I have been self-employed since around 92, I have more failed startups under my belt than some you have had sex. My current business is 13 years old but it still makes me just a living,

I grew it from me and one bloke to 13 employees. Now here is the thing, when I had all those employees I earned less than I did when it was just 2 of us.

I didn’t get to do much except sales, admin and fixing stuff those 13 Guys fucked up. After doing some sums I let attrition do the job and reduced back to a solo outfit.

Now I am tired before I start my day, my back hurts and lifting stuff that just two years ago was a breeze is no longer as easy. This is an age thing, I realised the other day that my pension plan is good for just about 3 hours. https://dustfactory.co.za You can look at my website here and until about 3 years ago it was supplying too many leads for me to reply to. COVID broke that., but I am tired more than not getting enough work. .

I ran a web dev company before this one in a small town in Africa and clients were limited, too much competition, people offering work at stupid low prices and I got tired of counting cents, so I went back to my trade.

I used my skills developed during that period to out perform all my opposition on the web for the woodworking business. The most important thing that I learned in the business was saying no, or even fuck off. You cannot offer value and quality if you are too cheap.

I have moved to a big city, reduced overheads and can now retire about 3 hours before I kick the bucket. I really don’t want to get back in the death spiral competing with people charging too little for their service, mainly because I am convinced that a website that doesn’t bring results is not an investment for any business.

I have started updating my skills again, updating the CMS that I built and have been using. also have registered a few domains to build sites on as test beds.

The numbers below are based on exchange rates and are in no way accurate, they are just an example. My question is as follows, let’s say the cheap blokes are selling web sites for $100 and they place them, charge for hosting about $7 a month, but are doing no SEO, no forward planning, just put it up and forget it, How much should I be charging a month for full service?

Would you be willing to pay $250 a month for a site that includes all the SEO stuff like semantics, includes me sorting out your local SEO stuff, creating content regularly or would that seem like too much of a difference. I am assuming small businesses as clients.

Next check out my website and tell me if it creates confidence. Note not all the content is complete yet, but check out these pages please.

https://centuriondesign.co.za/

https://centuriondesign.co.za/pages/SEO.html

https://centuriondesign.co.za/pages/web-design.html

Tell me how I could improve them, What could I do that would help you make a decision?

  • EriksonEnterprises@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Honestly, and I say this respectfully, I think it’s a little too late to the game… your sites use outdated formats and code. Nowadays it’s all about frameworks like Laravel, codeignitor, vue.js, etc with dynamic view frameworks like bootstrap

    Past this I don’t think anyone is going to pay a monthly subscription like that for SEO when people sell SEO for a onetime flat fee of usually dirt cheap (whether it works or not). Also, SEO is only half of the battle nowadays. Gone are the days where you’d rank high with the right keywords… It’s more than that like engagement/clicks, and even payments to Google ads or whomever you want to be high on

    I’m sorry I just wanted to be honest about this

    There is money to be made in buying and selling domain names though, unfortunately that’s also out the window as most places snatch and hold for over $1,500+ that people just aren’t gonna pay…

    • guymclarenza@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Woodguy used to be my site some years ago, I let it go because “the brand was not serious enough” Dumbest advice I ever got. When it was mine it ranked on Google, now it does not.

      I aim to please business owners not web designers. I would take down the woodguy site and take away all that flashy crap. It impresses designers, looks impressive but delivers no results.

    • guymclarenza@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Just as a matter of interest are you seriously suggesting that using Laravel, Bootstrap et al to code php is better option than coding by hand and that websites not using those tools are inferior, I suppose you think WordPress is great as well?

      The html extension makes no difference to the operation of the site, I use .htaccess to fetch the php file.

      People selling SEO services for a flat fee are charlatans, Websites need to evolve because the rules are changing, My website may look like it was designed in 1996 but the content as been updated many many times,

      I could also use Joomla, Drupal, WordPress like all my opposition but here is the thing My site uses 1/10th of the code that Wordpress does that is why I scored 97% on the SEO ranker tool, My site hasn’t been up for a month and already I have had a couple visit attributed to the SERPs.

      I am currently using a heatmap app to test where the pain points are and will be making some changes once I have enough data.

      Data driven development is the future not some arbitrary development platform.

      • lvuittongenghiskhan@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        laravel and bootstrap are not the same as wordpress at all. why bother coming here for advice if you’re not gonna take any of it? there’s a reason why you are asking for advice lol

      • ItsMeOSRS@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        What’s this SEO score you talk about? You can have a stunning website using any combination of frameworks and have great SEO.

        Also frameworks are there to help you and speed up development, so maybe you can put more time on the user experience than custom making whatever you’re doing.

        User Experience is #1 and the user experience on your is dull, I recommend you look into that

      • c_ostmo@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Despite using 1/10th the code, your desktop LCP time is 7.7s. Your “SEO score” might be high, but in 2023 UX is even more important than some arbitrary score, and that 7.7s just doesn’t cut it for a company that does SEO.

        With all due respect, your site does not inspire confidence. Having something a prospective client will recognize as authoritative is much more important than your puritan views on coding. BTW, you can code from scratch and make it not look like shit, it just takes longer.

        I don’t have the slightest clue why you’re mixing photography with web design and SEO. As a former photographer myself, I would not even dream of that. I have separate businesses and they can “refer” each other if need be. The photography also looks about as dated as the website if I’m being honest.

      • EriksonEnterprises@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        I’m sorry but you’re just not understanding the situation here, and unfortunately that will severely limit your idea of becoming what you desire. It’s like a car mechanic never switching their knowledge from carburetor to electric fuel ignition…

        It’s also not about the amount of code that’s being used. You’re overthinking it like I used to, and severely limiting growth. If you ever had a website take off, you’ll be screwed because it’ll only be you who understands it #1 (keeping others from helping), and #2 you’ll be scrambling all over files and folders trying to add, fix, and remove things - that again only you will know

        I know this because I was like you. Exactly like you. And I tried hiring other devs to help me fix issues I couldn’t learn (website was outgrowing my spaghetti code), and I had no choice but to start from scratch and go with Laravel + Bootstrap. Now it’s so standardized, I could literally hire any random person who knows Laravel, and they can do whatever I need them to without anything being broken or changed, or having to spend hours figuring out what the heck I did

        For comparison, my litter management website project that uses Laravel + Bootstrap, with many Composer components (that’s another thing you’ll want to learn), is over 300MB in size total with 15,644 files and 1,314 folders and still loads faster and looks better than your websites with high scores on Google pagespeed… And that’s not even including the database

        I wish you luck though