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.
I am not a web developer, but I can answer your questions based on recent experience a friend of mine had.
He is in the finance space - I think this contributed to the hefty price in the quote ($15K to build a WP site). I told him that was too much considering his existing site has less than 50 pages and it wouldn’t be customized (using an existing WP theme).
Monthly maintenance was going to be around $8K - but the firm would write and post articles along with building backlinks and working on SEO.
The agency works specifically with finance companies, so they do a lot of networking. Also they were published in Forbes, which is what made them more appealing to his company.
My tip here for you, is to get published in the place(s). Also, a lot of smaller companies, prefer local developers, so use local SEO strategies, like Google My Business to start getting clients.
I don’t know how they started out their business, but you will get a lot of traction with local SEO and outreach.
Hope this helps and best wishes!