171–180 of 209 posts
I live in the Austin area and tried this for a bit. There are tons of decades-old local businesses here, so I thought it'd be a treasure trove of jobs building fresh ones. I got one solid gig with a local music shop who needed a website with a CMS for maintaining an every-changing product inventory, but that was all I could find. Everybody else was good with Squarespace, so I went back to a desk job. I'm sure if I'd…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agency work is less profitable and higher hassle. They tend to want to “manage the project” and many of them do it rather poorly. My sales cycle is very short. I usually close the sale in the first meeting - or walk away knowing that a PO is imminent. Or I finish that meeting knowing that there’s no real opportunity there. Over many years I’ve developed a pretty good instinct of what is an opportunity and what isn’t,…
> Agency work is less profitable and higher hassle. I agree with the first part, but disagree with the second. Rather, partially disagree. Most agencies are inept. There are some out there that run a very tight ship and it is a pleasure to work for them. They tend to be larger and have a system for handling contractors. That said, since it's always less profitable, you're always better off having your own clients.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yikes, doing this since the 90s and your top price is 2500k?! You are focusing on the wrong opportunities and I bet you lose a lot of opportunities and you don’t know why. If you pitch a 2500k website to a 20+ person business there is 0 perceived value in that. That’s one persons time in their org for 2 weeks. What’s the value you are bringing? Decades of experience, marketing experience, conversion optimization, inb…
1. maybe not your intention, but this reads as quite rude 2. you mean 2.5k not 2500k. The latter would be a king's ransom for a wordpress site, even by your (apparently) high standards
I run a business that does outreach for agencies and can attest to the fact this there is still PLENTY of opportunity building sites for small business. We were "throwing so many fish back in the water" that had too little budget...but they had SOME budget so we spun out a business for that. I am a terrible WordPress programmer and only a moderate designer but even I make nice income from this division of our busines…
In a word sorta, but if you are on HN you are probably overthinking it. A guy I work with looks for bad small business sites on the side then he tries to convince them to let him "redesign" the site. He then moves their site to WIX and loads a default template that they like. He charges $3000 USD for this. 99% of the work is non technical.
There is lots of opportunity out there, but it depends on what you mean by ‘small business’. Super small companies (under 10 to 15 people in this context) are usually best off with SquareSpace or Wix. Companies slightly larger than this invariably end up wanting/needing things that these platforms can’t offer, and have the kind of budgets that can support a solo operator or small team. At this level, you are competin…
If you recommend SquareSpace and Wix, why not Wordpress.com?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Windsor, Ontario, Canada is where I am based and most of my clients are, though I do have customers here and there all over North America. One is based in Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Canada. Now THAT is far north. 2. Several years. First couple were tough. I took a 66% pay cut on Year 1 from my role as a senior developer at a Fortune 50 company. I should add - I’ve never met about 30% of my customers in person…
What kind of companies are your clients?
There is lots of opportunity out there, but it depends on what you mean by ‘small business’. Super small companies (under 10 to 15 people in this context) are usually best off with SquareSpace or Wix. Companies slightly larger than this invariably end up wanting/needing things that these platforms can’t offer, and have the kind of budgets that can support a solo operator or small team. At this level, you are competin…
> ...over 200k last year building, fixing and maintaining..., working from home in a region with a relatively low cost of living... THIS! My goal is to move away from my full-time day job and concentrate fully on my current side hustle...and arriving at or close to where you are now - both income and low expenses/cost-of-living, etc. Even if i'm a little under the 200k, that's squarely within my goal. I applaud you o…
There is lots of opportunity out there, but it depends on what you mean by ‘small business’. Super small companies (under 10 to 15 people in this context) are usually best off with SquareSpace or Wix. Companies slightly larger than this invariably end up wanting/needing things that these platforms can’t offer, and have the kind of budgets that can support a solo operator or small team. At this level, you are competin…
+1 for pointing out that soft skills are as important as the technical aspects of what is mostly a small project consulting business. Self evaluation for soft business skills can be difficult but one (obvious) metric is how often do you get continued work from existing customers. I would also say that concentrating on helping current customers is usually a better strategy than constantly chasing new work.
I run a business that does outreach for agencies and can attest to the fact this there is still PLENTY of opportunity building sites for small business. We were "throwing so many fish back in the water" that had too little budget...but they had SOME budget so we spun out a business for that. I am a terrible WordPress programmer and only a moderate designer but even I make nice income from this division of our busines…
How important is doing all of this locally? Meeting clients face to face? I assume businesses of this type would have to be totally readjusted for one living in a very small low tech isolated American town?