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Web Design or a real CENTS business?

akrtw

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Hi all,

Definitely not a frequent poster here but I’m currently stuck in my own thinking.

Would greatly appreciate any advice, even harsh ones as long as it’s constructive!

I think I have done what most wantreprenuers/money chasers did:

Built for Adsense sites (5-6 years ago): did sell some good websites and made $2k

Amazon selling: breakeven

Affiliate marketing: failed

Dropshipping: failed miserably; lost $15-20k

After my huge failure in dropshipping, I was devastated and paused my entrepreneurial pursuit for a while.

I decided to re-visit the forum, which I stopped when I was doing dropshipping, and discovered Fox’ legendary web design thread.

I was inspired and thought to myself, “hey you have never had really hard skills. Why don’t just learn one and make some money? Best thing is unlike dropshipping or affiliate marketing, I don’t need to gamble my money on paid traffic.”

So I started taking the courses in August and by Nov, I have had 3 clients and made $5k.

I was quite lucky to be honest. Finding clients become much harder after my first three clients.

Tried making short videos.
Sent 1000+ personalised emails.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I know over time if I stick to it I’ll figure out how to find more clients.

But at the meantime, I re-read TMF and Unscripted and many GOLD posts in the forum. It’s clear to me that CENTS is the foundation of rapid wealth creation.

To me web design does not satisfy the commandment of SCALE and NEED.

SCALE because it’s labour intensive work. It’s not like something that can go from $1k to $10k instantly. No need much explanation here.

NEED is a bigger problem here. Just like MJ’s famous “fitness blogger” example: does the world need one more web developer?

Yes I did closed some clients and they were indeed happy with my work. But I don’t see my websites giving them results like “increasing their businesses by 30%” or sth like that.

The value that I provide is merely “building the website”. That’s it.

Does the world need one more web developer who merely build websites? I don’t think so. There are tons in Hong Kong and they charge much lower than me, with much more experience.

Without a real NEED and without real value creation, I’m not sure if I should invest my time and resources on web design.

Why don’t I focus my energy on building a real CENTS business?

It’s not like I have to quit my job tomorrow. I have steady cash flow from my job so I can build a business with it.

Or am I being a quitter and not sticking to one thing?

Would greatly appreciate your input!
 
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Fox

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I think if you are to do web design do it 3-5 years tops.

Have a plan to use web design as part of some longer term plan.

It’s a great way to get some money together, along with connections, skills, and business experience.

But in of itself it’s not an ideal “destination”.
 

Thomas Baptiste

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Web design does answer need (and scale somewhat).

Time is the biggest commandment broken here. I'm big on this topic as I actually worked in this niche. I do recommend that you learn these technologies as it will help any future internet business pursuit you may have. I don't recommend becoming extremely versed in code. Like most programming languages, coding the web can get very complex and time consuming. The time you spend troubleshooting code and making edits to websites for clients isn't going to pay off as much as you think. That time will be better spent learning how to sell and putting together an actual fastlane business. Outsourcing isn't so bad either.

If you do end up going for it, learning the fundamentals of HTML, CSS and JavaScript is going to be the basis of everything that you do. Also, knowledge of server-side programming and databases is going to be beneficial here. Frameworks and templates are going to save a ton of time, but only after you spend a ton of time learning them. As @Fox said, make it the part of something bigger, e.g. with each site, update/increase your portfolio so you lower doubts and get clients easier. Improve your business model as you go along.
 

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