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?

  • dopamineTHErapper@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I have a feeling ur strengths are in selling. Let one of us redo ur site for you. Id be willing to do it free of charge. I’ll just be interested in a tiny stake in ur business. I can be your registered agent in the US, and I bring a lot of small business development and e-commerce development marketing experience to the table. I do web development, SEO marketing all that stuff too. But MY THING ultimately turned out to be SMB development training cells and support staff, and coming up with creative fulfillment solutions. Let me know if that piquee ur interest. I have years of experience data mining for specific lead sources, traditional lead funneling through marketing, and I’m an expert at merchant arbitration. In fact, I became known for - if a client called in to cancel services for any reason, I would turn them around and upsell them to a package involving more investment on their part. lol.