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Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

#151

Post by tbone2084 »

I wanted to see what other people thought about this. My experience is that in web dev, it's better to keep your hourly rate lower, just bill more hours. People will LOVE a 100 hour contract at $30/hr, but would freak out if an estimate was 25 hours @ $120/hr. Clients just can't seem to get past the hourly rate, even if the total project cost is the same.

As you become more skilled and significantly more productive, you'll find you can't capture this value because the client can not get past the hourly rate. And in their mind they can hire someone vastly cheaper who's 'almost as good'. The reality, as we all know is that the dropoff from a skilled dev is quite large.

I've found that overbilling hours at a lower rate results in happy, happy customers who get a quality product at a lower perceived cost. In the end their project is successful and they feel like they paid a fair price and I get paid what I'm worth.

Dishonest? Immoral? Curious on other's thoughts..

Re: Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

#152

Post by soheil »

I think there is money to be made still. If you focus on niche websites you can definitely charge a premium. I know lawyers that pay 4-figure monthly subscription fees for their websites in return for professional looking site tailored for a law firm and some type of SEO guarantee.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

#153

Post by gremlinsinc »

rograndom wrote: post #132
gremlinsinc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats your hourly? I'm more laravel/mobile/node/vue/react, and I find I under-charge, but I think if I were doing WP I'd need to charge even less... Currently my best-long-term client pays $40...but I feel I want/deserve 60-70 and trying to land that for my next couple clients... do people pay you more than $40/hr for wordpress or do you just charge per project?

You are probably undercharging. Not parent, but my WordPress specific work was either a flat fee for standard stuff (setting up a site, installing and configuring an existing theme, plugins, etc), or $50/hr for customization either through writing new plugins or adding functionality to an existing theme via PHP or CSS. Laravel or other custom work starts at $125 for clients I'm expecting volume from or $150 for one o…

Where do you find clients? My bread/butter is basically reddit - /r/forhire, Upwork is total shit, so I don't even login there anymore.

I'm wanting to potentially do some sort of hosting/support plan...and work on a site that has a ton more inbound marketing related articles on my biz. Then hire some offshore or jr devs or techs wanting to become devs to support the easy issues, I'll take care of the harder stuff, or hire some tier 2 people to do that... basically have something like $200/month for hosting, unlimited non-coding issues, change fonts, update settings, fix white screen of death, etc...w/ backups/malware scans/etc... -- the idea being get some recurring income.

Then I can up-sell people who need custom apps, full-design, etc... But before I can move into agency, I need solid/steady income. I had a bunch of imposter syndrome/depression but I'm depression free since August (therapy), and I've lost 90 pounds, and just have more energy, and I'm a lot more focused now, and just want to take freelancing to where I know it can go.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

#154

Post by mr_toad »

tbone2084 wrote: post #151

I wanted to see what other people thought about this. My experience is that in web dev, it's better to keep your hourly rate lower, just bill more hours. People will LOVE a 100 hour contract at $30/hr, but would freak out if an estimate was 25 hours @ $120/hr. Clients just can't seem to get past the hourly rate, even if the total project cost is the same. As you become more skilled and significantly more productive,…

Managers often have limits to what they can approve without going higher up the chain. That can be hourly limits like $100p/h or bulk limits like $50k for a project. And they’d rather spend time trying to argue you down than argue with their CFO.

Like they say, never bother arguing with someone who can’t say ‘yes’. If you need a yes, you need to start talking to someone higher up.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

#155

Post by vonseel »

notahacker wrote: post #43
adamqureshi wrote: post #38

Ad agencies here in NYC sub-contract out work all the time. They are sick of outsourcing to 3rd world. I'd connect with ad agencies in your area see if you can get sub-contract work. And you can charge $1,500-$3k to set up a SquareSpace site. Target dentist, interior designers, yoga studios. Forget the local pizza shop as a customer. If your building with WP then offer support. WP is being updated all the time and wi…

> Forget the local pizza shop as a customer The local pizza shop's potentially a good customer if you're selling them a way to take orders online and get people to buy their special offers and refer their friends through social media . Plenty of value in that, especially if you're yielding more proven results than those flyers they pay to have printed and delivered every couple of months. If you're selling them a hom…

Here in Texas, http://www.whatismavn.com/ has made a pretty good business out of this. Although, I believe they had to also integrate with existing PointOFSale systems or implement some hardware in order to offer online ordering. Nice niche market though, and I have nothing but praise as a buyer of food through their customers.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

#156

Post by perlgeek »

jugg1es wrote: post #84

All the comments here make me sad for my young children. I am now a lead dev at a medium-sized company, but I had a side business doing web design/development from age 14 to about 26. I never made big money, but when you're 15, a $2k payday for a month's worth of learning experience is pretty incredible. And a $15k project for a couple months of work in college buys a lot of beer. Based on the comments here, it sound…

Maybe the time is over for web design, but there's always something new around the corner that the kids have figured out, and the more conservative businesses haven't.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

#157

Post by adamqureshi »

yoava wrote: post #126
notahacker wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forget the local pizza shop as a customer The local pizza shop's potentially a good customer if you're selling them a way to take orders online and get people to buy their special offers and refer their friends through social media . Plenty of value in that, especially if you're yielding more proven results than those flyers they pay to have printed and delivered every couple of months. If you're selling them a hom…

Actually, you can do a lot more with Wix Code, and make a site with all kind of custom functionality, including 'a way to take orders online and get people to buy their special offers and refer their friends through social media'. But to use Wix Code, you will need to know some level of coding, hence value to sell for your clients. And I agree, there is a huge market for people to build websites for customers, you ne…

You can do that but the pizza guy may not know how to manage it. So the game has changed from making a static site to making a site and then figuring out how to make the pizza guy more money , get him more customers. Google business page optimization just basic stuff and then yelp listing. Just make sure the address is correct and no spelling errors. You put him on a subscription and meet him once a month to go over value , you become his digital media expert. You then ask him to promote you to his customers. I get free pizza , pasta from the pizza guy. Just for talking about this stuff with him. You can charge for it.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

#158

Post by squirrelicus »

You might consider partnering with web marketing services (the kinds that do marketing sites and SEO). They might send you contracts for custom work.

You might also consider getting into web application development. There's a lot of need still for small and medium businesses for custom portals that manage their line of business.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

#159

Post by projektfu »

As a small business owner who has paid for web design, yes I think you can make money at it. I was looking for some help developing a unique look and I found it and paid for it. I looked for someone who focused on the art, and we used SquareSpace to implement the site. This has worked out well because SS doesn't seem to go down and they have analytics baked in. I'm not beholden to the designer for hosting like I have seen with other small business websites.

Other companies I've seen doing it have been focused on a vertical, telling their customers that they'll solve all SEO problems and all that for a small initial investment and a monthly fee. I haven't believed them yet so they don't have my money.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any money in website design for small businesses anymore?

#160

Post by Nerada »

I've tried looking for contractors in the past who can make small changes to static HTML landing pages.

I've since given up just learned to hack together changes myself as everyone on the big web design markets ignores the original request for alteration and instead spins up a $50 Wordpress theme they try and resell to me for $800.

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