Here's My Business Plan: Business Owners Please Comment!

[JustaWizard]

Hey Warriors,

I'm looking at starting a web design business targeting brick and mortar small business owners who don't have a website, and also selling website redesigns for the biz owners that do but aren't happy with their current website.

NOTES:

I'm an experienced website creator (and SEO), but will outsource the website creation work.

I plan to upsell lservices like SEO, email marketing.

I also plan to sign up new clients for services they need such as hosting, domain registration, Aweber, 1shopping cart through my affiliate link for some residual income.

Would you please offer me your advice and suggestions for best practices and problems to avoid and important considerations, especially if you're a web design business owner?

THANKS!
David

[DavidTheMavin]

I worked in web dev selling sites for the past two years and it's a good business. The only advice is to make sure you have solid contracts, and make sure the client signs off on the original design before you give it to the outsources to implement. That way when they want all kinds of changes it will come out of the client's pocket and not your own!

[Brian W. Wang]

This is a very solid business plan, and you should really go forward with this if you have the right skills. Once you have the clients, then the business plan really rolls.

Also want to make sure you plan out the backend, as that can be a major money maker.

[JustaWizard]

Originally Posted by Brian W. Wang

This is a very solid business plan, and you should really go forward with this if you have the right skills. Once you have the clients, then the business plan really rolls.

Also want to make sure you plan out the backend, as that can be a major money maker.

Thanks Brian, could you please give me some specifics on what you'd suggest for the backend?

Thanks!
David

[JustaWizard]

Originally Posted by DavidTheMavin

I worked in web dev selling sites for the past two years and it's a good business. The only advice is to make sure you have solid contracts, and make sure the client signs off on the original design before you give it to the outsources to implement. That way when they want all kinds of changes it will come out of the client's pocket and not your own!

Hi David (hey, great name!) excellent suggestions, thanks!

Couple of questions: how do I get them to sign off on a design before I have it built for them?--how do you show them a design before having the outsource put some choices together??

Also, do you know where I can get a decent agreement/contract for this business?

THANKS!
David

[LMC]

Backend Upsells for more income:

- SEO services
- Backlinking Services
- Books to read on Marketing
- PPC services
- Social Bookmarking Services
- Press Release Services
- Article Writing Services

Problems you will face:

- Make sure you have strict contract guidelines, sometimes business's feel that if they hire a designer that you owe them the world.

- They will try to get you on some type of equity revenue share with them

- They will tell you how much business they can get you, if you do a good job for them. Don't fall for their fluff and drop your price.

When designing for business's they do know marketing, they know how to negotiate and they will try to get you to drop prices... stick to your prices, web design is not dying you don't need to drop for business.

- Don't become their friend. This is your business, not a new friendship.

- Have them operate their own hosting and domain accounts

Things to do to create a better business experience:

- Create a storyboard for their website, how their visitors will interact
- Create a timeline for them to look at
- Create an easy solution for them to update their website (eg. Wordpress)

[Andy Fletcher]

Originally Posted by LMC

Backend Upsells for more income:

- SEO services
- Backlinking Services
- Books to read on Marketing
- PPC services
- Social Bookmarking Services
- Press Release Services
- Article Writing Services

Problems you will face:

- Make sure you have strict contract guidelines, sometimes business's feel that if they hire a designer that you owe them the world.

- They will try to get you on some type of equity revenue share with them

- They will tell you how much business they can get you, if you do a good job for them. Don't fall for their fluff and drop your price.

When designing for business's they do know marketing, they know how to negotiate and they will try to get you to drop prices... stick to your prices, web design is not dying you don't need to drop for business.

- Don't become their friend. This is your business, not a new friendship.

- Have them operate their own hosting and domain accounts

Things to do to create a better business experience:

- Create a storyboard for their website, how their visitors will interact
- Create a timeline for them to look at
- Create an easy solution for them to update their website (eg. Wordpress)

This is fantastic advice. I was going to post in this thread but I'm struggling to add to this. This is pretty much exactly my experience and advice.

I worked for a company who fell for the "rev share" thing every single time. It never worked out once.

[JustaWizard]

Hey LMC, excellent advice, thanks!
Much appreciation,
David

[Loloy Diango]

Originally Posted by JustaWizard

Hi David (hey, great name!) excellent suggestions, thanks!

Couple of questions: how do I get them to sign off on a design before I have it built for them?--how do you show them a design before having the outsource put some choices together??

Also, do you know where I can get a decent agreement/contract for this business?

THANKS!
David

I'm interested to know the answers to these too.

[JustaWizard]

Originally Posted by Razorblade

I'm interested to know the answers to these too.

Yeah, ME TOO! :-)

Anyone??

David

[ASM Marketing]

For the design part, you would want to mock up some rough designs in photoshop and show them a PDF (printed and via email) of a few design ideas to look at, then follow them up with a meeting or phonecall to discuss the design that will go forward.

Alex

[LMC]

Justa,

To get them to sign off on a design before you have anything done for them use the storyboard and timeline exactly showing what they will receive on a week to week basis.

If you feel comfortable shoot me a PM with your address and I can send you one of our storyboard and timeline proposals, these were converting at 17% on mailouts to local business's.

We charge a $77/M membership fee.

I will also send you a catalog that we attach with the timeline and proposal. This catalog lays out all our services like they were retail clothes.

The business simply fills in the questionaire, checks what he wants on the catalog, and mails it back with a check.

We took old school and new school marketing to the test by using the old school mail order business model, but put web design as the product, and I got to tell you, it is working out great...

Utilizing this model, there is less "open" communication time, you wasting time trying to get the information to finish the website.

We create simple wordpress websites, this way the business can update themselves and you don't have to get those annoying phone calls.

Here are some is a link to a site we created: www.eagleslandingcatering.com

These websites take nearly an hour to two hours to create once you know what theme/layout you will choose. Simple header adjustment, some styling in css, and a picture here and there.

I outsource to three college kids that understand wordpress, They get $25/M for every business that they build a website to, so really I am using an affiliate commission model, to pay my outsourcing.

We are planning on launching the whole service online to make billing automatic and we are going to attempt, to make the process from customer questionaire --> website all automatic.

Sorry for the ramble, but anyways, take some of the above and put it to use because right now this model is working great and a lot of the design firms around me are not even close to thinking of this, they want strict $100 per page , $80 per hour design.