someone to just run a backup and update the plugins each month. Really easy to do while you're studying. Charge 2 hours per month for 15 minutes of work per website (unless client needs something more) and it's passive income lite.

You mentioned earlier in the thread you are on SiteGround, right? One website for $15/month. You can upgrade to their $25/month or $40/month plan and start hosting clients websites for $100-$150 per year + maintenance packages. Only takes a couple of clients to cover the cost, and with basic brochure sites, you can easily fit 20-25 clients on their servers (they limit you by inodes eventually).

Just throwing out some ideas. My agency has their $40/month plan and I put clients there that don't need WPEngine (more expensive solution).

Yeah actually just came back to update.
Made 1k so far after 3 weeks with more in the pipeline
The only issue is I haven't found a way to transfer the money as all the apps and stuff require you to be 18. Interesting how easy it is for me to consume and spend all my money but in order to receive money I have to go through a bunch of hoops. Luckly for me my birthday is Oct 27th so as a last resort I could just wait.
The main thing that is making what I'm doing right now so alluring is how flexible it is for me. I basically can do it whatever time works best for me. Which I need since I'm basically doing this behind my parents back.

 

[radiximus]

Yeah actually just came back to update.
Made 1k so far after 3 weeks with more in the pipeline
The only issue is I haven't found a way to transfer the money as all the apps and stuff require you to be 18. Interesting how easy it is for me to consume and spend all my money but in order to receive money I have to go through a bunch of hoops. Luckly for me my birthday is Oct 27th so as a last resort I could just wait.
The main thing that is making what I'm doing right now so alluring is how flexible it is for me. I basically can do it whatever time works best for me. Which I need since I'm basically doing this behind my parents back.

Hey just another quick question - what exactly did you post in those local fb groups to land the job? Did you target specific niches or just post that you're developing small websites for any business?
Also for your "free" projects how did you get around the hosting fee? Did you charge the business for that

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[WillHurtDontCare]

Mini update: So I kinda of pivoted to doing loom creation services. Basically I was in a FB community and discovered that making looms was a tedious process. So I set up a deal where I would get 25% of first months retainer for every landed deal from looms I made and currently their retainers are 4k. Currently haven't got paid yet as its a performance only deal but if my numebrs are correct I should be able to make profit within the next few weeks. The added benefit on my side is this takes significantly less time to produce than websites. ~10hrs/wk.

I pivoted because with the numbers I would need to do outreach with I would barely get anywhere and the original deal with construction guy feel apart after he ghosted me when I sent him the first draft. I tried to tell him its just a first draft and we could make updates but he was gone.

It's always great seeing young guys here making strides

If you're going the video route, you can check out pitchlane Pitchlane - Video Prospecting

It's a tool that lets you make a bunch of personalized videos at scale. I think that you upload a list of websites as a CSV, and they'll make multiple recordings of your video for each website. I haven't used it myself yet, but I've heard people recommend it. It could help you make videos faster once you have your formula down.

 

[Funky Monkey]

Hey just another quick question - what exactly did you post in those local fb groups to land the job? Did you target specific niches or just post that you're developing small websites for any business?
Also for your "free" projects how did you get around the hosting fee? Did you charge the business for that

So it was kinda organic. I was in a FB group for outreach and found it from there.
For websites my best recommendation is see if there are any ways you can get some easy first projects [maybe you know family, or local business owners, or you know a friend of friend,etc]. If you truly come up dry choosing blue collar niches think [plumber,construction,etc] and join there groups to provide value. Go see Andy Blacks post on joing a community in sheep skin for some inbound and for outbound try cold calling using niches. If a niche isn't working after a decent number [I would use 200 cold calls in a niche with a less than 2% rate of wanting it] try another. Get about 1-5 free porjects then after that use that credibility of results to get more. Hope that helps

It wasn't free. I paid 60 bucks of an entire year of hosting and I ate the cost.

 

[Funky Monkey]

Update: So far its been a bit slow with the loom thing right now and I've just been making tweaks until I get it right. Not

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[radiximus]

So it was kinda organic. I was in a FB group for outreach and found it from there.
For websites my best recommendation is see if there are any ways you can get some easy first projects [maybe you know family, or local business owners, or you know a friend of friend,etc]. If you truly come up dry choosing blue collar niches think [plumber,construction,etc] and join there groups to provide value. Go see Andy Blacks post on joing a community in sheep skin for some inbound and for outbound try cold calling using niches. If a niche isn't working after a decent number [I would use 200 cold calls in a niche with a less than 2% rate of wanting it] try another. Get about 1-5 free porjects then after that use that credibility of results to get more. Hope that helps

It wasn't free. I paid 60 bucks of an entire year of hosting and I ate the cost.

Thanks for your advice, right now i've done a free project for someone i know and am waiting on a friends dad to give me the green light for his own website. I see what you mean about the hosting, if you tell a company youre doing it for free but then send them an invoice for $60 it definitely wont make you look good. Thankfully webflow has a free year of site hosting for students which i am taking advantage of.
Best of luck for whatever you try in the future

 

[Funky Monkey]

Update: So I finished the deals but now I'm in the famine phase so I'm utilizing twitter to generate leads

 

[Edgar King]

Update: So I finished the deals but now I'm in the famine phase so I'm utilizing twitter to generate leads

You could also post value adding content on a platform like tiktok/ Youtube shorts to be seen as an authority figure. Then the leads could come to you (Haven't personally tested this strategy for leads though, but I've seen others do this and be successful with it on the platform)

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Funky Monkey]

You could also post value adding content on a platform like tiktok/ Youtube shorts to be seen as an authority figure. Then the leads could come to you (Haven't personally tested this strategy for leads though, but I've seen others do this and be successful with it on the platform)

Thought about it but seems like twitter is the place to be for my offer. Might implement it later

 

[Funky Monkey]

So I've had to stop doing looms as I wasn't able to keep a consistent schedule. My mom goes to parties and events 2-4 a month and forces me to go and I couldn't tell her that I didn't want to go since I was working because then she would have gotten mad and shut off my internet for not studying and doing things to prepare for university.

So far now I'm signing up for this sales course/camp thing where it teaches sales but gets you landed at a job for 60-100k a year. I decided I would get a sales job in the meantime so I can make enough money to move out to Arizona (though I'm considering Austin or Silicon Valley for the obvious reasons)

I also somehow convinced my parents to sign me up for a startup camp in Feburary (Luckly they didn't read into that well and just saw it as something for my transcript) and if I get accepted into I can maybe use them as an institutional [They won't listen to their "young and dumb" son but they will listen to mainstream media,instutions, and anyone else with American authority] reason to be working on something like a startup.

While I'm doing all that I'm going to see if I can do some tutoring as its the only acceptable "work" (besides my minimum wage slaving) that I can do. Maybe while I'm doing that I can scale that by hiring other people but well see.

Hope yall have an enjoyable holiday season.

 

[Funky Monkey]

So the entire month of janaury I was doing the work required to get the cert and I've basically got it at this point. This acts as a plan B and more importantly allows me to move out and not rely on my parents. Now it is time for the real fun of business

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Funky Monkey]

So far the startup camp has been interesting. One hand they are overly slow on some parts but I've also had the opportunity to speak with many really successful entrepreneurs so its not all bad. Right now I'm doing user interviews for one the ideas that my team is working on.

Long term I'm probably I want to continue on with startups as the probability of success is so low (I wished I had known earlier) .