Selling Websites: Selling it when it's available for FREE!

Nothing wrong for charging if you are populating and formatting for them.

Its not the most professional look for the client and they can miss out on the
functionality of plugins and other marketing tweaks.

My question to you is why do you want to do this?

Your post above is a little confusing...:confused:
However, your post reminded me of my first venture into offline...

My first sales to offline business owners was supplying websites using the free .wordpress.com with a twist, and I can tell you these small biz owners loved it as once it was all set up it NEVER cost them any more money.
I don't do this particular method any more as I only supply biz owners now with marketing whereby I can earn recurring income for a set period.

However, I will say that it still works, because just before Christmas I taught it to a single mother who was in desperate need of cash, and thankfully for her she is doing okay...

GOOD LUCK with your BIZ...

You want to sell websites and host them on wordpress.com?

Definitely not worth it in my opinion, espcially because you want to create a long term relationship with your client.

Besides, hosting is as cheap as $30/year and you don't want to mask the wordpress.com subdomain. There're so many pros compared to cons if you decide to get your own webhosting.

I dont get it , they can afford to pay for a website but cant afford a domain and hosting.

If you are just trying to hustle up a little money they I guess do what you gotta do, I just cant imagine this as any kind of sustainable profitable business model.

I would just offer free hosting for a year or something if you want to go that route. Looks really bad to host on those websites in my opinion.

When I first started out in Offline, knowing that there were free solutions and very cheap options for people to get websites online, I started off charging very little.

I remember my first deal was only $197 and the time I spent making every little change she wanted made it anything but worth it for me, but it was a good start.

I think I made two wrong decisions at the time:

1. Thinking that being the cheapest would get me more business and hence charging low rates.

2. Positioning myself as a Web Designer.


People will pay you good money for websites if you can educate them about why they need it and that's what I think consulting is all about.

It might not need to be a website that they need, maybe they need Google+ Pages Optimization, maybe they need SMS marketing or maybe Reputation Management.

So I think that if you can position yourself as a person who helps businesses get more business, then you can eliminate the thought of worrying about free websites.

1) You're still providing a service by populating their website and getting them online.
2) You could educate them about the advantages and disadvantages of free v paid for their business.
3) You could do wordpress paid inexpensively and get them to sign up for hosting
through your affiliate link.
4) Then move towards the business model damasgate suggested.

Dan

Ryan,

1: It's a great lead in, because eventually they will want their own domain and you can upsell as you gain more experience. You WILL get more confident if you start practicing doing business, even on a small level. Your first small upgrade can be later charging them $200 bucks to register and appropriate their unique domain name. They will all want one eventually, and that desire will increase once they see that they have a site to claim as their own, with their own eyes, tangibly...

They will naturally want ownership of it as soon as possible, even if they dont see that from the beginning, and you will be able to convert them with only the slightest suggestion of the idea, once they see that they have a site. Where you may not have been able to, at your experience level, had you asked for the whole enchilada upfront.

"It's easier to get a man to walk ten miles with you, if you ask him one mile at a time." And right now you need something "easy". You arent ready to ask someone to walk ten miles yet, and thats okay.

Note: Sure they can do it themselves for 15 bucks, but they dont know how, thats why they are willing to pay YOU!

2: It helps them to get an initial online presence.

3: If people didnt value their free wordpress sites, then there wouldnt be thousands of them out there, so its obviously something people want.

4: If you dont have the experience to go too far beyond this its a great way for you to start learning, and earn some money while you do it.

5: It's an easy sell. I teach people to start out making easy sales, because the confidence you gain from just "writing some business", no matter how big or small the business, is the number one way to encourage yourself to keep going and give you the confidence that you can achieve.

Thats why I teach new cold callers to skip all the hardcore techniques and go straight for the laydowns at first, so they can experience the feeling of a success as quickly as possible.

ANY level of success will propel you from one level to the next alot faster than biting off more than you can chew in the beginning and experiencing hard failures. Initial hard failures out of the gate will make you "gun shy", instead of encourage you to keep going. This is a shoe in and you will be able to get customers with relative ease and get those small successes that propel your development, and give you some initial income.

I say go for it. People want it, you can do it, you can gain alot of valuable experience without damaging anyone by over promising beyond your skill level, in fact helping them with a basic presentation.

It's a good way to start out.

Yes, you will want to move on to bigger and better things, but gaining some initial success, however small will get you in motion, and headed in the right direction.

"Momentum".

Again; if free word press sites were worthless to people, then thousands of people wouldnt value theirs. This is an excellent way to start , train yourself, and establish some customers that you can upgrade as your knowledge and confidence increase.

If you know how to build a solid basic word press site... and you are charging fees that match the value of that... (Say $250-$500) I'd say DO IT!

The only thing missing for it to be just like any other basic site we sell around here is a domain name. Alot of people sell basic five page wp sites for $1500 so...

Add in an extra 35 bucks to your fees so you can pay some warrior around here to design custom headers for your customers. Easy as pie to do that.

Soon you will feel confident enough to manage a business hosting account, and confident enough to charge monthly fees...

This is how you start.... by taking a skill you have developed, whatever that may be, and "starting". You dont know how to manage a business hosting account yet, but you DO know how to make people a nice five page WP site...?

Then there you go.

Offer that service to people who can use it. You can always hire a warrior to optimize it if your customer wants an upgrade, all of these guys know how to work with WP and they can do anything you want to your customers sites.

Having customers is worth way more than having all these other skills. Those can be hired out.

Optimally, you dont want to be doing all that other stuff anyway, you want to be hiring others to do it, while you create more customers. Thats the REAL valuable skill.

You will develop more ability to do that as you practice what?

"Creating customers from where you are now, with what you have now."

I like it.

-John

Wow, I can't believe this thread has grown such legs! And so much agreement with the OP.

Personally I wouldn't do this. I don't believe you're doing your clients any favours at all. Sub-domains - wix, weebly, wordpress or whatever create the wrong look for your client - they look unprofessional, they sound unprofessional - well you know what they say about ducks. They're also a bitch to rank where there's any kind of competition. For $6 per month you can host 26 domains with Namecheap and get domains starting at $4 per year. Install Wordpress - free - get thousands of themes - free and thousands of plugins - free.

Now if you want to use these services for their site builders - then fine but do your customer the favour of setting them up with their own domain.

Just wondering, why let them pay for $197 for free website? i think better find domain, and hosting for them which cost not more than $10 and make it more professional. Customer will be happy i think.. just 2cent from a newbie.

I don't know if you would find any takers for such things online - if you are planning to sell them on flippa etc. The people on these sites are smart know that they can actually get it for free. As someone else already mentioned, if you are selling it offline to people who have no idea how to set up a website even if it is free, it might work.