Complete Guide to Freelance Web Development
I suggest adding “Web Design” to the end of your decided name since it helps rank for your keyword “web design”. It’s even better for SEO if you incorporate as “Your Town Web Designs” since you have your two keyword qualifiers in your name. In my market, I am the number 1 result for Oak harbor web designer, oak harbor web developer, small business website Oak Harbor, etc. I dominate the search results.
Or you can take things that are significant to you, like if you love the ocean or something you can go with High Seas Web Design, Pacific Web Design, or Compass Web Design with a tagline “We help you find your way”. Get creative. Make something that you can connect to personally and attach yourself to. You’ll have a much more personal connection to your business and brand and that pride and confidence will show through in your conversations.
How to do taxes
For keeping track of everything, I use an app called Everlance. Which was built for freelancers to track mileage, income, and expenses. I connected my bank account and credit card to the app so it pulls that info every time I make a purchase or money gets withdrawn from the account. Then I just go through them and categorize them as work expenses and change the transaction type if needed. Like when I have Fiverr bills, the app thinks it’s a restaurant and I just have to change it to “design fees”. For the most part it gets it right. But it’s the best app I have used to track expenses. You can also export all your data as a spreadsheet and hand it off to your accountant. You don’t need to keep track or do the math. Everlance does it all for you. Download it and get the premium version. It’s also tax deductible!
Also, create two separate business banking accounts if you can, one is the main account, and the other with where you put 30% away for taxes. That way you aren’t blind sided at tax time when you owe a bunch of money. Whatever is left over is a nice little bonus for you. My accountant gave me envelopes already addressed to the IRS and I send an $1800 check to the IRS every quarter (3 months) to “prepay” my taxes.
Sending invoices and managing clients
You need invoicing software when doing freelance web design. I use [Square Up](https://squareup.com/us/en) in the US and recommend it over PayPal all day. PayPal is scary, I’ve known many businesses who had their account frozen because of suspected fraud and can’t withdraw their money or receive money.
Automatic Invoicing
I use Square Up because it has automatic invoicing. When I sell a website subscription for $150 a month, I can make it a recurring invoice and the customer can save their card on file and select auto pay. Now when the invoice due date comes, the system will automatically send the invoice, automatically pay it, and the funds are in your square account ready to be transferred to your bank. It’s easy and saves me a ton of time having to send invoices. I sell my websites at $0 down and $150 a month, so when I sign a new client, I ALWAYS set the invoice to go out on the 1st of the month. This way, all my monthly subscription invoices go out the same day, get paid at the same time, and I collect my payments on same day to transfer to my bank account all at once. It’s so much easier and better for your finances to have them all come out on the same day. If it is June 16th, I charge the client $150 for work performed in June to get started (NEVER WORK FO FREE) and I tell them the next invoice will come out on July 1st and will be the recurring invoice that they can save their card and select auto pay and never have to deal with it again. If it’s June 29th, I just schedule the recurring invoice to come out on the 1st of July and hold off on doing any work until that gets paid.
Make sure you also put your customers address, name, and phone in their contact. It helps come holiday time so you can send out personalized cards wishing them happy holidays. It’s the personal touch that makes all the difference. Make sure when you create their profile in your invoicing software that you also put in their address.
For a standard 5-page static informational site with no ecommerce or databases or logins or booking integrations I’d estimate about 20-30 hours of work for the average developer. So multiply that doubled comfortable hourly rate by 30 hours high side, and there’s your lump sum pricing. If you finish in 20 hours, bonus! If you finish in 40 hours, it’s a learning lesson and to charge for 40 next time. It’s important to know how long it takes you on average to build a site so you can make more accurate estimates. For me, I charge $3K minimum, and on that I’ll spend an average of 6-10 hours building it. I’m just really fast and efficient in what I do, so that can top out at like $300-$500 an hour, which is crazy, right? But I don’t charge by the hour. I charge by the project.
For ecommerce sites, I only do lump sum pricing. Especially for new stores. There’s no guarantee they will survive the first year and you left a lot of money on the table if they have to cancel after 6 months because it wasn’t as successful as they hoped it’d be. When I do e-commerce, I hand code all the front end of the site and hand it off to my Shopify developer who takes my code and integrates it into Shopify and even makes my sections editable in the CMS (content management system) so the client can make their own changes. My guy was found on Upwork, but beware, it’s full of duds. The best developers for your money are in Ukraine, Poland, and Prague that I have found.
Some clients can’t absorb a huge bill at once for a website. So, I started offering my services at $0 down and $150 a month and includes hosting, unlimited edits, 24/7 support, and lifetime updates, analytics, and help with their Google business profile. This has proven VERY popular with small businesses who don’t know anything about websites and would rather pay someone to do everything for them and manage it. Now you’re selling yourself as a service, YOU are the product, the website just comes with it. I have 6 month minimum contracts and then it’s month to month after that.
When a potential client asks why they should pay you every month for the site, just tell them “Because I handle everything for you. Your time is worth money, so you need to spend your time where it brings in the most money for you – and that’s running your business. Every minute you spend fiddling with the website or trying to fix something that broke or add things to it, you are taking away time you could have spent on your business and making money. At $150 a month you have your own personal web developer in your pocket with their direct phone line ready to take your call anytime. And I keep tabs on the constant changes Google makes to its algorithm to make sure your website is updated and always making Google happy. I worry about this, so you don’t have to. And at the end of the month, I am confident that the website brought in more than $150 in value to the business, so the return on your investment is almost always positive.”
You’re selling a relationship, not a website at this point. And with that relationship comes peace of mind. We will get more into how to sell yourself and your work in the sales section of this document. But for selling the service, this is a great way to frame the benefits of working with you and get them on a subscription. I’ve had clients for over 3 years and paid me more than they would have if they bought it upfront, but they don’t care because I helped them a lot along the way and took their calls and did everything they needed. I am here for them, and to them that is worth paying for.
Templating is how you scale. Eventually I’d run into a client whose business is not suited for one of my templates and I need to make a new one, so I do. And when I do, I go back to those other markets where I sold my first three and try to sell the new one there, and so on to every market. I created a personalized Google Map where I dropped pins in areas where I had my clients and who the client is so I know which markets I can use which templates in. I would never use the same template in the same market, that’s just poor taste and not fair to the clients.
I went to Themeforest and found some good-looking WordPress themes for an industry and bought their theme to support the developer and have the license to use their design, and I inspected the demo site to get the styles and rebuilt the whole thing in my own HTML and CSS that was mobile first, cleaner, and more responsive. I made 3 of them to start: 1 that was more casual and simpler, 1 that was fancier with more style and looks more modern and professional, and 1 that was for luxury and high-end business that catered to wealthy clientele. That way I can target the $, $$, and $$$ businesses in this industry that target different levels of work they perform. This made me more versatile. I would then only call businesses in this industry and sell each template once in an area. Once I made those three sales, I would look on a map 3-5 hours away in a different market and resell those templates there, and so on.
Reuse Interior Page Templates For All Sites
So, I have a few interior page templates I already had designed and built that I just cycle between and reuse no matter the design. Saves a ton of time, because now instead of building 5 pages, you only need to build 1 new one: the home page, which allows you to work faster and not waste time that you could be using to make more sales. Very rarely will I make sites with their own unique interior pages unless the client wants it or the design is so unique it needs it, but then they have to pay extra for the extra time on design and my time on development. Pages like ABOUT US, SERVICES, PORTFOLIO, TESTIMONIALS, and CONTACT are all page templates I have a collection of that I pick and choose from a few different designs, and make minor tweaks to them.
I add my copywriter as an add on service. Generally, they charge $0.10-$0.15 a word, and on average I spend maybe $150-$200 for a home page with over 1000 words. The best place to find one is on Fiverr actually. That’s where I found mine. If you are making a website for an English-speaking market, you want to find someone who is in the UK, US, Australia, or Canada ideally as I’ve had the best experience working with copywriters from these countries.
You want to search their qualifications and find ones that have degrees related to writing like journalism, English, communications, or marketing and creative writing degrees and experience in content writing, marketing, blog writing, or SEO.
I’d suggest having 1-2 copywriters on tap that you can email any time. That way, if you have a great couple weeks with sales you don’t need to wait on anyone’s schedule and can have multiple copywriters working on different projects for you at the same time.
This is another good one to have in your pocket. Your clients will almost always have a large or small PNG file for their logo. If it’s too big it will tank your page speed scores, if it’s too small it will look blurry and terrible. What you need is an SVG logo. SVG logos can scale up or down however big or small and never lose quality. They are also incredibly lightweight and only 10-20KB in size generally compared to the 70-150KB or more for a PNG file. I found my guy on Fiverr. He takes my client’s logos and remakes them as SVGs for like $20. He’s in Indonesia so my money goes far over there. I always tip him 100%, he’s a good guy and deserves it. I wish Fiverr let me tip more than that. Find someone with good reviews, decent work you can look at, and can make SVGs. Try them out on a client and see how they do! It’s such a minor detail that not many developers would think needed to be addressed or done, but doing this for every client adds a ton of value to your work, increases your page speeds on mobile, and looks much better in the final product. It’s a great investment to make in order to make the best website you can possibly make. And having your own logo guy remake their logo for free makes your subscription look that much more valuable to the client.
I actually don’t know JavaScript or any backend language. I only know HTML and CSS. This is very limiting the types of sites I can build and for a long time I refused to do e-commerce sites because I simply couldn’t make them, and I didn’t have the time to learn how. Recently, I found a great Shopify developer on Upwork who can take my custom HTML and CSS code for a website and integrate them into Shopify’s platform and make them into editable sections with a CMS for the client to make their own edits to the site. It was amazing. He even sets up the store and everything. So if you can’t make an e-commerce site yourself, look to Upwork for Shopify developers in Prague, Ukraine, or Poland. They tend to have the best talent pool at reasonable prices. They average about $30-$50 an hour, where a US Shopify dev can command $150 an hour. My guy is in Ukraine and he’s been amazing to work with.
I never do e-commerce sites on a subscription plan, they are always lump sum and I add the cost of my developer to the estimate. It typically costs me about $1500-$2000 minimum to do a Shopify integration. If there’s more products and they want custom shop configurations and apps, then it makes the cost higher. So if I charge $3k for my work, $500 minimum for design, and $2000 for a Shopify integration, it’s looking like $5,500 minimum. I’d also add a $500 markup for having to be project manager between the client and my Shopify guy. Which is still VERY low for an e-commerce site. Bigger e-commerce sites can start at $8K-$25K minimum at larger agencies.
Moral of the story – if you are not a strong back-end developer, find one. You can find them on Upwork, the webdev subreddit on reddit, LinkedIn, etc. There’s really no Dribble or Behance for back-end developers that I know of. You can even go to local developer meet-ups in large cities to network or go to conferences where those developers can be found. You just have to network and find someone you can rely on and have a good relationship with. They will come in handy when you need to do bigger projects. Back in the day I’d never take on a large project because it takes too much time and I focus on making simple websites really fast. But with my team, I can take them on and not spend any more time on it than I normally would have if it were a simple site.
Ads, SEO, and Marketing
I have a separate ads guy, SEO guy, and online marketing and social media management girl. Depending on what my client needs I’ll send them to one or all of them for their services. I don’t have time to run ads or social media for all of my clients. Again, that’s a whole separate job altogether that takes time and dedication to do right. Hand it off.
We do our best with what’s called “On Page SEO”, which is what is ON the website, like the content, the code, the code structure, accessibility, page speed, asset optimization, etc. Those are things we have control of that benefit SEO. The active SEO like link building, guest posting on blogs, citations and listing management, are all better done by a professional. You can find them either on Upwork, Fiverr, Google searches, or referrals from people you know. I have a few clients take me up on the SEO team I have, who have worked on large national brands and charge upwards of $2500-$5,000 a month to work with them. They are my big boy team. I have smaller teams for smaller budgets and ambitions. The goal is to have all your clients needs and potential needs covered as they grow their business and grow with you.
YOU NEED A CONTRACT. I have two contracts – one for lump sum jobs and one for monthly subscription jobs. I searched locally for business and contract lawyers and found one that suits my needs and budget and had them draw up contracts for me to use in my business. It cost me $800 for both of them.
If you are planning on going to get a contract written up, here are a few items you should include in them: 1. Price paid, payment terms, plus any extras such as hosting or domain registrations or Shopify fees 2. You have final say in design regardless of what the client asks. Sometimes they want something that is unreasonable or not accessible or bad practice and you don’t want to have those in your site with your name on it. You have to protect the integrity of your work because it also reflects on you when it’s live and out there. 3. Clauses for contract cancellation due to non-payments, harassment, late payment 4. That you are not liable for any damages or losses or lawsuits as a result of the completed website. 5. For monthly subscriptions, you need clauses for late and non-payments. If the client is more than 2 months late or cancels before the 6 month minimum contract then you can cancel the contract and charge them full price for the site, mine is $3k. If client doesn’t pay after the 6 months is up, you can take down the site and charge late fees. If client wants to be reinstated after being delinquent for some time, they have to pay the late fees and first month's payment upfront. 6. The client cannot take you code or design and go somewhere else and have them use your work. This is copyright infringement. The client is granted a temporary license to use your work for their site as long as they continue to pay you. That license does not include duplication of…
Here’s how I use Adobe Sign for collecting signatures for contracts: 1. Fill out the contact information and all pricing, services, etc in Microsoft Word and print the entire contract to a PDF on your desktop. Like so:
It is a little pricey, at $27 a month that must be paid yearly. So if it’s a little much for you, you can try and find a more affordable solution. I just write this off as a business expense. I like how easy it is to use and I can access all my completed contracts and manage everyone in my database. It’s an intuitive platform and I recommend it to send your contracts if you can.
How To Find Clients
First, you will need to have a business website for yourself to show what you can do since you don’t have any actual real projects to show. So instead, you use your business website to sell yourself. For example, here is my website that I used to start selling myself in the beginning: [Oak Harbor Web Designs](https://www.oakharborwebdesigns.com/)
Setting Yourself Up
You need to bring up anything they might need to know and be concerned about in your website’s content such as page speed, mobile responsiveness, instant load times, engaging design, all the services you offer through your partners, web accessibility, etc. You can also look up website agencies on Google and see what they’re saying and talking about on their home page, and you can replicate their talking points but put it in your own words (or hire your copywriter partner to do it for you!).
Once you have your business website set up, bank account ready to go, invoicing software ready to go and connected to your bank account, and your contracts ready to send when needed, then you’re ready to start canvassing your market for leads.
in the margin1. finish website 2. set up bank account 3 set up invoicing software/ connect to bank account 4. get contracts
How To Find Your Clients
ake my advice from the templates section, build three templates for a specific and target that industry in your sales. I started off with painters and landscapers because they make a lot of money, have high value clients, and absolutely terrible websites. If a website can bring in even just 1 extra client a month that can be worth thousands. And in a highly competitive market like that, having the best website in the area will give them an edge and get a few more clients a month from a better online presence and the extra money they make from it will more than justify the $150 a month subscription I was selling.
overall, all they need is a home, about, services, portfolio, contact setup. Rarely do they have or want blogs or anything more complicated that makes maintenance more complicated. It’s not just painters and landscapers, this can be applied to accountants, lawyers, restaurants, etc. This standard 5 page layout is very versatile, but you may need to add extra pages depending on the client and their industry. Like maybe a lawyer wants a unique page for every type of law they practice. That is totally fine. Just make sure you are aware of the scope of what they need from the beginning.
I will do a Google search for painters in an area. I will go to the Maps listings, not the search results listing, and one by one I will right click on the website link button and open it in a new tab until I did the whole page and have 20+ new tabs open. I will then go down each website and examine it to determine if they are a good candidate to call.
Check Who Made It: Is it made by a marketing company? Check the footer at the bottom and see the credits for who made it. If there’s a link to a marketing company I ignore it, they likely have contracts that they cannot break and it’s a waste of my time to call them.
Visual Check: Does it look good? If it looks pretty good, has like 10+ pages, and looks professional then I don’t call them. Their site is pretty big with 10-20 pages and I don’t really want to be spending all my time building those pages and managing them. Plus, if it looks legit, it’ll be a harder sell to get them to change since they more than likely like their site and probably won’t change. So, it’d be a waste of time for me to call.
If No Website: If they don’t have a website, I google their company to see if it’s anywhere out there and they just didn’t put it on Google. If there still isn’t a website out there, I move on to the rest of the tabs and go through step 1 and 2 over and over. If there’s no website, I put the link to their Google profile in the “website” box in my spreadsheet so I can always reference their profile whenever I need.
Read The Reviews: Once I have my selections narrowed down, I first look at the ones with no website. I look at their google profile and their ratings. I check to see if they have any reviews within the last year or so and make sure they’re good reviews. If the last review they had was like 3+ years ago, I don’t call them because a) it’s likely they aren’t in business anymore or b) they don’t seem to care about their online presence enough to even try to get reviews on Google, which means they are more likely to reject getting a website since they think they don’t need one or don’t care about being online. They don’t qualify now. Also, if they have BAD reviews, do they respond to them and explain the situation with a level head? Or do they ignore them or respond with swear words and a nasty attitude? If they do, I don’t call them. I don’t want to work with people who have bad reviews (that are legitimate and worrying).
Site Review: Once they make it through the reviews round, I start putting them into my spreadsheet to call and enter all their info. Then I go through their website and its code and learn what I can about the aspects of their website that can be improved. I use a website called BuiltWith https://builtwith.com/ to check and see what these websites are built with. I’ll go down the list looking for the usual suspects, Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Godaddy Builder, etc. I’ll find out what they used to make it and note that in the notes. Then I’ll do a page speed test and note that in the notes, then I’ll check the site itself – is it empty? Is there barely any content? If there’s barely any content, I note that because it’s important to rank on Google. I use all of those in my pitch which I will go over later in this section.
Google or Godadday: The other thing I look for is if a website is built with Google’s auto generated builder or Godaddy’s Builder. You’ll know it’s a Google one if the web address ends in a “.business.site” ending. For instance “larryspainting.business.site”. That’s an immediate call. Those websites are so bland, bare, and lacking any sort of identity that it’s basically a husk of a website. It’s barely the minimum to be called a website. These are generally easier to sell to because chances are the client set this up themselves in the beginning but don’t know what to do to make it better and doesn’t have the time, so they just left it. They are primed for someone like me to call because they more than likely agree – it’s a terrible site. Same goes for the Godaddy builders. Godaddy sites are typically boring, ugly templates with terrible page speeds and tend to all look the same. If they have a GoDaddy site made with the builder, chances are they set it up really quick when they bought the domain and have outgrown it, but don’t know what to do with it and don’t know who to trust. So rather than spending money on something they don’t understand, they leave it as is and try to make the best of it. When I call them, it’s easier to sell to them.
I spend an entire day collecting leads like this. Once I go through all the websites that I opened in new tabs, I close them all and go to the second page of the Google Maps listings and repeat this process until I run out of businesses or get to page 10 or something. That is just Google. When I finish searching an area and went through all the listings, I go to Yelp and do the same thing. Sometimes, businesses set up a Yelp profile and not a Google profile because they don’t know they can or how to do it. This means there may be a bunch of businesses on Yelp that are not on Google. So I do a search in the same area on Yelp, right click and open all the websites in new tabs, and go through the same process except I immediately close out websites I have already seen from Google. When I narrowed down my list, I reference my spreadsheet to see if I already collected their information. If I haven’t, then they get added to the spreadsheet. If they don’t have a website, I put the link to their Yelp profile as the URL in the “website” box on my spreadsheet.
When I finish making my spreadsheet for the day, I spend the following day calling everyone one by one down the list. Before I make the call though, I open their site up and take a quick look around it and my notes to refresh on what improvements can be made and how. I make sure to only call businesses once every 3 days and only during the week. They hate when you call them on the weekend on their off time. If after 3 calls they don’t answer, I leave a message and black them out in my spreadsheet to never call again.
You should have at least 50 leads from doing this. Once I exhausted all the painters in the area, I hit my subcategory of landscapers and do this whole process all over again in the same area, but for landscapers.
On about 100 calls, maybe 30-40 answer. Out of those that answer maybe 7-10 are interested, and out of those maybe 2-3 will close. Sometimes the rates are higher, sometimes lower. One week I sold 5 websites in a day, and with my templates I was able to start and finish them all that week while another week had no sales. Sales is a numbers game when you get to the core of it. At least by prequalifying your leads, you can up the chances for success instead of spending time calling every single business you can find. I also make sure to add new pins and names of where all my clients are in the US so I can see what areas I am dominant in, and which ones have some room for me to sell a few templates.
I say to start local because since you won’t have any projects in your portfolio, they may want to meet you and check you out, see if you’re legit. You can’t do face to face meetings from out of state or the region. By starting local, you have a better opportunity to establish a relationship with them so they can feel comfortable purchasing your services. Once you have a few local clients, you can use those for your portfolio and grow your presence in the community and spread your radius of calls farther and farther. Once you’ve pretty much exhausted your local network, then you can move on to clients in other states farther away and use your portfolio of work you’ve built up at home to sell yourself to these newer clients. I have clients all over the US now.
I also recently got into working with marketing and SEO people as well. I had a client who hired an SEO guy to work on her site’s search engine optimization and when he tested the sites page speed and it came back at 100/100 he immediately got in touch with me and asked how I did it. We got to talking and I ended up becoming his developer from then on. He was stuck using WordPress and his competitions page speed scores were outperforming his and he didn’t know what to do to compete. Every other developer he interviewed was a WordPress “developer” and only really knew how to edit themes, no real coding. He wanted a DEVELOPER who can make these sites for him and crush the page speeds. When I told him my minimum was $3k per site he didn’t even flinch. He just said “Done, I have 2 websites I need ASAP, how soon can you deliver?”. Those sites we’re delivered within days of receiving the content and in his words, he said “Google is really liking this work, their numbers are all skyrocketing – this is perfect”. High quality code and work goes a long way. And having a hand coded 100/100 site in the hands of a good SEO and marketing company is pure gold to them. Try to find freelance SEO and Marketing people that you can reach out to with your portfolio and page speed scores and see if they take a liking to you. A good developer is really hard to find, and one that can do the level of work that I do and as fast as I can do it is even harder to find.
Your skills are valuable, even if it’s only in HTML and CSS. That’s because this area of the market (static informational sites) doesn’t need anything more. Devs tend to overcomplicate things by introducing static site generators, frameworks, react, templating engines, etc. when they don’t really need them. I know that statement will ruffle some feathers but when we’re working at this scale, it’s really just extra baggage. My philosophy is to use as little as possible to make every website. HTML and CSS are not going anywhere, and any changes that get added to them ca be added to old sites without any issue. They’re version proof.
How make sales calls (at least in the US)
When I make a call, and they answer, here’s how the call goes: “Hey is this (business name)?” They confirm and ask what they can do for you or whose calling and I say: “Awesome, well my name is Ryan and I’m actually a stay-at-home dad web developer and I found you on Google and poked around the site and saw it’s a pretty standard WordPress site that could use some work, and I wanted to call and see if I can help make you something better”. This opening has been the best one out of all the ones I’ve tried. I know not everyone can use that stay-at-home dad route, but that’s my pitch. You have a very limited amount of time to establish trust in the call. By leading with being a stay-at-home dad, (which I am) it is immediately humanizing and separates me from a salesman in an office. I’m just a regular guy putting myself out there and part of who I am. It’s info about me and who I am in a really quick sentence. I say I found them on Google because I did. It shows I am a regular person looking online at businesses and not just going down a list from corporate or a robot. I try to be careful about how I say their website is bad because they might have made it themselves or had a family member or friend do it and you don’t want to step on any toes or be rude. So that line is the softest way to tell someone that their website is lacking.
If they DON’T have a website, I change things up and say: “…I found you on Google but I didn’t see a website anywhere, so I wanted to at least call and see if you needed any help with one.” The ones who are interested, usually the first thing they ask after that is “Oh yeah, and what’s something like that gonna cost me?” They’re primed to saying no based on the price of the people that have been calling them in the past. They’re skeptical and it usually comes down to price. Trying to go for $3K out the gate when they barely even know who you are does not always go over well. So I lead with the $0 down and $150 a month model. Here’s what I say “I do things a little different, I charge $0 down and $150 a month. That includes hosting, unlimited edits, 24/7 support, lifetime updates, analytics, help with your Google Profile, the works. I do everything for you so you never have to. 6 month minimum contracts and month to month after that, cancel anytime.” This intrigues them because they’ve never been offered this before. Usually, it’s expensive and they have to make their own edits and support is often lackluster. With this model, they can take a chance on me without risking too much money, and with my 24/7 support they know they have someone they can call directly without a phone tree or going through an automated system.
This is where I close most of my sales. They’re expecting thousands of dollars. This is a low financial risk for them. They’re hesitant to spend that kind of money ($2500+) all at once from some dude that just called them. So when they hear my $150 a month, they get interested because they’ve never been offered that before and never had anyone offer to do unlimited edits. Usually there’s strings attached or extra costs. When they ask what happens when they cancel, I tell them “you keep your domain, but the design and code stay with me. You’ll have to start over with someone else. Which means you’ll be 6 months behind where you could have been if you stayed longer with me. It takes about 6-12months for Google to properly rank your site, so after six months I think you’ll start to see some results from the site and stick around. I’m looking for people who understand websites are an investment for the long term. It’s not a turnkey product. It’s something that takes time to build up to start returning on your investment. So if you don’t see yourself sticking around for too long or are not 100% on board then I might not be a good fit for you and I don’t want to waste your time and money if you aren’t 100% committed to the site and working with me”.
This is another opportunity to show your integrity. You don’t want to waste their money, so you basically are telling them that if they aren’t 100% sure of their decision that they shouldn’t sign with you. That right there is you putting their needs above yours and they will recognize that. It’s not about the sale for you to them now. It’s about being the best fit for them. Now you’re flipping the narrative. It’s not about you selling them a website, it’s more than that. it’s about them wanting to work with you and whether you’re a good fit for them. It’s a partnership. They’re tired of getting terrible sites from developers who just ghost them. By selling yourself as a service and them having your personal phone number to call if they need anything is the cherry on top.
And when they ask me why they should be paying me $150 a month indefinitely I tell them: “think about it this way, if the website is successful, how much is a new client worth?” For trades people it’s hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars. I then say: “if the website is bringing in just one new customer a month, it more than pays for itself. Now imagine it brings in 10 or more. At the end of the day, the website is an asset of your business. You spend $150 a month on it, and it brings in more than $150 a month in value to the business. When you take that away, any value that my work was bringing will stop and you’ll have to start over and rebuild that value with another site and it might not even be as effective. It will still bring in new clients but not nearly as many clients as mine was doing. Plus that $150 a month is more than just the cost of the site. It’s access to me. It’s a retainer to call me with any questions and make all your edits. It’s peace of mind, I’m here for you when you need me so you don’t have to waste your time figuring this stuff out when it could have been better spent on the business making you money instead of costing you money.”
I also help optimize their google business page and tell them they need 20-30 reviews. Get them from every client, friend, or family member they can. It really helps a lot. More reviews = more visibility in the google maps search results. And your website also helps boost your profiles appearance in the results. I tell them all of this.
WHY does this matter and HOW do you “optimize” it? This is the single most important question to answer and get right. If you cannot answer the question of “what you do that is better", then you’re not ready to start selling. Because if you don’t even know that answer, how can you really say what you’re doing is better? Here’s everything I tell them about why what I do is special: “I custom code everything line by line. No page builders. This makes my work better than page builders because they load instantly and make Google happy. Google recently launched its core vitals update that heavily favored mobile performance and speed in their search rankings. That’s where I shine. Page builders have bloated code, prone to hacking, and very messy code. Right now, your site scores (I checked theirs before calling) 34/100. This is terrible and your site won’t really rank as well as it could. My sites score 98-100 and are literally as fast as they can be, there’s no wasteful code. Everything was built with purpose. Over time this makes your website more favorable with Google and will eventually rank higher and outperform to your competition who are almost guaranteed to be using a page builder or cheap WordPress theme that’s poorly built and not optimized for mobile experiences like mine are. My sites are custom-built and designed to convert traffic into customers by satisfying Google’s metrics and making the best performing mobile site you can have with keyword-rich content to get…
They want to hear what you do that’s so special and this is a prime opportunity to educate the client on what matters in a website and how you address all of them line by line. It shows you actually know and care about what you’re doing. You have definitive answers, a plan, and you’re upfront about everything without hiding behind buzzwords and phrases. That is how you sell yourself effectively. You lay out the pain points of what makes websites fail, and you explain how you address them and overcome them. When a client is educated on what page speed is and why it matters, and content strategy, they can infer themselves that that means better ranking and generating more leads without being explicitly told that with nothing to back it up.
My pitch never sounds the same twice. It’s not a beat for beta memorization. It’s all coming from my passion and core understanding of the topics at hand and why they matter. When I speak about them it comes off more authentic because it’s not scripted. It’s all just me and my love for what I do, and that shows under every word I say. In my head I know I have to say: 1. I custom code, no page builders 2. Explain Core Vitals 3. How page Builders Fail them 4. Why my work is better to outperform competition 5. How load times impact conversions 6. Website conversion funnels 7. Hire copywriter for better content
You have to sound natural, don’t sound like a salesman. Talk to them like a friend and not a client or sale, have inflections in your tone, emotions or passion in what you’re talking about, sound like a person and not some monotone dead-eyed robot.
Don’t be afraid to talk about yourself either and be Honest. Some have asked me how I found them and I tell them. I say “well I decided to call Texas today and looked for businesses on Yelp with no website or bad ones that definitely need help who also have good reviews in the last year because I don’t want to work with bad people. I handpicked everyone I call who I’d like to work with that I think I can help. And that’s how I found you, your reviews are awesome and people love the work you do. You’re someone I’d love to help and work with myself.”
Don't ask loaded questions to lead the conversation
They’re business owners themselves. They know typical sales tactics. They don’t like being talked down to like a they’re not a business owner. It’s disrespectful to them. Just let THEM lead the conversation. Let them respond and ask you the questions and now your answers can become the pitch. It’s not a sales pitch anymore. It’s a conversation. Treat it as such.
If they say they’re busy, don’t be pushy and ask are mornings or afternoons better? Does tomorrow work? Etc. It’s pushy. Just ask them, “totally understand, is there a time you’d like me to call back when you’re free?”
Let them decide everything. Let them ask the questions. All you’re offering is help. You only sell yourself when they ask for it.
They're Interested, Now What?
After you’ve done your pitch and answered their questions, the last thing they say is “alright, so how do we get started? What’s the process?”. Here’s my process and what I say to this question: 1. Well, first thing is I send a contract to get signed electronically so everything is safe and above board and we’re both protected. 2. Once that is signed, I’ll send the first invoice for work performed this month, then the next $150 invoice will come out on the 1st of the next month and that’s the invoice you can save your card on file and select auto pay so you never have to deal with it again. That will auto send every month on the 1st indefinitely. 3. From there, I’ll send you an email with questions about your business and what you do so I can have a good idea of what content we need on the site. I’ll send you some demo links to website designs that I think would look good for you and you tell me which you like best and why. 4. I’ll take your questionnaire answers and designs you liked and hand it over to my designer who will make something unique for you. Once she’s finished, I’ll send you a link to see my screen and we go over the design together to make sure you like it all or any changes you’d like to see. 5. If you want it, I can loop in my copywriter for $150 fee to write all your content for you. 6. Once the design is approved, I can start coding it and when it’s ready I’ll send you a demo link for you to browse and check out and approve. Once that’s done and…
They approve and say “alright, let’s go. What do you need from me now?”, and I’ll just say I’ll send them the contract later that day and email with the questions to get started. I tell them I’ll create a Google Drive folder for them to upload all their photos and to keep an eye out for the email I send them with the link. I ask if they have any other questions before I get started, if nothing, I tell them “looking forward to working with you, I’ll get everything started and I’ll reach out if I need anything else. And if you have any questions along the way please text or call anytime.” Then we say our goodbyes and to enjoy the rest of the day and I go about the process to start a new project.
What do you say to a client who says they want their website to be more optimized and gain more traffic to their site?
When it comes to SEO, there’s two schools of thought: On Page SEO - This is optimization you can do ON the page. Like content, design, page speed, code organization and accessibility, meta tags, semantic tags, etc. They all happen on the actual site itself. These are factors you can control and use to maximize the SEO of your site. Off Page SEO - This is traditional SEO work that is done OFF the page, like link and citation building, guest posting on other sites to link back to you, social media and content creation, etc. These are things that a professional SEO expert does that a developer won’t know how to do. A lot of times clients expect you to do both because they don’t know the differences. Web Development and SEO are separate fields and disciplines that take time and experience to understand and do right. I don’t have that time so I hire out to trusted SEO partners.
When I am asked to do something like this, here’s everything that goes into it so you can explain it to the client better: 1. Redesign (if needed) - Sometimes (actually a lot of times) the design is poor and outdated. A new design will revitalize their brand online and look like they are on top of the latest in their field, know what they’re doing, and look professional. If you have a bad and outdated site, people might think you’re out of business or sketchy. A better design will look more trustworthy and convert more customers. 2. Copywriting - Content is king. It’s more than identifying keywords, it’s keyword phrases that matter. Mine finds ones that have high search volume with low competition from other sites. Meaning, they aren’t using those keyword phrases but people are searching using those, so if you write content around those phrases you will rank better for those than the others who don’t have those on their site. That’s the mark of a good copywriter. Worth every penny. I send her the design with dummy text and she fills it all in for me. 3. Page Speed - some of my clients go from a 17/100 to a 100/100 when I’m done making their site. It makes a world of difference. After 3 seconds of load time they can lose up to 30-50% of their traffic who leave before it loads. So minimizing the load times increases the amount of visitors you retain and increases the amount of potential conversions into paying customers they can have. 4. Google Business Profile - Optimize…
Making Sales In Person
When you're starting out and have no portfolio to show potential clients, walking into businesses and talking to the owner directly is a great alternative to get over that problem. By meeting in person, they can see who you are and build trust because you're not just someone who called them - you're someone who is in front of them and can see you. They are more likely to trust someone from their own town that they can see and verify and build trust with even if they don't have a portfolio. You just have to be honest and upfront in saying that you are just starting out and are looking for your first client, how everyone has to start from somewhere, and that you'd like to make your start with them and grow together.
So how do you approach a business owner in person? Here's a scenario to show how it went for me:
Walk in to the business and ask if the owner is available, “Hey, I was wondering if the owner was in today?” They say "sure what do you need with them?" I said “I noticed a few problems with their website and I wanted to talk to them about it and how to fix them” Owners comes out. I introduce myself and who I am. They asked what I think their problems on the website are and I said (from the best of my memory and paraphrased): “The number 1 thing I found is your content is very lacking. There’s just not enough content on there to rank for the keywords and phrases people use to search your services. We need more content with better keyword use, better structure and organization, and more informative. Number 2 is the page speed. It loads very slowly and scores 17/100 on Google’s page speed score. This is important because google indexes your site based on the mobile site performance, it's called mobile first indexing. And your mobile site is failing all the metrics used to score it by google and losing rank online because of it. Sites with higher page speed scores will rank better over time since google now prefers sites that cater to these scores. I hand code all my sites and I can control how everything loads. So my sites score 98-100/100 and there’s literally nothing else that can be done to optimize it any further. I know what google wants to see and I build my sites around that. Number 3, the site itself feels small. You have 1 page, no other pages for extra info or…
This is an example of doing your research beforehand. Don’t go in there to sell a website. Go in there to solve problems. You’re there to offer HELP now. It’s a completely different vibe and tone and the conversation can flow more smoothly. Be yourself. Be honest in who you are and how you found him. Like if they ask how you found them just say “I was looking at websites around town to see what’s out there and what can be improved. I found your site and read your reviews and you’re clearly good people and someone I’d like to work with myself so I studied your site and put together a plan on how I’d help. And here I am! Websites are hard for small businesses and there’s no such that goes into making a good one that not a lot of people know needs to be done. My goal is to fix that for small businesses and give them the websites they always wished they had”
Say HOW, WHY it works, and WHAT you’re going to do. This is where you can be knowledgeable without being arrogant or talking down to them. This is just you talking about your work and what you do. It’s all so comfortable to you. And you explain it in ways that they can understand.
Building Your Website
How To Manage a Project Once You've Sold A Site
Earlier in this document I laid out the general process on how I manage a project. Which boils down to: 1. Sign contract 2. Pay first month’s invoice (or 50% deposit on lump sum job) 3. Fill out questionnaire 4. Design Phase 5. Copywriting (If needed) 6. Design Approval 7. Begin Coding 8. Launch
If you’re using a designer, to manage the costs of design I tell them all I’d need is a home page desktop design, no mobile translations, and if they can do it in Figma. Figma is by far the best web design prototyping program out there and it’s so easy to use and work off of as a developer. Create a Figma account and learn how to use it, it’s integral to my day to day. I can translate desktop designs to mobile very easily, so I want to save time and money from having them make one, and I have my interior page templates that I already made so I don’t need them to make unique ones. By scoping your work to be this very specific design request, you’re saving a of money on design. But if you are not very good at desktop to mobile translations then you should ask for a mobile and desktop view of just the home page. By doing this, my designer charges me $250-$300 per home page design ($30-$40 an hour). That’s the budget I want to hit for new designs if I am needing it for a $150 a month subscription client. In two months, I make it back up. If the client wants unique interior pages, I tell them I have to charge them for it. I am essentially investing in them as a client. I eat the cost but make it up over the year when they pay every month and now, I have a new template I can reuse for other clients. This also adds value to your $150 a month since it also comes with design.
Working With A Designer
For my lump sum clients, I add the design fee to my fee. But I need to get an estimate from them first so I can know how much to charge the client. I ask the client what type of design they’d like (traditional, modern, fancy, etc) and I go to Themeforest and find some demo links of designs I think they’d like, and I send them about 5 to choose from. I ask them which design style they like best and why. Then I gather all their content, old website, and the demo links to the themes they liked, and I message my designer on WhatsApp with them all and ask them what they’d like to charge. I also dictate the structure of the website. A typical website conversion funnel will play out like this: 1. Landing section 2. Services 3. About 4. Other Content (maybe service highlights with a couple paragraphs to rank on Google) 5. Why Choose us 6. Gallery 7. Reviews 8. Footer
Typically, a user will only remember the first and last part of a website. So I put the services at the top and the reviews at the bottom. By doing so, when they leave the site, they remember what your client does and the nice things people said about them. They leave the site with a positive experience and if they were just shopping around, hopefully they remember your client because of it. I put miscellaneous content in the middle for ranking on Google for certain services and keywords. On Google, content is king. So, you’re going to have to have more than just a few small paragraphs on a site. I put it in the middle since it’s likely the user won’t remember it and we don’t waste having important info in the middle for them to forget.
On lump sum job, if they just want a home page designed, I charge $500 while my designer charges me about $300 on average), so my total would be $3500. If they want 5 pages, I charge $1500 for design and my designer probably charges me $1000-$1200. The extra few hundred dollars is for taxes, fees, and my time as project manager to go back and forth with the client and steer the direction of the design.
Here's a real message I sent to my designer about a job I have this week so you can see a real example of this in action: “Hey! So here’s the new clients current site (LINK REDACTED FOR PRIVACY) We need to modernize it. He loves your work you did for PHMTA and What I did for Cosgrove (LINK REDACTED FOR PRIVACY) (LINK REDACTED FOR PRIVACY) They’re very traditional. Much like the PHMTA site. They actually came as a referral from PHMTA. I need a home page and an about page with a meet the team section and a paragraph for each member. Let me know what you need to charge. I need this layout: 1. Landing section 2. Piano lessons section with CTA 3. About/history 4. Our unique approach 5. Opportunities (info cards) 6. Quote section (like the one at the bottom of the current site but better) 7. Meet our team 8. Gallery 9. Reviews 10. Footer For opportunities section grab them from here on their old site: (LINK REDACTED FOR PRIVACY) I’d like to do a card-like section for this. Does Not necessarily have to be a “card” card, like it doesn’t have to be in box or with a border. Heading and a sentence or two. Maybe icons? Do whatever you feel is best! There will be a CTA for each to Learn more and will go to a separate page dedicated to that opportunity. Let me know if you need any more info!” They gave me a budget of $480-$540. So I charged the client $750 to cover fees, taxes, and my time directing the design portion. I then email the designer any and all images they’d need…