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Web designer

Anything considered a "hustle" and not necessarily a CENTS-based Fastlane
U

User62861

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I want to expand my offer from logo design and branding to web design. Already have 2 business owners lined up for the website setup. I'll do websites and maintenance through Wordpress themes as small businesses usually don't need crazy custom development.

My plan is to charge one time fee for the setup and monthly payments for maintenance.

If anyone here do this, what's the best way to host all those websites? I see sites like Hostgator and GoDaddy offer plans where you can get UNLIMITED domains under one hosting (Shared Web Hosting Plans).

Is that the best way to do it? I guess shared hosting has probably some negative sides too.

Please let me know if anyone has more experience in this.

Thank you!

p.s. I've done websites already for clients but they take care of them by themselves.
 
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astr0

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It may be slower and not that reliable than more expensive plans. But it also free's you from the maintenance of the server itself.
Probably a good start for cheap.
I've had a project hosted on shared hosting, but with a different hosting company, for years. And it had a pretty big audience (also was making little money).

They usually give all your websites a pool with limited resources like RAM and CPU time. On some hosting the bandwidth might be limited too, but that shouldn't be an issue for just sales web sites for small businesses.
VPS and Dedicated give you more resources thus speed and stability, but that has to be managed and probably overkill for what you doing.

Unlimited domains under one hosting may also don't mean what you think. Usually, it's the ability to point multiple domains to the same website. What you need are multiple web sites.
Usually, that's called a Reseller plan, I think, for many of them, but shared hosting often has more than one too.
 
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U

User62861

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It may be slower and not that reliable than more expensive plans. But it also free's you from the maintenance of the server itself.
Probably a good start for cheap.
I've had a project hosted on shared hosting, but with a different hosting company, for years. And it had a pretty big audience (also was making little money).

They usually give all your websites a pool with limited resources like RAM and CPU time. On some hosting the bandwidth might be limited too, but that shouldn't be an issue for just sales web sites for small businesses.
VPS and Dedicated give you more resources thus speed and stability, but that has to be managed and probably overkill for what you doing.

Unlimited domains under one hosting may also don't mean what you think. Usually, it's the ability to point multiple domains to the same website. What you need are multiple web sites.
Usually, that's called a Reseller plan, I think, for many of them, but shared hosting often has more than one too.
Maybe the best solution is to let clients buy their own hosting and charge just for setup? If they need help with the maintenance in the future I could charge them hourly.
 

Longinus

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Do not ever start with cheap hosting. It will lead to headaches sooner or later and you 'd wish you never chose cheap hosting.

Siteground is well priced and has good support and a lot of features. I would recommend them.

Also, if you want to sell WP sites, keep in mind it will need updates. It's also so much more easy to have it all in one place. And you're sure your client won't choose shitty hosting.

So asking money for maintenance, support, backups and updates is logical. You can all automate it anyway.
 
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Danczyk

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Get a bluehost or any big hosting company with affiliate offers, send them your affiliate links and make some extra bucks per client.
 

Digamma

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Get a bluehost or any big hosting company with affiliate offers, send them your affiliate links and make some extra bucks per client.
Hell yes.

But don't have the client buy their own hosting. Don't be the guy who says "I don't do that".
Be useful instead. Solve the problem for them.

Explain to them that they should own the hosting so they are independent from you.
But buy for them. "I know the right option, and I know it's a quality company".
And get that sweet commission.

You are at once making more money and improving your service (give them control at no additional headache). Win-win.

EDIT: Also, having them on your hosting gives you the burden to deal with them forever. Shitty clients? Harder to fire them. They stop paying? You remove the website and they sue you because people are that stupid. You go do something else? You have to deal with every one of them to transfer their websites.
 
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U

User62861

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Hell yes.

But don't have the client buy their own hosting. Don't be the guy who says "I don't do that".
Be useful instead. Solve the problem for them.

Explain to them that they should own the hosting so they are independent from you.
But buy for them. "I know the right option, and I know it's a quality company".
And get that sweet commission.

You are at once making more money and improving your service (give them control at no additional headache). Win-win.

EDIT: Also, having them on your hosting gives you the burden to deal with them forever. Shitty clients? Harder to fire them. They stop paying? You remove the website and they sue you because people are that stupid. You go do something else? You have to deal with every one of them to transfer their websites.
Yeah, me taking care of everything sounds like a better solution and service offer.

What do you think of me using Squarespace? I think they offer multiple websites under one account for people that offer the same service. Squarespace seems good enough for simple websites I'll be making.
 
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Digamma

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Yeah, me taking care of everything sounds like a better solution and service offer.

What do you think of me using Squarespace? I think they offer multiple websites under one account for people that offer the same service. Squarespace seems good enough for simple websites I'll be making.
No direct experience with SquareSpace myself, but generally speaking customers who need simple sites don't care and it's a good solution as long as it looks good. Plenty of other options too (Wix the first that comes to mind).
 

Longinus

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@Logomet Since you're a designer yourself, check out WP + GeneratePress + Elementor. Not sure about SS, but Wix sucks since you don't have much freedom. Imo Wix is good for small local businesses that just need a basic website that they want to manage themselves.
 
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Danczyk

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What percentage do they usually offer for affiliates?
Depends on the company really. Between 40-120$. Google is your friend.

Are you able to make changes on the site? I mean do you have the knowledge to make changes on how the site looks? The client generally asks to change the header or the layout etc.

And from SEO standpoint I would advise against Wix, SS or anything that limits you. WordPress is the way to go. Elementor or Divi have some WYSIWYG editors so you could have a site quite fast. Use all in one SEO or yoast and you are ready to go.
 
U

User62861

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@Logomet Since you're a designer yourself, check out WP + GeneratePress + Elementor. Not sure about SS, but Wix sucks since you don't have much freedom. Imo Wix is good for small local businesses that just need a basic website that they want to manage themselves.
Depends on the company really. Between 40-120$. Google is your friend.

Are you able to make changes on the site? I mean do you have the knowledge to make changes on how the site looks? The client generally asks to change the header or the layout etc.

And from SEO standpoint I would advise against Wix, SS or anything that limits you. WordPress is the way to go. Elementor or Divi have some WYSIWYG editors so you could have a site quite fast. Use all in one SEO or yoast and you are ready to go.
The actual design of a website is not an issue, I used Wordpress builders before and I could code the website from zero too.

The biggest question for me is hosting. I would like to take care of everything for a client, but with normal (Reseller) hosting, there might be too many issues down the road.

I'm asking for Squarespace because I assume it's pretty easy to set up a simple business website. Also, it seems they allow one user to manage more websites under one account. Looks like much ''cleaner'' way to handle all that.

What kind of limitations could SS have for 3-5 simple pages websites?

p.s. I'm considering only WP or SS.
 

Nikjoh101

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I've used both squarespace and wix. Both work really well, but I switched because I felled the system was a bit, I wouldn't say complicated, but time consuming, when I wanted to test different landing pages, funnels ect.
Wix have a nice affiliate payout of $100 though

I switched to ClickFunnels, and a couple months later on to (AFFILIATE LINK REMOVED).

Builderall gives me all the fancy features of ClickFunnels but for a fraction of the cost.

I think you can store up to 15 different domains in one account, and transferring a website from one account to another is literally done with a copy/paste link.
This also saves a lot of time if your clients website has the same kind of layout, just reuse the template you've created once.

So using this for clients websites would be a good alternative, either by hosting it for them, or have them sign up for an account through your affiliate link and then transfer the website to them. I think the affiliate commission is around $30-40$/month.
 

richstone.io

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sorry for off-topic, but since I am reading all of this valuable information:

I am about to set up a a new bluehost for my new blog right now, so feel free anyone to send me a private post with a bluehost link (first come first serve)
 

FierceRacoon

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Off-topic, I've just set up hosting with BlueHost. Then I had some inquiry and they asked me for the last 4 characters of the password. I couldn't believe it, I've asked them if they knew anything about how hashes work, but they were clueless. That, you know, encrypting 4 characters and then 10 is not the same as encrypting 14. So no wonder they seem to be getting hacked; moved to SiteGround. This question alone was a deal-breaker for me, I knew instantly it had to be an incompetent company from the security point of view, if they had instituted such a system. So sad, as it was great otherwise. (They were like, your 4 characters are encrypted, don't worry. Seriously, lol, encryption on the backend for 4 characters is not worth much, they might as well store it in plain.)

Then SiteGround had this crazy issue where the CPanel won't establish an Https connection because of my proxy or whatever -- even though gmail, facebook, linkedin and the rest of the internet work just fine -- and it would automatically switch to Http, and the rep told me they don't expect an issue. In the end I've figured out it works over mobile internet, so that's what I do now, but I can't recommend either of them on that basis.
 
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richstone.io

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Off-topic, I've just set up hosting with BlueHost. Then I had some inquiry and they asked me for the last 4 characters of the password

...

This is the trade-off of giving up control. You could host it yourself, but this comes with quite some overhead.

So, what's the alternative?

In the end you'll always have people, for every hosting provider who experienced some problems here or there. And tons of people who are ok with everything.

Also, was it one unaware support guy in your story or the whole company standing behind it?
 

Davide Corizzo

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And from SEO standpoint I would advise against Wix, SS or anything that limits you. WordPress is the way to go. Elementor or Divi have some WYSIWYG editors so you could have a site quite fast. Use all in one SEO or yoast and you are ready to go.

I make web design with Divi theme and also thanks to coding I'm constantly improving my designer skills ;-)

Then SiteGround had this crazy issue where the CPanel won't establish an Https connection because of my proxy or whatever -- even though gmail, facebook, linkedin and the rest of the internet work just fine -- and it would automatically switch to Http, and the rep told me they don't expect an issue. In the end I've figured out it works over mobile internet, so that's what I do now, but I can't recommend either of them on that basis.

Since 2 years, I've been relying on Siteground hosting and never had issues like this or downtime (even if I was on the cheapest plan).
 

Xeon

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When it comes to normal hosting, there is only 1 name you should know: Cloudways.

/drops mic
 
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FierceRacoon

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Also, was it one unaware support guy in your story or the whole company standing behind it?

No, it should not be possible for anyone in the company to check the last 4 characters of the password, or the last 2, or the last 7. They should store a cryptographic hash of the entire password and nothing else. The fact that it is possible means that they wrote custom code around handling passwords, which is a No-No. Existing cryptographic solutions have been tested billions of times on millions of websites, there is no need to reinvent the wheel, given that it's not their expertise anyway.
 

Peter59

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I want to expand my offer from logo design and branding to web design. Already have 2 business owners lined up for the website setup. I'll do websites and maintenance through Wordpress themes as small businesses usually don't need crazy custom development.

My plan is to charge one time fee for the setup and monthly payments for maintenance.

If anyone here do this, what's the best way to host all those websites? I see sites like Hostgator and GoDaddy offer plans where you can get UNLIMITED domains under one hosting (Shared Web Hosting Plans).

Is that the best way to do it? I guess shared hosting has probably some negative sides too.

Please let me know if anyone has more experience in this.

Thank you!

p.s. I've done websites already for clients but they take care of them by themselves.

Hi as other have said don't go for the cheap option,speed does matter, go for a VPS service or managed VPS this will do wonders for your SEO. I have copied something out of an article from Bitcatcha dot com this will hopefully explain clearly why.

What Speed Does A Fast Host Possesses?

Here’s a few more things you should know about before we get to the details:

1. Server speed is not the same as website speed.

It’s similar but not the same, like the difference between hardware and software in your Iphone. No matter how optimized the user interface may be, your phone will still feel sluggish if the hardware can’t keep up. It’s important to keep both hardware and software up to date so everything runs smoothly and speedy

2. How we measure server speed

Server speed is measured by testing its response time – the amount of time it takes for the server to respond to a request from a client.

3. What the server speed test reveals

The effective reach of the data center, hardware specs, server setup and their network planning

4. Google’s server response time benchmark

According to Google, the optimal server response time is 200 ms. Anything slower and sites will start feeling sluggish.

5. About Bitcatcha’s server speed checker

Our unique server speed checker calculates the average server response times across 8 locations worldwide. Scores below 180 ms is ranked “A+” and scores from 181 ms to 210 ms will be ranked “A.”

The Fastest Web Hosting
SiteGround
Hostinger
A2 Turbo
Inmotion Hosting
Kinsta
Liquid Web

I always ask anyone I host with how many website are on each server the fewer the better,On cheap hostings there can be hundreds of website on each server this means it takes Google's robots ages when it arrives on the server to find your website and for slow servers you get minus points from Google. Eight websites or less on one VPS server is great.

So ideally you want a fast server speed with few webstites per server and of course a fast website those 3 critera give you big SEO plus points in Googles eyes and you don't really need to try hard to achieve that why make it hard for yourself.

Just a passing thought for you: More than three seconds and the visitors are gone. Whether on a smartphone or laptop, whether online shopping or clicking through images: If the website requires more than a few seconds to load, the visitor leaves the site angrily. Studies suggest that even a 1 second extended load time results in 7% fewer sales and 11% fewer pageviews. To get the best user experience, more and more users expect to be loading and displaying the pages instantly.
I want to expand my offer from logo design and branding to web design. Already have 2 business owners lined up for the website setup. I'll do websites and maintenance through Wordpress themes as small businesses usually don't need crazy custom development.

My plan is to charge one time fee for the setup and monthly payments for maintenance.

If anyone here do this, what's the best way to host all those websites? I see sites like Hostgator and GoDaddy offer plans where you can get UNLIMITED domains under one hosting (Shared Web Hosting Plans).

Is that the best way to do it? I guess shared hosting has probably some negative sides too.

Please let me know if anyone has more experience in this.

Thank you!

p.s. I've done websites already for clients but they take care of them by themselves.
 

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