201–209 of 209 posts
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I'd hate to call it "hustle"
"Side hustle" is some kind of SV slang for money-making side project. The SV-specific part is that it's not meant in a dishonest or otherwise negative (rather humoristic) way.
Yes. I work at a 15-person agency doing website design and SEO for small businesses up from about 5 when I started there 4 years ago. We specialize in a few verticals and have a few industries we won’t work with. We do wordpress only and turn away plenty of clients who we don’t want to work with.
Really curious about the state of agency SEO services these days. Do you guys just do the standard on-page tweaks, or is there some backlink building too? I once looked into the backlink profiles of a successful SEO agency's clients and I discovered a makeshift PBN going on; they had 100s of sites ready to go and would just add client links to them. In predictable patterns (# of referrer pages would jump weekly etc.)…
Honestly, our work isn’t really cutting edge or innovative. Optimize content (we usually rewrite/redesign it all from scratch to hit both keywords and user-experience), claim profiles, get a few good backlinks.
I think the biggest thing is simply to track results over 6+ months and react to what you’re seeing. And looking for opportunities to continue creating good long-tail content, which is admittedly a crapshoot sometimes. But by working with a lot of similar companies, we kind of have a head start on what will probably work.
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I do both, and I’m not actually super awesome at either. It turns out to be less important than many think. My design work is professional, but isn’t going to win any awards. My dev skills are pretty good within the context of WordPress - there isn’t much I haven’t done on that platform. But I’m pretty sure I’d be laughed out of the room at a Google or FB. I was a senior engineer at a BigCo but my role there was more…
If you're open to share, why did you decide to leave the leadership/PM role for freelancing?
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…
How do you disconnect? As a solo guy charging retainers for support, etc. how can you take a couple of weeks off? Do you always have to check your emails even when you're on holiday or do you have someone else who can hold the fort?
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?
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But a good salary is pre-tax too unless you’re talking about the actual paycheck which is far lower than listed salary. There are benefits. Like matching 401K, paid vacation (though if this isn’t long enough it can be a negative), and mainly, health insurance. Those should be counted for a normal salaried job. Otherwise taxes should be compared the same way, no?
If you are self-employed in the US, you pay an additional tax before you even start your regular taxes, and this tax isn't affected by your personal deductions. You also need to pay for your own computers, SAAS services you use, etc. The more you make, the less this becomes an issue.
How can a 7% difference mean you compare non tax salary to taxed self employed income? As was the point of my comment. It doesn’t make sense. The disparity is way worse if you do that.
Also it was never said to compare revenue to salary. I assumed profit would be compared to salary.
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…
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Are your clients local? Would you mind talking about the city you're located in?
95% are local, we live and operate about 1.75 hours from Boston.