New Webdesign business.

[seaj1one]

I'll be starting web development next year. Just getting my skills up first.

There's a YouTube channel that I following and it's Kevin Geary. He talks about pricing. As I'll be new, my aim is to get a min of £500 for a one page website. With that the customer will need to setup their google my business page or complete a questionnaire and I'll set it up for £100.

Regarding hosting, I plan to charge £40 a month min, which includes website maintenance, i.e. updating plugins, creating backups, google search console and CloudFlare (free). The customer has to have hosting with me.

If a customer wants any more pages, I'll be happy to do the about, contact us and service page for between £150 - £200. Initially, I won't be touching e-comm as it's a beast in itself.

If customer wanted to dominate an area, I'll be looking to charge a discovery. How much I charge will depend on how much they say in terms of expected revenue, but starting at £250. If they don't know their expected revenue, they don't know their business therefore, I can't do a discovery. If I can't do a discovery, I can't move forward.

The discovery allows me to scope out the whole project and give a final price. It's the most important part. I do plan on starting with a one page to demonstrate what I can do but also as a way in.

A rough guide is:

• Create custom post type for each service - £200 per service.
• Custom post type for each service area - £200 per service. It could be by county, city or region. It depends on what people are searching for.
• Customer always supply images but if I do the copywriting, I'll charge £100 per page. I'll be upfront and say that I'm not a copywriter. I'd recommend getting one and I'll charge depending on the rates of a copywriter.

I see if that we are here to help business thrive. Customer can choose how many pages they want based on their budget and my proposed site map. As the company grows, I believe we can too. As an example, if you charge £100 per month for hosting, but the customers generate £5000 of business, to the customer it's worth it.

I can afford to turn down business as I have a full time job but the one thing that I learned from Kevin Geary is that it's all about how much revenue you can generate for the customer, not how much you are charging them.

 

[seaj1one]

I'll be starting web development next year. Just getting my skills up first.

There's a YouTube channel that I following and it's Kevin Geary. He talks about pricing. As I'll be new, my aim is to get a min of £500 for a one page website. With that the customer will need to setup their google my business page or complete a questionnaire and I'll set it up for £100.

Regarding hosting, I plan to charge £40 a month min, which includes website maintenance, i.e. updating plugins, creating backups, google search console and CloudFlare (free). The customer has to have hosting with me.

If a customer wants any more pages, I'll be happy to do the about, contact us and service page for between £150 - £200. Initially, I won't be touching e-comm as it's a beast in itself.

If customer wanted to dominate an area, I'll be looking to charge a discovery. How much I charge will depend on how much they say in terms of expected revenue, but starting at £250. If they don't know their expected revenue, they don't know their business therefore, I can't do a discovery. If I can't do a discovery, I can't move forward.

The discovery allows me to scope out the whole project and give a final price. It's the most important part. I do plan on starting with a one page to demonstrate what I can do but also as a way in.

A rough guide is:

• Create custom post type for each service - £200 per service.
• Custom post type for each service area - £200 per service. It could be by county, city or region. It depends on what people are searching for.
• Customer always supply images but if I do the copywriting, I'll charge £100 per page. I'll be upfront and say that I'm not a copywriter. I'd recommend getting one and I'll charge depending on the rates of a copywriter.

I see if that we are here to help business thrive. Customer can choose how many pages they want based on their budget and my proposed site map. As the company grows, I believe we can too. As an example, if you charge £100 per month for hosting, but the customers generate £5000 of business, to the customer it's worth it.

I can afford to turn down business as I have a full time job but the one thing that I learned from Kevin Geary is that it's all about how much revenue you can generate for the customer, not how much you are charging them.

I'm off to bed but will look at your reply Friday as I have a Xmas party tomorrow @Shopclicks.

 

[Shopclicks]

There's a YouTube channel that I following and it's Kevin Geary. He talks about pricing. As I'll be new, my aim is to get a min of £500 for a one page website.

How much experience do you have in building websites? If you are going to charge for a website build, you need to build effective websites. £500 is fine for a one page site. But nobody wants a one page website and if they do, they will want a professionally built site for their money.

 

[Shopclicks]

Regarding hosting, I plan to charge £40 a month min, which includes website maintenance, i.e. updating plugins, creating backups, google search console and CloudFlare (free). The customer has to have hosting with me.

Why would you create backups? That can be handled with your hosting. Why would the client's site have to be hosted by you? Is it a problem for you if they don't?

 

[Shopclicks]

If a customer wants any more pages, I'll be happy to do the about, contact us and service page for between £150 - £200. Initially, I won't be touching e-comm as it's a beast in itself.

If you can't handle eCommerce, please don't call yourself a developer.

 

[Shopclicks]

If customer wanted to dominate an area, I'll be looking to charge a discovery. How much I charge will depend on how much they say in terms of expected revenue, but starting at £250. If they don't know their expected revenue, they don't know their business therefore, I can't do a discovery. If I can't do a discovery, I can't move forward.

I have no idea what you're talking about here.

The discovery allows me to scope out the whole project and give a final price. It's the most important part. I do plan on starting with a one page to demonstrate what I can do but also as a way in.

Do you mean talk to the client? Most clients will want to see your previous work.

 

[Shopclicks]

• Create custom post type for each service - £200 per service.
• Custom post type for each service area - £200 per service. It could be by county, city or region. It depends on what people are searching for.
• Customer always supply images but if I do the copywriting, I'll charge £100 per page. I'll be upfront and say that I'm not a copywriter. I'd recommend getting one and I'll charge depending on the rates of a copywriter.

Stating these prices when you have no experience is naive.

 

[Shopclicks]

I see if that we are here to help business thrive. Customer can choose how many pages they want based on their budget and my proposed site map. As the company grows, I believe we can too. As an example, if you charge £100 per month for hosting, but the customers generate £5000 of business, to the customer it's worth it.

I can afford to turn down business as I have a full time job but the one thing that I learned from Kevin Geary is that it's all about how much revenue you can generate for the customer, not how much you are charging them.

Again, this is a very naive approach. Build some websites for yourself as demo sites and get some experience. You might find you don't like web design.

 

[fisicx]

@seaj1one - firstly wlecome to UKBF. I hope you enjoy your stay here.

The problem with your approach isn't about the pricing. It's about marketing. The pool of potential businesses willing to pay those sums for a one page site is very small. The web and is awash with companies offering self build sites and professional services. It's becoming very difficult to become noticed. Which means you need to be something very special and have something different to attract potential clients.

There is a whole world of different between a one page site and a site with just one page. I'm not really sure what type you plan to offer as the themes you use for each are different.

Building and maintaining a wordpress site is easy. I can get a site up and running in an hour and maintenance is mostly automated. The bit that takes all the time is getting the content from the client and then getting them to decide what they hope to achieve as this drives the structure of the site.

In your post you mention a custom post type. Not sure you mean this as CPT is specific wordpress construct, for example an ecommerce product or directory listing.

And the cost of hosting is not connected to the revenue. You can earn £5000/month from a cheap shared hosting all the way up to a dedicated server.

As @Shopclicks suggested, start building sites to develop your skills but more importantly get a marketing plan sorted. This is the difficult bit of your business plan.

 

[antropy]

I'll be starting web development next year. Just getting my skills up first.

...

Cool story but I don't see any questions?

Paul.

 

[NickZ]

Why would you create backups? That can be handled with your hosting. Why would the client's site have to be hosted by you? Is it a problem for you if they don't?

you should always have your own back ups. There are thousands of disappointed shop owners which have trusted those free saved up data only to see that they cannot recreate their site.

 

[fisicx]

you should always have your own back ups. There are thousands of disappointed shop owners which have trusted those free saved up data only to see that they cannot recreate their site.

Not if you have a decent host. Disappointed shop owners tend to be those doing it on the cheap.

 

[Shopclicks]

you should always have your own back ups.

Rubbish. That's what you pay your hosting for. They aren't free, they are included in a decent hosting package.

 

[UKSBD]

I don't care how good the host is.
I keep a backup of all the files, images, databases, of most of my sites and also advise anyone I do a site for to do the same

 

[Shopclicks]

I don't care how good the host is.
I keep a backup of all the files, images, databases, of most of my sites and also advise anyone I do a site for to do the same

What's the difference? The third party backup provider does the same thing. How does your method work for eCommerce? How often do you take a copy?

I do take copies of completed sites but only because I may want to use it as template for a new site.

 

[UKSBD]

I don't force people to change hosts go with the host I recommend (I advice them to, but don't make them) and have had people contact me who can't remember where their domain is registered, let alone where it is hosted.

If I, or them, have a back up of all files and images it makes things so much simpler.

I rarely do eCommece, but on database driven sites I make copies of databases once site is finished then maybe once a week for important sites or after making any big changes.

If someone asks me to help with a site, very 1st thing I do before touching anything else is create an FTP account and make a copy of everything.

 

[Shopclicks]

I don't force people to change hosts go with the host I recommend (I advice them to, but don't make them)

I don't have any clients who use other hosting services. They either have their own account with the hosting service I use or use one of my plans.
I did have one client who wouldn't change over but he didn't want to pay for site maintenance. So I built his site and I get a call when something goes wrong. He just pays an hourly rate for fixes.

 

[MarketingQuote]

Hope it is successful, there are a lot of web developers/designers out there.

 

[seaj1one]

How much experience do you have in building websites? If you are going to charge for a website build, you need to build effective websites. £500 is fine for a one page site. But nobody wants a one page website and if they do, they will want a professionally built site for their money.

Good question regarding how many websites that I've built. I've built about 10 sites using a variety of website builders.

I've now settled on Bricks and Builderius.

The main difference between others and myself is that I'm going to be taking accessibility serious.

 

[seaj1one]

Why would you create backups? That can be handled with your hosting. Why would the client's site have to be hosted by you? Is it a problem for you if they don't?

I prefer to have my own backups.

 

[seaj1one]

If you can't handle eCommerce, please don't call yourself a developer.

This part, doesn't make sense what you are saying You don't need to do eCommerce to call yourself a developer. It's important to provide tangible advice to me and all forum members.

 

[seaj1one]

I have no idea what you're talking about here.


Do you mean talk to the client? Most clients will want to see your previous work.

A discovery in the context of web development is trying to scope out the project.

• Keyword research.
• Establishing how many pages the customer needs to dominate a service area.
• How many page templates or custom post types that I need.
• How many reviews the customer has that I can use on the website.
• How many photos that I can use for the website.
• Site map mapping
• Etc, etc

A discovery will be chargeable

 

[seaj1one]

Stating these prices when you have no experience is naive.

I'm happy with the prices I will be looking to get a portfolio together but offering my prices a lot lower or maybe for free. Hosting will be separate. Same again, no helpful suggestions, sharing advise or anything tangible that you are offering to me or other forum members.

 

[seaj1one]

Again, this is a very naive approach. Build some websites for yourself as demo sites and get some experience. You might find you don't like web design.

This reply does make sense in what you are saying. Get some experience first. The only part missing is how this relates to the my quote on charging for maintaince. It's important to say why you share your thoughts to people starting out in business. That way people can learn and develope.

 

[seaj1one]

I can reply to other replies in a little while. I just got company at my house.

 

[fisicx]

I've now settled on Bricks and Builderius.

Or better still, don't use either. Site/page builders aren't needed for most sites.

The main difference between others and myself is that I'm going to be taking accessibility serious.

If you are then don't use site/page builders.

 

[fisicx]

A discovery in the context of web development is trying to scope out the project.

• Keyword research.
• Establishing how many pages the customer needs to dominate a service area.
• How many page templates or custom post types that I need.
• How many reviews the customer has that I can use on the website.
• How many photos that I can use for the website.
• Site map mapping
• Etc, etc

A discovery will be chargeable

Most of this isn't needed.

Keyword research for example is only necessary if the marketing plan includes SEO.

Dominating a service area is not dependent on the number of pages.

Why does a site need a custom p[ost type. As I said in an other post CPT is a specific wordpress construct: https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/post-types/registering-custom-post-types/

Many reviews can only be included via a plugin (with an API). Which means the number is irrelevant.

The number of photos is irrelevant. It all depends on the business and marketing plan.

Site maps can be ignored.

 

[fisicx]

I prefer to have my own backups.

Not really sure what you mean by this. Backups are all automated with most hosts. Or you can use a service like https://vaultpress.com/

 

[Shopclicks]

This is taken from the other thread:

I'm looking to spent the least as possible interacting with the customer as possible. The idea is to avoid going back and forth but if the customer is slow in getting back to me, I can ditch the customer before any money exchanges hands and also avoid a bad review.

So your potential client sends you poor quality images and copy that doesn't meet Google's content guidelines. You have no deposit.
Where do you go from there?

 

[seaj1one]

I don't have any clients who use other hosting services. They either have their own account with the hosting service I use or use one of my plans.
I did have one client who wouldn't change over but he didn't want to pay for site maintenance. So I built his site and I get a call when something goes wrong. He just pays an hourly rate for fixes.

I do like this comment and that you shared your experience.

 

[seaj1one]

Not really sure what you mean by this. Backups are all automated with most hosts. Or you can use a service like

Good shout on Vaultpress, I've heard of it but not used it as yet.

 

[seaj1one]

Hope it is successful, there are a lot of web developers/designers out there.

Many thanks

 

[Shopclicks]

I do like this comment and that you shared your experience.

The reason I'm here is to share and discuss. Your opening post doesn't contain any questions. You've simply come in telling us what your plan is. If you have a question, you might find people will answer based on their experience. If you can take advice, you may get something from the forum.

 

[seaj1one]

@seaj1one - firstly wlecome to UKBF. I hope you enjoy your stay here.

The problem with your approach isn't about the pricing. It's about marketing. The pool of potential businesses willing to pay those sums for a one page site is very small. The web and is awash with companies offering self build sites and professional services. It's becoming very difficult to become noticed. Which means you need to be something very special and have something different to attract potential clients.

There is a whole world of different between a one page site and a site with just one page. I'm not really sure what type you plan to offer as the themes you use for each are different.

Building and maintaining a wordpress site is easy. I can get a site up and running in an hour and maintenance is mostly automated. The bit that takes all the time is getting the content from the client and then getting them to decide what they hope to achieve as this drives the structure of the site.

In your post you mention a custom post type. Not sure you mean this as CPT is specific wordpress construct, for example an ecommerce product or directory listing.

And the cost of hosting is not connected to the revenue. You can earn £5000/month from a cheap shared hosting all the way up to a dedicated server.

As @Shopclicks suggested, start building sites to develop your skills but more importantly get a marketing plan sorted. This is the difficult bit of your business plan.

Thanks @fisicx

I'm hoping to learn and exchange ideas.

The main target I'm going for are businesses that have built a site using tools like WIX, Square space etc and are looking for a website redesign or a fresh built. I'm making the assumption that they have done a little research understand the value of approaching a web developer. At the same time don't want to pay agency prices.

My approach is to use either Bricks or builderius as my choice of site builders. Both builders have clean htlm output and have a lot of css controls. Both allow me to dynamically display content using custom post type (CPT) as templates. Once the template is created all I need to do us add the content. It's archived using Meta box.

The persona that I'm targeting is not big but I've got time on myself. I have a fulltime job and want to build customers at a steady pace in the first year. Any website that I build I want it to be accessibly as possible. There's a lot talk on the submit and I want to be ready when it becomes a big ranking factor.

With the one page site, it's if someone doesn't have a site primarily. They can rank on map pack depending the search intent and on the competition. I'll do seo for the price range of £500 for a one page website.

Deciding on the content hierarchy is a bit of a pain for me. I want my customers to have a high converting website. It'll depend on what they have for me. Accreditation, type of reviews, information about their business and picture/video. First 2 sections on a website is for satisficing user intent and the rest is supporting your claim.

Hosting is only because I don't want to deal with certain website builders. They are free to leave at any time. I'll be asking customers to setup a Cloudflare account and add me as a user.

The marketing plan is where I aim to seek websites that could do with a bit of work and offer my services for free. Here could also be an interesting.

 

[Shopclicks]

Still no questions?

A question like 'When should I use CPT's?' might reveal that your approach needs work.

 

[UKSBD]

This is a bit of a generalisation but bear in mind, a lot of the time it's not a good develloper/designer who can charge £500 for a simple one page website, it is the salesman, admin team, manager, businesses reputation, etc.

 

[fisicx]

The main target I'm going for are businesses that have built a site using tools like WIX, Square space etc and are looking for a website redesign or a fresh built. I'm making the assumption that they have done a little research understand the value of approaching a web developer. At the same time don't want to pay agency prices.

Finding these potential clients isn't going to be easy. There is just too much competition. They will search on google and pick one from the mappack with good reviews or one of the top organic results.

Thanks @fisicx

My approach is to use either Bricks or builderius as my choice of site builders. Both builders have clean htlm output and have a lot of css controls. Both allow me to dynamically display content using custom post type (CPT) as templates. Once the template is created all I need to do us add the content. It's archived using Meta box.

Why pay for something you don't need. Just use the free templates on WP and learn how to use blocks. Neither Build or builderius create clean code.

Thanks @fisicx

The persona that I'm targeting is not big but I've got time on myself. I have a fulltime job and want to build customers at a steady pace in the first year. Any website that I build I want it to be accessibly as possible. There's a lot talk on the submit and I want to be ready when it becomes a big ranking factor.

No idea what 'submit' is but if you want to be fully accessible don't use a page/site builder.

With the one page site, it's if someone doesn't have a site primarily. They can rank on map pack depending the search intent and on the competition. I'll do seo for the price range of £500 for a one page website.

You don't need a website to rank in the mappack. GBP ranking is all about reviews.

If you want to do SEO on the website you need multiple pages. Google likes depth and breadth.

Deciding on the content hierarchy is a bit of a pain for me. I want my customers to have a high converting website. It'll depend on what they have for me. Accreditation, type of reviews, information about their business and picture/video. First 2 sections on a website is for satisficing user intent and the rest is supporting your claim.

You really need to learn about marketing, AIDA, colour theory, calls to action, trustmarks, information flow, typography, content creation, image placement, landing page theory and everything else that goes into building and effective website.

Hosting is only because I don't want to deal with certain website builders. They are free to leave at any time. I'll be asking customers to setup a Cloudflare account and add me as a user.

If that's your requirement you will lose a lot of potential clients. Especially those who already have a website.

The marketing plan is where I aim to seek websites that could do with a bit of work and offer my services for free. Here could also be an interesting.

This is the most important part and the one that needs the most thought. How do you plan to seek out websites that could do with a bit of work?

Where is your website?

Upgrade your membership and get a website review. The responses may feel harsh but they are all made with good intent. I've had my many websites reviewed and implementing the suggestion made a big difference.

 

[14Steve14]

I don't care how good the host is.
I keep a backup of all the files, images, databases, of most of my sites and also advise anyone I do a site for to do the same

With our ecommerce store we keep at least one full backup of the site. That includes all images, files and any download files plus what ever else may be stored on the server such as emails. I have backups going back 3 or 4 years as the site developed. Whether the code has been changed or any files updated every month I create a backup. If code gets updated or altered a backup copy is kept.

The host backs up everything once a day, but it is surprising that when we want to restore something because something has gone wrong, the hosts backup system does not seem to work. We then resort to using a copy of our backup which works every time.

We also use a cron job to save a copy of the database every day, and delete them after 7 days.

It may seem excessive but we have been caught out several times with not having a backup. We also work from the backup with testing core code updates, new features or code changes.

 

[seaj1one]

The reason I'm here is to share and discuss. Your opening post doesn't contain any questions. You've simply come in telling us what your plan is. If you have a question, you might find people will answer based on their experience. If you can take advice, you may get something from the forum.

I haven't asked a question because I wasn't asking a question. I replied to another thread when a user was asking how to price for a website. I shared my approach, but you disagreed. I asked you to provide tangible reasoning and breakdown on what I said. You also asked me to open another thread, which I did.

Since I opened the post, I'm happen to listen to critique. In fact, it's important that people listen to critique, share experiences, share mistakes and offer a suggested solution that would help users that everyone can benefit from.

Just saying that one one is naive is not helpful. However, if you said you are naive because of something, but if you do something you'd get better results, or something like it. It may also help to share some resource from here or external.

 

[Shopclicks]

Just saying that one one is naive is not helpful. However, if you said you are naive because of something, but if you do something you'd get better results, or something like it. It may also help to share some resource from here or external.

Ok well I'll ask you a question then. Where on a website do you intend to use CPT's? You've mentioned CPT a couple of times but haven't said where you would use them.