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Webdesign Fastlane or Slowlane?

evoo21

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Jan 25, 2013
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LeungJan, I'm going to start charging for hosting/maintenance on the next and subsequent clients that I get to start a passive/recurring income stream.

I'm just going to use Hostgator hosting and bill clients using PayPal, which will eliminate the need to handle credit card information. (If anyone knows of a better alternative, I'd appreciate any info!)

I don't know that using paypal billing is the best option. Sure it's free and easy, but in my mind it seems kind of amaterurish.

I think you'd be better off getting a Quickbooks account or something similar, and sending monthly invoices to clients. You can either accept checks or Quickbooks Online has an option where clients can pay you online and they take $.75 or something like that.

Lastly, you can have your customers fill out a form that has their credit card information and a release that says you are allowed to charge it if they do not contest charges on their invoice within x amount of days. Then, get a square (for free) and process payments that way.
 
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elliot

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I know the topic has changed a little but I have decided to follow a course (videos) on how to create Wordpress and Dreamweaver themes and also HTML5, CSS3 with Dreamweaver even though I am not really up on this hopefully I can have a play around. I have made a site for my partner sophiebeeches.co.uk (personal training) which is very basic and I just let her type in the words but the problem that might be a worry now is that many sites offer these easy website builders so any business can use this? I have been reading this thread but am still not sure this is fastlane but not much else to spend my time on atm.
 

LeungJan

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Jan 8, 2013
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I know the topic has changed a little but I have decided to follow a course (videos) on how to create Wordpress and Dreamweaver themes and also HTML5, CSS3 with Dreamweaver even though I am not really up on this hopefully I can have a play around. I have made a site for my partner sophiebeeches.co.uk (personal training) which is very basic and I just let her type in the words but the problem that might be a worry now is that many sites offer these easy website builders so any business can use this? I have been reading this thread but am still not sure this is fastlane but not much else to spend my time on atm.

The website builders havent dominated the market yet and some people would rather give the job to you than do it themselves.

I somehow related this also to:

"The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time."
—HENRY FORD
 

logic

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I'll definitely check out Quickbooks, evoo, thanks!

And the website builders (weebly, wix, etc.) still require a time investment for the business owner. Many folks are intimidated by the thought of building a website themselves. They're also limited in creativity and if they want something that is even somewhat unique, they would have to invest more time learning how to do it.

There's a fastlane need that can be solved; create an even better website-builder.

Still, there will always be a need for a custom, or semi-custom website (wordpress w/ templates) because many don't want to invest their time into something that is unfamiliar to them.
 
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Last edited:

JoeV

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There are 2 ways that I see to make web design worth your time...

First, create and sell templates. This has already been mentioned and it is a good passive way to make income. So many people are building off of templates and just modifying them a bit.

Second, create designs that increase sales for a client. This can be landing page design, optimizing designs or designing entirely new sites with the promise to follow up to make sure the design is producing good sales. Today, people don't want just a nice design. They want a design that increases their sales. This is the direction things are going and any design firm that can't do this will fall behind.

Companies pay top dollar for landing page design and optimizing site designs. Optimizing is more data oriented. Once you get the experience, it is not too difficult if you have some marketing talents. Companies pay me $30k+ just to optimize their designs. They will not be willing to spend $30k+ on a new "look", but if you are optimizing their design to achieve x% more sales, then they will see the ROI.

Take some marketing and ad copy courses in school. Then work on some small sites on the side and offer follow up with optimization work so you can get familiar with analyzing the data to determine where design changes need to be made. It is not passive income, but there is big money paid for your time if you are good.
 

LeungJan

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Companies pay top dollar for landing page design and optimizing site designs. Optimizing is more data oriented. Once you get the experience, it is not too difficult if you have some marketing talents. Companies pay me $30k+ just to optimize their designs. They will not be willing to spend $30k+ on a new "look", but if you are optimizing their design to achieve x% more sales, then they will see the ROI.

Take some marketing and ad copy courses in school. Then work on some small sites on the side and offer follow up with optimization work so you can get familiar with analyzing the data to determine where design changes need to be made. It is not passive income, but there is big money paid for your time if you are good.

Thanks for some great advice, I'm really interested in the concept of sites that convert, not just sites that look great - I've finished Maria Veloso's book on "Web copy that sells" and I'm just starting Ca$hvetising. I just need to apply it right now - any good resources you reccomend?
 

JoeV

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Thanks for some great advice, I'm really interested in the concept of sites that convert, not just sites that look great - I've finished Maria Veloso's book on "Web copy that sells" and I'm just starting Ca$hvetising. I just need to apply it right now - any good resources you reccomend?

Experience. It is the best resource you can have.

Too many people make the mistake of reading books about how to do something instead of just doing it. If you already design for clients, offer to set up tracking for their sites and fix any issues you see.

- Use google analytics and set up goals. You just need to enter the "thank you" page (the page someone sees when they complete an order or lead) as a goal.

- Use google content experiments to run a/b/x tests on any pages that you think can be improved. Never be scared to make a drastic layout change on a page and test it out.

- See if there are any pages where visitors are dropping off. I did a detailed case study where you can read more how we found an issue with traffic flow. See the "Traffic Flow" section at Conversion Rate Case Study: Revenue Up Over 300% | Prodigal Solutions

- Make sure you get all of the basics down... have testimonials, customer reviews, security badge in footer and checkout, keep a simple design, easy to follow navigation, etc.

- Use services like Click Tale and watch videos of users browsing the site. You will get to see where they are reading and why they left.

- test, test, test.


Most conversion rate optimization firms and the information out there is garbage. I have had several companies contact me and tell me their bad experiences with other CRO firms. You will read articles how you should change button colors or change the text for a link and that will generate huge increase in conversions. It is never that simple, but many firms out there will focus so much on the wrong goals and then dance around because they got 137% more people to click on a button. Did it generate more revenue or just distract people before they were ready to buy?

The goal is always more revenue and profits. Always focus on the bottom line. Go out there and get involved in as many sites as possible to see how they are generating there revenue and how you can increase it through improving design / navigation / trust / etc. Every site is different, so don't think books or articles will help you out. The books and articles will basically tell you the same things over and over and over, but using different stories. They basically will tell you how to gain trust, keep things easy to understand for your customer, make things easy to find/purchase, keep the presentation clean, and give the customer value.

You might find a good tip here and there by reading, but getting hands on experience is the only way to move forward.
 
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SameerElvis

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I have been in the web design industry for the past couple years. It can be fastlane only if you build a team, have an actual office and just manage the team. I currently operate a virtual team and manage to do around $30,000 per year which is nowhere near "fastlane". However, I have saved up enough and will be opening an office in New Delhi next year with a sales and development team along with an offline marketing campaign in newspapers, mags, hoardings etc. By the second year I hope to have a team making iPhone / android games as well and by the third year I expect to open a new branch in another city. That can be pretty fastlane. Take yourself out of the equation. I am a top notch award winning designer and a decent coder myself yet I don't do that anymore - I only manage people now and I am now learning to be as good of a manager as I am a designer. And hosting and SEO services are important - recurring revenue is crucial. I also do a lot of upsells like fb likes, twitter followers etc.
 

elliot

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Dec 21, 2012
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I am trying to follow the idea from Pat Flynn giving me experience with using wordpress now and google adsence. Has anyone else had any experience with creating a adsence site, ranking high on google and living off the ad profits?
 

vmatheboss

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Dec 26, 2012
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webdesign can definitely be the fastlane if done right..... i use to do webdesign and graphic design on the side... thats history..but let say i still get income once in a while from my "designs".....but either way i feel alot of work is put into the designs...i can charge $1000 for a simple myspace design back in the days, but had to take a lot of sht from people...not worth the money in my opinion....
 
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