Your WP Sites For Offline Clients?

[thunderbird]

Hello,

Would anybody here like to share links to WP sites you've created for offline clients? Thanks.

[VegasGreg]

Here are 2 of the ones I have done:

Polar Ice Italian Ices
and
Boise Phone Guy, Boise Telephone and Internet Services

[markshields]

Sadly I havent created any for offline clients or I would have shown you them

[rosetrees]

Hall End House
Tickford Cottage
Much Marcle
Kington Blackboard
work in progress (still in development on test site)

[Russell Hall]

1) A restaurant on Goldcoast Australia (note; site content still a works in progress) Reflections@one6ixty Restaurant
2) A commercial services business in Brisbane Australia (site submission final format and content to be decided) AUST-WIDE CLEANING & TROLLEY SYSTEMS
3) A dog massage therapy site http://pawssage.com

Hope this gives an indication for you Thunderbird. There is clearly a big market for offline websites and SEO. My brother in Australia is involved heavily in this and gives me a lot of work. I'd chase it up myself but being located in Thailand means that's not possible,.. and besides,- I kind of like not having to put a shirt and tie (plus trousers) on everyday just to go to work ;-)

[Pat Ordenes]

cool stuff!
Though...
That Paw massage logo looks a bit... funny.
:P

[iw433]

Arizona Personal Injury Lawyer

[Lisa Gergets]

Interesting stuff! Anyone care to divulge what they got paid for any of those great sites? THAT would be motivating!

[thunderbird]

Thanks for sharing. Great to see what y'all have done. Much appreciated.

(Anyone willing to share what you were paid?)

[TimCastleman]

VegasGreg -

Love the sites but wish you did email capture. With the ice people you could do a coupon incentive to get them to sign up and give their email to you.

[TimCastleman]

Ok I looked over 95% of the sites listed and while they are beautiful they lack the ability to capture the information of the people who are going to the website.

The money is in the list and a list of customers is huge. Make up a coupon to give away in exchange for an email address to send them to.

Great job otherwise and some very pretty websites.

Tim

[VegasGreg]

Originally Posted by TimCastleman

VegasGreg -

Love the sites but wish you did email capture. With the ice people you could do a coupon incentive to get them to sign up and give their email to you.

I did try and offer to do the email capture forms, but they didn't want them for those sites. The Phone Guy may be adding one real soon though.

[TimCastleman]

Greg -

That is a shame. Show them how it can add to the bottom line:

1. Contact old customers to rebook at a moments notice
2. Give coupons out to new customers for referrals
3. Offer seasonal discounts in "slow time"
4. Keep their services top of mind.

At any rate good job man!

tim

[Quentin]

Here are a few we have done mainly blogs to drive traffic

Personalized Ceramic Baby Gift Plates
Castlehill Truck and Car Mechanical Repair
Ross Replacement and Performance Parts

just to name t a few

Quentin

[TimCastleman]

Q -

Regarding this site -
Personalized Ceramic Baby Gift Plates

I wish you could make the plates bigger in the photos. When I clicked on them they were thumbnail size.

Also as above it would be great to capture new mom names and emails to give them Christmas reminders.

Or I wonder (where she lives) if she can get the names of new mothers (birth certificates are public record I believe) for this year and send them a mailing piece offering them the plate.

Something to think about. Love the site.

Tim

[Danny Turner]

hre's one
— Flags R Fun

[Russell Hall]

Originally Posted by Pat Ordenes

cool stuff!
Though...
That Paw massage logo looks a bit... funny.
:P

Agreed,... a client submission,.. my task.. to cut paste and squeeze in!

Without giving away individual details which could be seen as client privilege, I generally charge out at between $300 and $400 for these sites,.. which is OK,.. although considering all of the fiddling around and amendment requests it doesn't really amount to a huge hourly rate,... I suppose around $20 to $25 an hour but sometimes much less if really curly problems are encountered.

[Russell Hall]

Originally Posted by rosetrees

Hall End House
Tickford Cottage
Much Marcle
Kington Blackboard
work in progress (still in development on test site)

Nice work Rosetrees!
That Atahualpa theme looks interesting and quite flexible. Similar in some respects to Thesis,.. which I've just started using and must say it's truly awesome. I got notice today that Thesis 1.6 is released and that it has even more back end morph control... can't wait!

[rosetrees]

Thanks Russ. As for charges -
Hall End was £350 plus ongoing maintenance.
Tickford Cottage was £100.
Much Marcle I run for our village on behalf of the church (who pay me a small annual retainer).
Kington Blackboard I designed with a friend (and taught her how to use the theme) - there was no charge and I host it for free.
The work in progress site will probably be around $500.

Tim's comment about lack of mailing lists is spot on. The last site will use a mailing list. The first two claim they have enough business without needing a list.

I am getter better at persuading clients to use lists though - I have enough signed up to pay my monthly Aweber fees - it's a start!

[tonyscott]

My latest: Painter And Decorators Barrow And The Lake District | Mark Cooper Painters And Decorators

Nice sites rosetrees, I'm going to pick up your wso and have a look at Atahualpa.

Tony

[rosetrees]

Thanks Tony - let me know what you think of the tutorial - and post a link on my site if you use it to design a site.

[Quentin]

Here is another one we are working on by turning wordpress into a shopping cart.

Promotional Mugs and Glassware Straight from the Printer

I am doing this one as a JV with the printer.

Quentin

[AmyKay]

I actually have a couple requests from small businesses to create a website for them. So thank you for this thread!

How much do you all charge them for the monthly hosting? Any examples of contracts you're willing to share? I'm an amateur, so I'll work cheap for clients, but would like to start off doing it right.

Again, thank you!

[TimCastleman]

Amy -

You are going about this all wrong. When is the last time you went to a dentist or a doctor and the first thing he told you was ... "I work on the cheap"?

Look you have a skill few people do ok. You, like I, have the ability of making money appear out of thin air. Don't laugh, I am serious. At any time you want you can build a website, get traffic to it, send an email to a list, etc and some money is going to come in.

Price shouldn't be the issue - value should be. If you can make me 10k why wouldn't I pay you $1,000 in return?

One cheap client only gets you another cheap client.

Think value, not price.

Tim

[rosetrees]

Originally Posted by AmyKay

How much do you all charge them for the monthly hosting?

I charge the same for monthly hosting via my reseller account as my web host would charge for hosting a single site.

So far I haven't used a contract for ongoing work - I just charge by the hour.

I work in an unusual way, though, as I live in a small rural community and know most of my clients.

Carol

[iw433]

Flagstaff Chiropractors

[thunderbird]

Originally Posted by rosetrees

I charge the same for monthly hosting via my reseller account as my web host would charge for hosting a single site.

So far I haven't used a contract for ongoing work - I just charge by the hour.

I work in an unusual way, though, as I live in a small rural community and know most of my clients.

Carol

That sounds nice and serene. I live in an urban center, supposedly in a nice safe-ish neighborhood but I frequently see fights from my apartment window.

I also know my clients for the most part since I chat with people a lot, mostly in my densely populated neighborhood. I've also done work for people I've never met in person (one of them being a biker, so maybe that's for the best).

[TimCastleman]

I posted by mistake this in another thread.

These are some great sites but all of them can be improved with a few things that will make your clients more money.

1. Email capture. Not going to beat a dead horse

2. Testimonials. People buy their stuff, they should be saying nice things and we should be putting those nice things on the website.

3. Coupons/Free Reports/Something. Give them some reason to come back to the website on at least a weekly basis. A weekly sale or a 10% off coupon, etc.

Again great site that with a few tweeks can be even better.

[thunderbird]

Here's a site I recently created for a retail business.
MrKumpirVancouver.com

The client is very happy (it's always a little unpredictable how someone will react to something as subjective as design and layout). That said, I'll still need to tweak style.css here and there. For example, the header may not always show up the same on all computers/browsers -- the logo gets pushed down on a friend's computer.

[rosetrees]

I love it. Although making me look at photos of hot, baked potatoes stuffed with delicious fillings is seriously unfair when I've just started a diet!! I was reading the menu and working out what to order - then I remembered I live something like 5 thousands miles away. Ho, hum - it could be cold by the time it's delivered.

[joshril]

There are some really nice looking sites on this thread!

Based on the trend of what some of you are charging, have you considered offering these sites for free to business owners that don't have a site? As Tim mentioned, make sure you include an opt-in box, and then charge a monthly hosting and list maintenance fee.

If you're only going to charge $200-$500 on average anyway, you'd make a lot more money doing it this way. You can also outsource the website design for $75-$100 instead of spending hours doing it (unless you just enjoy doing it). I can build a nice Wordpress site, but it will take me 5-10 hours to get it exactly how I want it, and my time is worth far more than $10-$20 per hour.

So here's what the numbers look like...

Offer a free custom website to a business owner valued at $1,000-$1,500 which will cost you about $100 or so to outsource.

Charge them a $100-$500+/month for hosting/list maintenance/marketing which can include a number of things that will actually help the business owner make money with the site:

-Auto-responder copy
-Article submission
-Video submission
-Backlink building and other SEO services
-Optimization or creation of a Google, Yahoo, or Bing local listing
-etc...

There are tons of things you can to that are easy/cheap to outsource that will build the value to a point where your client will gladly hand you the monthly fee.

Even at $100 per month... you're now making $1,200 (less your outsourcing costs if you choose to go that route) per year versus $200-$500 upfront, one-time per site.

This would be a very attractive opportunity for most business owners...

And here's a tip on how to find clients for this method...

When a new business is registered, this is public data. Most of the time, you can go to your state or your county's website and look this information up (not sure how it works outside the US, but I'm sure it's about the same situation).

If the information is not online, you may have to make a call or go in person to get a list from the county, but the information is available.

Call the business owners up and offer them a free website. They will be getting calls from other web designers and credit card processors since they are a recently registered business, but most (if not all) are going to be charging them for web design.

There are all sorts of variations to this idea... just thought this might add something of value to the thread a give a different spin on doing basic web designs.

[teamind]

Originally Posted by joshril

There are some really nice looking sites on this thread!

Based on the trend of what some of you are charging, have you considered offering these sites for free to business owners that don't have a site? As Tim mentioned, make sure you include an opt-in box, and then charge a monthly hosting and list maintenance fee.

If you're only going to charge $200-$500 on average anyway, you'd make a lot more money doing it this way. You can also outsource the website design for $75-$100 instead of spending hours doing it (unless you just enjoy doing it). I can build a nice Wordpress site, but it will take me 5-10 hours to get it exactly how I want it, and my time is worth far more than $10-$20 per hour.

So here's what the numbers look like...

Offer a free custom website to a business owner valued at $1,000-$1,500 which will cost you about $100 or so to outsource.

Charge them a $100-$500+/month for hosting/list maintenance/marketing which can include a number of things that will actually help the business owner make money with the site:

-Auto-responder copy
-Article submission
-Video submission
-Backlink building and other SEO services
-Optimization or creation of a Google, Yahoo, or Bing local listing
-etc...

There are tons of things you can to that are easy/cheap to outsource that will build the value to a point where your client will gladly hand you the monthly fee.

Even at $100 per month... you're now making $1,200 (less your outsourcing costs if you choose to go that route) per year versus $200-$500 upfront, one-time per site.

This would be a very attractive opportunity for most business owners...

And here's a tip on how to find clients for this method...

When a new business is registered, this is public data. Most of the time, you can go to your state or your county's website and look this information up (not sure how it works outside the US, but I'm sure it's about the same situation).

If the information is not online, you may have to make a call or go in person to get a list from the county, but the information is available.

Call the business owners up and offer them a free website. They will be getting calls from other web designers and credit card processors since they are a recently registered business, but most (if not all) are going to be charging them for web design.

There are all sorts of variations to this idea... just thought this might add something of value to the thread a give a different spin on doing basic web designs.

Joshril is SPOT ON with this! And, if you can find a way to create ONE SINGLE site for FIVE clients, and bill all of them a monthly maintenance fee, then you can reduce your work effort even more, while increasing your income.

Offline businesses specialize (and only have time to specialize) in their OFFLINE business. So, EZA marketing, email marketing, SEO, Wordpress install and theme design, copywriting, backlinks...it will make their heads spin.

If you can get them online and ranking, AND then keep them there, WHILE helping them GROW their business, the money will freely flow your way.

(p.s. You can even charge a small set up fee to the client to make sure they have some "skin in the game" = less likely to back out after just a month, or two. Do something that makes this feel like a GREAT value - like interview the client, or help them collect testimonials from their clients, or conduct an audio or video interview with them and post it on their site, or page on the site.)

Cheers,
Kelly

Cheers,
Kelly

[DogScout]

Do not under-price your services. If you are willing to work with a small business, instead of charging $500 for a site, charge them $3,000. Bill $500 a month for 6 months.

Justify by including SEO. Outsource 1,000 back links with 2-3 of James' (Rich Jerk) WSOs. Do the keyword research, open them a Google account and add paralytics and add a few articles in addition to the content THEY provide.

Teach the owner how to make a blog post and tell him/her to make one at the least every 2 weeks. (do it for him if you have to for a few months using his content and your keywords, after which you can start charging for that if they never grasp how to do a post. There are those that just cannot get that no matter how smart they are.)

Do a month or two of Adwords at $250 or $500 in costs so that when they see the boost in sales they continue and start paying for the Adwords AND your managing of them. (basically continuing the $500. You spend $350 or so in Google and keep $150 for the 2-4 hours a month you spend testing ads and landing pages.) As they grow, they increase the Adwords spend and you increase the fee.

Remember they are probably local so keyword research has to take that into account. In Google make them a local biz, open a Google biz listing (as well as Yahoo & Bing). Use the local meta tag, that ranks them higher in local searches and excludes them everywhere else. Hardly anyone uses it, so it is very useful right now and make their account local in the webmaster tools of Google.

In 6 months you are likely to have a constant 2-500 dollars in net income from that one account if you are any good at adwords.

Off-line biz is easy to get because there are so many idiots & crooks in the biz. Value is easy to show. Don't make them sign long term contracts. (In some cases I do the work before being paid! Worst case is loss of a few hours work. And then they really trust you.) Let them know you are under charging them. After all, most adword companies (if they know what they are doing) charge $3000 just to get to know the company and $3,000 to set the campaigns up! $6,000 before they place the 1st ad! You are giving them a great deal!)

When doing adwords always never stop testing ads and landing pages. Do that and an idiot can beat most of the competition in ANY niche! (98% don't test. Lol.) If I were you and you never used adwords before, just buy Perry Marshall's ultimate guide to adwords on his site for $197. That has all the info you need and more. Ignore the high priced classes. Opt into Perry's list and Glenn Livingston's list. they email enough free info to keep you busy. Lol.

At 3-500 for a site, you are doing them no favors and yourself even less of a favor.

If they don't want to pay for a 'list', make one anyway. Use your AR to feed it. 6 months later ask if they would like a 'rush' of business make a % of increased sales deal and email the list with 10% off or something. They will see the value in the list then!

If you pick a few tiny mom & pop companies to work with, (12-15), in a year, you will be working 10 hours a week and making 10-12K a month. PLUS you will be making the companies successful and they will love you.

[DogScout]

Originally Posted by DogScout

add paralytics

or analytics, whichever.

[rosetrees]

Originally Posted by DogScout

or analytics, whichever.

I preferred paralytics -sounds way more fun.

[Leron Ford]

What a great thread! Here are two sites that I've done.

Coy's Woodworking

Palmetto Children's Academy

I'd love to see what you guys think of my sites.

Thanks,

Leron

[joshril]

Great sites! I really liked the Palmetto site a lot!

Originally Posted by Leron Ford

What a great thread! Here are two sites that I've done.

Coy's Woodworking

Palmetto Children's Academy

I'd love to see what you guys think of my sites.

Thanks,

Leron

[dingleigofai]

I'm developing this one for a client... Should be done in about a week. Fully custom theme. Yes, there are several things that are going to still be changed on it... relative width, email capture, static front page, etc.
But coming together nicely.
www.peakpositionmarketing.com

[Leron Ford]

Originally Posted by joshril

Great sites! I really liked the Palmetto site a lot!

Thanks! That means a lot.

[Benjamin Eddy]

Great sites guys and good info. I havn't gotten into the whole
local biz thing yet, but I probably will use it for extra money soon.

Here is a site I made for my mom's business. It's a unique wordpress
theme I made. Tell me what you think.

SandS estate sales Hood River. Still need to add a video bottom
left and the box middle right is where their sale info goes, she just
hasn't added it yet.

[thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Benjamin Eddy

Great sites guys and good info. I havn't gotten into the whole
local biz thing yet, but I probably will use it for extra money soon.

Here is a site I made for my mom's business. It's a unique wordpress
theme I made. Tell me what you think.

SandS estate sales Hood River. Still need to add a video bottom
left and the box middle right is where their sale info goes, she just
hasn't added it yet.

That's a nice looking site/theme you created. The ornate font combines well with your graphics and is very pleasing to the eyes. My only suggestion is to double-check and run it by different eyeballs to make sure they can read the font ok (I can read it ok).

[GeorgeO7]

Massage Therapy MN - $2400.00 - This site was recently featured in a Massage Association magazine and has been online about a year. The site works well, gathering new clients and gift certificate sales.

[DogScout]

Fonts are English 'Black Letter'

a little ornate, but readable in that size as long as clients resolution isn't over 1280 x 1024 or 1440 x 910 (IMO)

Looks like a Type Oasis font? The Fontographer is Dieter Steffmann? (hard to tell, lots of guys use that style, but he is the king)

[Benjamin Eddy]

Originally Posted by thunderbird

That's a nice looking site/theme you created. The ornate font combines well with your graphics and is very pleasing to the eyes. My only suggestion is to double-check and run it by different eyeballs to make sure they can read the font ok (I can read it ok).

Thanks, ya I wondered about the font, but it doesn't get very crazy and
goes along with the antique theme.

[thunderbird]

Originally Posted by GeorgeO7

Massage Therapy MN - $2400.00 - This site was recently featured in a Massage Association magazine and has been online about a year. The site works well, gathering new clients and gift certificate sales.

That is a great looking site! Clever, elegant design and layout.

[thunderbird]

Originally Posted by VegasGreg

Here are 2 of the ones I have done:

Polar Ice Italian Ices
and
Boise Phone Guy, Boise Telephone and Internet Services

Checked out your websites. I like them. They are nice clean sites.

[Jermaine Tabor]

These are some nice looking sites!!!

Congrats to the makers.

Wish there was a list of xsitepro sites.

[thunderbird]

Jermaine, I just started a thread for xsitepro sites (I don't have any myself). So far there is one response with examples:
Your Xsitepro Sites For Offline Clients?

[jagsenghera]

I developed this for an offline client. nothing fancy.

ek-sys[dot]com

[debra]

Plumber60647

About 6 different versions of that demo.

And...
http://christmas.jackson-miss.com (just started it)
Jackson Mississippi Community Headline News (traffic node with a crap load of traffic daily)

Then the ugly: Local Chicago Plumber (they insisted on it that way)

Tickets Chicago (i'm wasn't in charge of graphics)
Dump Truck Secrets (he's changed it up a bit now)

Going Green

There's a butt load of them...just can't remember all of them right off hand.