I need someone to build my website. My budget is $200 and I need it ASAP.

That is not the lesson your experience. The lesson is the make sure there is demand before putting in a ton of time, especially when you're going to be bitter about it later.

Your project was doomed from the start.

You committed the time to build 5 websites and SEO them to the top spot before you had any demand.

If you had waited until a restuarant actually wanted a website, and then realized that even a small application can be made in a few hours for a few $hundred, then you may have had better results. Pre-emptively making websites or scripts is the opposite of what I've suggested.

So the next lesson is to not do work before getting paid (unless it is also a hobby - like building a database class that you will use in freelance projects).

I would have also approached selling the websites differently. Showing someone a website you're trying to sell them and then finishing with "I just need to change some pictures and stuff" isn't that compelling. You have 5 websites. Customize one for each restuarant you're talking to. They pass? Change it up with different pictures and titles. Let the customer see what they're buying, not some representation. This is more time consuming, but it will help sales. You already sunk time to designing, building, and SEOing the sites, so an additional unpaid 20 minutes probably won't hurt you too much.

Also you can't just assume why people didn't buy the websites. You should have done some random calling after the fact to determine why people weren't buying. But I will throw out a few ideas on that too.

You approached restaurants trying to sell them a commodity without knowing what they want. They could have not bought because of the price, because they didn't like the colors, they were intimidated by it's complexity, underwhelmed by its simplicity, or because they didn't think they needed a website (you really need to be making calls).

When someone comes to you with a budget and a need for a website, you are in a position of power. You can dictate more terms. Building a random websie without requirements or a scope and then approaching people takes the power out of your hands.

Finally, there are thousands of companies that don't have a website because they don't know how to make one or think they cost tens of thousands of dollars. These are the types of companies you can be trying to advertise to (but not cold call/approach).

www.vistaprint.com/websites.aspx

DISCLAIMER: Yes, I work for them, and yes I built that page. But you guys aren't our market (too savvy) so I posted it because you probably didn't even know we made websites.

If I were still a freelancer THAT would scare me. The price point is exactly in the budget of your stereotyped user - $200 is like the price of the PROFESSIONAL package, you could go even cheaper for the simplest stuff. As SHOwnsYou pointed out, paying commodity prices is using boilerplate, and that is EXACTLY what we use...there's no magic tricks here: we make it easy for non-technical baby boomers and older (the LEAST tech savvy) to have a website at a price they can afford. The UI is simple enough for a 40-yr-old business owner to make a site. And to the point of the original poster, yeah we are capitalizing on a booming market.

I think the problem is that people want what they can't have: a beautiful looking site at a great price. As I said, speaking frankly, you get what you pay for with our templates. I would never have created those templates and called them my work as a freelancer, but I think the HN community of aesthetically-seasoned designers/developers/entrepreneurs generally forgets that the overwhelming majority has NO IDEA what good design is like and truly DOESN'T need it. This is perhaps the BIGGEST lesson I've learned about business, and truly echoes the sentiments of the greatest creed in marketing, "KNOW YOUR TARGET MARKET."

I guess in the end, the problem from a web designer is that they refuse to produce commodity work, and justifiably raises their rates, when they COULD be making money hand-over-fist if they just kept a slew of simple, cheap templates and just did the labor of porting them to a website for their customers and charging next to nothing. Each transaction would seem like peanuts to most freelancers, and they would feel like they aren't earning anything, but this is a numbers game, and the numbers don't lie.

Websites require a lot of communication as overhead - and cheap labor will only get you so far.

Considering the ONLY value proposition you will be providing is 'price', its a difficult business model. Any business with extremely tight margins and price as their only competitive point is an uphill battle.

Keep in mind the service you will be providing will generally be poor - because your price is low, you need to keep customer service time to a minimum - leading to a poor service.

Its better to reject these clients, rather than try to adopt them.