What skills do you have? That’s a huge factor. I’m a web developer. I taught myself how to code. And with that I sold websites as a subscription to small businesses. $0 down $150 a month. I make $6500 a month in recurring passive income that I don’t have to work for. I do less than 10-15 hours of edits a year. It takes me about 4-6 hours to set up a site from start to finish, I have SEO and ads and marketing people who handle that aspect of the service and they work directly with the client so I don’t have to do anything. It’s chill. So that’s one avenue. I’m hoping to be over $7k a month by the end of the year. And by next year I’d be happy with $10k a month. The hard part is learning to code, learning how SEO works, what makes a good site versus bad site, how to sell, etc. lots of things to figure out and learn. But that’s the thing though. It takes effort. It’s not something you can just turn on with no work involved. True passive income is achieved through non passive effort and set up. So don’t look for any get rich quick schemes.
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1·10 months agoThis is so dumb. Not you. Them. I’m a web developer. And I run an agency. They’re selling “landing pages” because they’re simpler and easier to make for them. Landing pages don’t work for service based businesses and small businesses. You NEED content. Extra Pages. Etc. That’s how you rank! Content is king. Like this site I made
We have service pages for each service so they rank for those pages in searches. You want a contact page as well so when they search “contact business” that page ranks for it and they don’t have to go searching a landing page for the form.
If you have offer, ads, or specific services you want to advertise and run ads to, you create a landing page within the site for that specific campaign that’s targeted to those offers and services. You still have your full website around your company so people can learn more about you, what you do, validation that you’re legit, etc.
Don’t trust videos online from consultants and gurus. Good websites take effort and time. You NEED content. Without it you won’t rank. How can people find you if you don’t have the keywords on your site to match their search query? And the proper content amount to satisfy google that you are an authority and your information answers users questions. If you need help with a site you can ask me anything. It’s literally what I do everyday. I’m not a hobbyist or anything. I actually write the code to build my sites and understand how they should be built on a fundamental code level and I have SEO people who I learned from on how pages rank and why. Always happy to share what I know.
I like to think ours is different at least
Totally know what you mean. It bores me. It’s like they all used the same tailwind template
I like to think ours is different at least
Totally know what you mean. It bores me. It’s like they all used the same tailwind template
I’m a web developer with an agency. I’m busier than ever. You need to learn sales and cold calling and how to find your own clients. I wrote how I find my clients and pitch my services here
https://codestitch.app/complete-guide-to-freelancing#finding-clients
That how I started. It’s been two years and I haven’t had to do sales at all because now I just get referrals work and people find my site. Impress enough people and they throw work at you. I got the attention of a cookie SEO people and I now white label my services and build their sites for their clients and just pay me my rates for them and bill the client. I did a clothing manufacture site And they liked it so much they send all their e-commerce clients to me who are setting up clothing brands, like influencers and celebrities. They come to them for the product and when they need a site to sell them on, they get sent to me.
When you make good work, provide good service, and it has good performance and results, it starts to snowball. I’m working on like 12 clients right now at the same time. They just keep coming. But I keep up. Others here tell you you’re 20 years too late. I say they’re 20 years behind. Page builders and cheap overseas work is so ubiquitous now a days but they make crap. Have crap service. And and very limiting and cookie cutter looking. There’s lots of pain points small businesses have using these services to make their sites for cheap and wonder why it’s not getting traction. It’s because it’s a bad site. Just because anyone can make a website now a days doesn’t mean everyone can make a GOOD one. It’s like watching people DIY their own home remodels. Sure you can do it, but it most often won’t be the same quality as a professional. I hand code my sites. That’s my unique selling point. I can make a custom product with no limitations. I know what google wants to see in a website and how websites rank and I have SEO people who know how to do it and they get access to them. They also do their ad campaigns. I offer more than just websites. I offer a full boutique service for every need they have. They’re tired of the cheap stuff. They want the good stuff now. Those are the clients I target. They value my work more because they learn that it’s not actually that easy and experience and expertise are worth every penny. The hard part is selling it. Do you know the difference between a good website and and website? When someone asks you what you do that’s better, what are you gonna say? What is your value proposition? What is your unique selling point and what do you bring to the table they can’t get for $50 overseas? That’s how you make it in this business. You need to identify problems and sell solutions to those problems. If you can’t identify what’s wrong with a website, how can you sell your site as a solution? There’s no value proposition. And you won’t make that sale.
That’s great. I’m happy for you. I am scaling Just fine actually. Currently working 11 sites at the same time this month and delivering them all within 30 days. I have a nice little system set up and designers and other devs that help me. Which is why I charge as much as I do. More people involved, more money to charge for. I or I use a boutique service that isn’t for everyone. I’m not a hustler. You’re just not my target demographic. And that’s ok.
And yet I’m booked for the next month and a half. 🤷🏻♂️ I charge based on the value my work brings, and if people accept it, is it really overpriced? Sounds like you’re undercharging to me.
I wrote how I do that here
https://codestitch.app/complete-guide-to-freelancing#finding-clients
Too much to put in a comment
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 work with designers to design everything. I’m exclusively front end. Hosting isn’t a front end or backend thing.
Udemy course. Zero to mastery by Andrei neogie
I build e-commerce sites. Shopify is king
If they cancel, they don’t keep the site. It’s in the contract. And they cant take my code either. It’s being pulled from GitHub through my hosting provider. If they remove the nameservers on the domain dns settings they can’t access my files so they have no site. And it’s not like they’d know what to do with them anyway.
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.
I sell static brochure sites for $3500. 5 pages. Every page after that is $100 per page. $500 fee to add a blog. Shopify e-commerce sites start at $8k.
I’ve done a few $5k+ sites because of the blog and extra page fees. They’re just static pages. Information only. They don’t have apps or booking or anything inside of it.
Lump sum sites have a $25 a month hosting and general Maintenance fee. Hourly rate for edits.
I offer an upsell for $80 a month for unlimited edits, 24/7 support, lifetime updates, etc.
Or
Subscription sites cost $0 down and $150 a month, 12 month minimum contract. Month to month after that.
In the beginning I just cold called from google and yelp. Then after about 30-40 clients the referrals started to come in and my website was ranking well locally. Now I get all my work from my website and referrals.
I started out by teaching myself web development in my car while I did Uber. In between rides I was coding and watching tutorials and doing online self paced bootcamps. After about a year and a half of that I got good enough at it to start freelancing. And here I am 5 years later with a full time front end developer job and I run my agency that makes 6 figures a year working it part time. The subscription account for about half my income. It’s passive and recurring. I do less than 10 hours of edits a year. Pretty chill.
Here’s an example of an $8k site
An example of a $6k site
And a $3500 site
I’m a web developer.
a Facebook page can’t rank on google for people searching for your services. Only a website can. And if they’re doin fine with just a Facebook then they can do even better with a website which will help make the slow periods not as slow and keep the leads coming in more consistently. Not everyone uses Facebook to find your services. And lots of people won’t call a business if they don’t have a website because anyone can make a Facebook page with little effort and buy followers. Making an actual good looking website takes effort and instills more trust in a brand. Facebook pages are for social validation. Websites are used to be found online. And ignoring a website is ignoring an entire market of customers who use websites to find your services. And if you’re doing well without a website it is just validation that what you do is in demand, valued, and sought after. A website will only amplify your current reach in the community and let people find you who don’t have Facebook or who doesn’t know anyone that has worked with you before to get a Referral. You can reach people who wouldn’t have found you otherwise. And that’s a client who can now refer you to other people and expand your already established referral network. A new website can’t hurt you. It can only help you in this situation. And if you want to retire at the end of it all, having a well established website that ranks well adds more value to your company and that’s more money you can ask for in your sale price. A website is an asset like any other tool or piece of machinery. And assets have value and bring value.
That’s because those methods don’t work. Gotta cold call them. This his how I found my clients
https://codestitch.app/complete-guide-to-freelancing#finding-clients
I run an agency and I’m a web developer. You should really keep the ready job and do the business as a side gif until it grows enough to be a main gig. Freelancing is hard. And its saturated. It took me years to get to a point where I make more than I do at my day job and get referral work. You will struggle financially and put a lot of stress in yourself. You king get a few clients from this post but it’s not enough to sustain you long term without a good sales pipeline and referral network.
I’m a web developer. And I have a gutter installation client of mine. Here’s what you’re missing
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the text over the images are not great. The white text disappears into the image and is very hard to read. This is bad for accessibility as well since people with visual sensitivities won’t be able to read your content there. That’s a no no. If you want a section with an image background and text on top you need to add a color overlay on top of the image. Black overlay, 75% opacity and white text on top. That should do it. You also have too much space between the image on your hero section and the services section. I’m on mobile at least. Can’t say anything for desktop so I’m going off mobile. Way too much space above and below the image. It’s awkward. And that image should be 100% with and at least 300px tall on on mobile. 16px left and right of the image between the edges of the screen.
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no visual hierarchy between your hero header text and the sub heading below it. They have the same font weight and the sub heading should be smaller. I usually have 39px header and 16-20px sub header in those spots. And the Atlanta base text at the top should not be the same distance from the header as the subheading. Creates a lot of empty space and the eye has no focal point. The top text is too big and the subheading is too big, so the main header is figured for visual prominence between them. Make the heading bold, 39px, lower the font size of the top text to 16px, and 8px between it and the header, make the subheading 20px and 16px away from the heading.
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the services section header “services” is smaller than the lower level headings below it. That should be you let h2 heading, and should be bigger. 31px minimum. Then the subheadings for the services should be 20-25px and bolder so they have more visual hierarchy over the text helped them. And your services header is in all caps but the rest of your headings are not. Bad design detail. You need to be consistent in your design choices like this for a more cohesive design. That uppercase text looks like it doesn’t belong. It should be the biggest font size text in that section. There’s also too much gap between the sign up button and last list item. Should be 16px gap between the text paragraphs and list items and then 32px between the button. Double your spacing between non related elements for proper spacing.
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the interested section with the neon sign background is way out of place. There’s no neon theme anywhere on the site and there’s no pink colors in your branding so it doesn’t make sense. The text on top is also drowned out by that image. That whole section is an eye store and sticks out. I thought it was an ad at first.
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the service seed section is very empty. Lots of space in that white card and space around them. But there’s too LITTLE space between the top of the image and the green background section above it. Not great spacing going on in this section. There’s like 20px space at the top of the section and like 150px if space below it. The top is cluttered and the bottom is empty.
Here’s an example of a site I did for a plumber in your area actually, in the Atlanta area (Ball Ground, Marietta).
Notice how I have my hero image on mobile full Width, the header big and bold, the subheading at a proper size and spacing away from it, there’s the same amount of space at the top and bottom of every section of the site, the why choose us section has an image background like yours, but it’s done the same way I mentioned earlier in my comment. Also look at the pages setup. We have service pages for every service they offer. You should have a page dedicated to gutter cleaning and move that block of content in the green section over to its own page. People don’t read that much content in a home page. You need to give them little blurbs and a call to action button to learn more and go to the page with more content or call now and set up and appointment button.
You have no Portfolio or examples of gutters you’ve cleaned, pricing, who you are, about you, no picture of you, no reason why we should choose you, etc. you’re missing a lot of value propositions in your content strategy and have like no call to action buttons to the home page to call and schedule a clean up. You have sign up call to actions. I don’t wanna sign up. I wanna call you first and speak to you and ask you questions before I pay for something. You need to direct your call to actions to get in touch with you. It’s an easier action to email you than it is to sign up for a service on the spot. Not as much risk or friction. I’d do away with that. I don’t want to commit to a subscription when I never used before. You should have a section about one time cleans with a cta to schedule their cleaning, and another one for recurring cleans and a cta to schedule online.
I don’t like wix and I don’t like their booking. I don’t recommend people using proprietary booking systems like that because if you ever need to change your website platform you can’t take it with you and you need to start over and set up all your clients on a new subscription with the new platform. I use square up for all my monthly recurring invoicing. I recommend you move to that instead. They have an online booking platform you can link to form your site and they go to the square up site to finish that action. It’s perfect. If you ever need to ditch wix you can easily move that link to the new platform. It goes where you go. Plus if wix screws up or goes down, your booking and payments are affected. If you separate your site from your booking that adds an extra layer of protection. If your site goes down your invoicing platform is still running on square and is unaffected. I do this stuff all the time. All my clients with booking or online classes needs I have them use an outside third party software to do it off the site. It’s much better in the long run.
Happy to answer any questions you have about your site and how to make an effective site.
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My guy u/fugi_tive can help you. He’s a UK dev I know and work with personally. We are both freelancers and we work on websites together sometimes and send each other work. He’s one of the most talented devs I know. Hit him up