What types of websites do you build for more than $5,000?
What do you charge for monthly maintenance?
How do you advertise/get clients?
How did you start out your business?
Other people that don’t fit the criteria feel free to chime in about your business as well.
No offence, but those sites don’t seem any better than what you can do through Shopify, PrestaShop of Wordpress. I really don’t know how people are willing to pay $8k for something you can quite easily achieve by even hiring help from websites like Fiverr.
This is an example of a $350 Shopify theme. Customizing the template is fairly simple to your needs and the administrative panel makes is very easy for someone not technical to set up stock and manage orders.
Not to sound negative and I applaud you for finding business, but what makes your business attractive compared to all the options out there?
If that’s the type of site you want, by all means go for it. It’s a little bland for me.
And what you need to understand as someone not in the industry, dev work on fiver is an absolute mess and unreliable and you’ll spend more paying multiple people to fix what they failed to deliver or screwed up or not set up properly. Their support is non existent and when you need edits or have questions or need something fixed you will be ghosted. You’re better off setting it up yourself at that point. It’s a waste of money for a product made by someone whose goal is to spend a little time as possible to make as much as possible. That $8k site i linked already did their own Shopify site themselves. And they hated it. Hated the process. Hated editing it and it never looked good. They didn’t trust the overseas work or fiver and for good reason. That want something unique and on brand, that they don’t have to manage and edit, and that loads fast and works well. They can still edit their store on the Shopify dashboard and change inventory and all that.
When you have a designer to design it, me to code it, a Shopify dev to integrate the store, and a copywriter to write and edit the content, that adds up. And each are proficient and experienced in their field to do what they do at a higher level. People pay my rates because of the experience and knowledge I provide with the wealth of resources and people to handle all their needs and answer all their questions. we make a custom product for clients who want more than just the cheap theme or fiver work. They’ve been there and done that and it didn’t give any good results. So they come to us for something different. Something higher quality. And in a sea of mediocrity with builders and fiver work, we are unique in what we build and offer and actually deliver what they want. They give these fiver guys examples of what they want their site to look like, and they give them something that doesn’t look remotely like it but that’s the best they can do because their theme can only be stretched so far.
It’s cheap and easy to do your own site now days. But it’s not cheap to have it done right. It’s not always how it looks, but also how it’s built that makes a huge difference. And we must be doing something right because I haven’t done sales in 2 years. All my work is from referrals right now. So obviously it’s working better for them than their cheap themes they were using before.
Most business owners know fuckall about fiverr and websites.
You NEVER sell on price. If a person is that price conscious, they are not a viable prospect and you move on.
There are oodles of companies paying that much.
That website comes up a LOT LOT LOT slower than /u/Citrous_Oyster’s website.
Because there are other intangibles that people want that have nothing to do with price at all.
Most people don’t purchase a business product or service until there are at least 7 communications with them. That’s standard. It takes a lot of work to earn someone’s trust. The way /u/Citrous_Oyster builds trust is his complete and total domination of the thing he excels at, which is static websites that come up in less than a second. His website that has a lot of valuable content. And trust is just one part of intangibles that businesses want. Maybe they just want someone who lives in the same city because they want to make sure they can directly talk to the website designer. Maybe that’s not important to you, but you are not them.
I talk to prospects a lot. If we have a series of long conversations, and he or she is serious, at some point in the conversation, I’ll send them a thank you card with a Starbucks card worth $10, and the note states that whether they use my services or not, I appreciate all their time they’ve spent. I can’t begin to tell you how many sales that has closed. Why? Because it shows I care for them as a person. I send out birthday cards, anniversary cards, congratulations cards if I have that information. It shows I care, and I actually do. Sure, I want their business, but if I don’t get it, that’s fine, not getting business is part of the sales funnel. Not everyone is going to buy from you. But people VALUE when I send out personal touches, they WANT to be liked, and to be valued as people. Who doesn’t?
Never compete on price, never.
Agreed, but your target market are then:
A - Small businesses that are cash-rich and willing to pay a staggering amount for a basic website like the $8k, above. B - Small business owners that are not happy with a self-build non-technical approach (think Wix).
Larger companies will have the means to hire help in-house and would likely already have a website. Overall, your target audience is small and likely to reduce over time when more self-build non-technical solutions arise.
Well, it’s a demo site… It’s also a lot more complicated and advanced than OP’s website. Removing unused features combined with a good hosting package, and the speed difference wouldn’t be noticeable to an end-user.
Sorry bud, but that sounds like a sales pitch again. The website also doesn’t have “lots of valuable content”. It’s a very VERY basic website that lacks all that one would expect from an e-commence store. Even the products page looks so amateurish that I would run a mile before thinking about making a purchase… Two items for sale and one image for each? With one of those images being pixelated and blurry? Come one, man.
Again, a sale pitch/tactics. That’s nothing new and irrelevant to the website.
No you don’t and you are lying to yourself. You do that because there is self gain in the hope it will lead to new business. I laugh when people kid themselves into believing “they care” but the elephant in the room is to ask if you would build them a site for lower margin if asked? Would you? Because if you “truly cared” and did what you did because you “cared” then profit wouldn’t be your main objective.
You’re talking complete and utter nonsense.
One thing I will say is the store is limited by the client. They don’t have a lot of items yet, and I asked them to upload better images for the one apron and more images. Just waiting for them to do it. The rest is not worth my time or anyone’s to respond to because there seems to be no reasoning with you. You’re hell bent on being angry so go ahead and just stay angry I guess.
I like how you claim I’m angry on the simple basis we don’t agree.
I’ve spent my career in technology, including web design and UX at a corporate level. Unlike some of your clients, I feel that I have a good opinion on what is good value - and judging by the end result, $8k for that website is not good value, even with the bespoke/personality services taken into account.
Much of what you have said also doesn’t make sense. Sure, website speed and accessibility has an impact on a website rating, but it also depends on other factors, including things like keyword saturation and general market saturation. In reality, a website loading at a difference of tens of milliseconds faster will have no noticeable benefit to end users - many customizable out-the-box solutions will be more than adequate for most needs.
If there was some uniqueness in the design e.g. something like this then I could see where you are coming from, but the design of that site is quite underwhelming.
Yes. Getting new business is a sales pitch.
For sure.
You can’t read my mind. Of course I do it for gain. The person who awards me their business knows this. They are not stupid. They are not going to get fooled. My sister and her husband just got a thousand dollar gift card from their real estate agent because they had him sell our relative’s home. My sister and brother-in-law and I, and everyone else in our family know that he did this to get more business for himself. My sis and brother-in-law are not dumb. But here is the thing: they say this is super smart way for him to get more business. They love it. He also goes above and beyond to help them with issues, far beyond other realtors. But they have a good relationship with him.
What you are saying is so idiotic. It’s like going into a diner every morning and the whole staff knows you, and you all laugh and have fun every morning, and say that the waitress and staff are reptiles and do not like you at all and only doing it for the money and pretending to like you. That is so wrong as to be insane. People can have friendships, real friendships, with their clients, while sure, they still want to get paid and get a tip.
No. That’s completely backwards. Care goes two ways. A client knows that I have to pay rent and food, etc. They have to pay for their services from others to make their business go.
The only reason they would want me to lower the price like that is if they were exceptionally bad at running a business and can’t afford to buy things. A successful businessperson who makes a lot of money can afford it.
Those businessmen and women also know that relationships are very important. I’ve talked to business owners who have used the same vendor for 3 generations. They don’t even look at other companies, because the relationship is more important than pure price. I’m not saying that they would pay $25,000 for something that costs $5. But they would pay thousands of dollars per year more, because of their relationship.
You are making it all about money, as if nothing else matters.
But maybe you work in ecommerce where everything is transactional, and you have no contact with the end customer. Yes, then delivering for the lowest price might be ok. But people pay more for all kinds of reasons. Brand being one of them.
And in service businesses, the relationship is everything. When I say I care and want the cuistomer to do well, I’m NOT saying that I want them to adopt me or give me their daughter’s hand in marriage. That said, I do care about people I work with. Believe what you will.
It really sounds like you are a bitter person, who does not have friends so everything comes down to transactions. Where people are just objects. There are people like that. They are called sociopaths.
Good luck with this attitude. I love how the “secret” is to act entitled to your price, as if that’s everyone else’s problem instead of the market telling you you’re over-priced or your product isn’t that valuable, etc.
Guy above you is right; it looks like a basic website. The only person that’s going to pay out the ass is the person that can be convinced they need to/have no clue they’re getting taken for a ride by someone convinced their own product is worth that price, etc.
I’m not saying to try to sell a website for $20 million.
However, I’ve actually sold websites for $3K+. This is not theory.
If you want to create websites like they do in Pakistan and want to charge $50, because that’s what Pakistanis can do, hey, knock yourself out. You can make up for the low price by selling in volume.