Can I be successful building websites for small businesses?

I suppose but what happens when a company wants customizations that require coding skills? Do you have any kind of graphic design skills? Relying on fiverr for logos and headers isn't something I'd consider.

I would hang on to your job a while longer, go out and find a couple of "beta" customers - work with them to get a site built, learn from that, get them to give you a testimonial and use that to kick off your business. This means hanging on for another month or so until you can get a couple of early proof points under your belt.

In addition - you can improve your positioning and your fee by offering a "soup-to-nuts" option where you help them setup a) An email, list-building function b) integrated with their website c) shopping cart option if they have products to list online d) membership option if they have services and/or content to sell in a recurring fashion e) affiliate program if they want to leverage partners to help drive traffic and sales to their website.

You differentiate based on not just building websites (as the competition is stiff here and there is always free or low cost templates they can get for Wordpress) - but on build the foundation for their online business.

You can offer a few tiers - tier 1) Website only 2) Website + Email marketing 3) Website + shoppingcart 4) Complete package with everything

Jeff

Yes, you can be very successful as the small business community needs an online presence like any large business.

But be careful about selling your time for one off jobs. You need to set up a model with recurring commissions or it will be tough to make a decent living at this venture.

You can make a lot of money creating websites for small businesses.

But first you need to secure some income. It won't be easy finding the first few clients for your new business. If you quit your job now you won't have any income until you find a client.

Why don't you look for clients while you are working and once you find some clients, quit your job. It is always important to have at least one source of income.

I don't think clients will mind if you create Wordpress websites as long as they look professional. Do you have some premium Wordpress themes that you can use? Better yet, do you know how to create Wordpress themes?

Learning is your curve, go ahead and start reading and learning about building websites and logo designing. It`s not enough to know how to setup a wordpress website.

well, that is certainly not a bad idea! keep working on small project until you get some good reputation and then you can target some big fishes.

thanks for the feedback guys. I updated the original post to give more information without giving away the site name. also has anyone done this before? do your clients usually have realistic expectations?

It would be a good idea if you had some Coding and Design experience.


I recommend that you don't take such a big risk.

1) You should learn some Coding and Design skills first. You don't need to be an expert, if you're just customizing templates, but at least be comfortable in editing sites.

2) Once you've got the hang of editing Code and Design a little, go ahead and start looking for some clients.

3) Once you're getting enough Clients per month to cover your cost of living, you can then think about quitting your day-job.

If you have lots of money saved, then you can quit sooner. But right now, it doesn't sound like a good idea for you, to quit your job this early in your business venture.


I understand that customizing Pre-made templates may not always require Coding work, but you never know when a Client will need some coding changes done. It happens with me for almost every project.

You don't want to shoot yourself in the foot, giving yourself a bad reputation as being "A Website Developer who cannot Code/Design".

You can lose your credibility, clients and possible referrals.

Best of luck!

You can be good in anything in what you want to do. But you cannot be good at it unless you start doing it. Experience is the best education one can get.

Asking questions in forums will not help you at all, coz nobody really here knows if you are good at it or not. Also since you say you don't have any coding experience, you should start learning basic HTML/CSS.

Start making simple pages, grab a free template or a site, clone it ( for testing not selling ). Make it look exactly the same. Tons of tutorials out there.

Definitely do not quit your day job until you feel very comfortable with this business solution and have several happy clients that are willing to give testimonials or references if needed. You need to make sure you have everything in order before you take that plunge. It also wouldn't hurt to do some reading on line on how to do basic wordpress edits (such as changing background color if your theme doesn't allow it in the CMS file). Have a friend act as a business owner and built a dummy site for them. Write down any issues or anything that you feel as if you need to improve on. You need to be a well oiled machine before you quit your job.

Now for more advanced Wordpress edits you can also tack on a small fee if they require something special and just hire someone off Elance to do it.

Reoccuring fee's is is a great idea. I would recommend selling a package where you get X amount of free months of updates, then $xx or even $xxx a month for unlimited updates. This is important because if you sell a website to a spa and they have new monthly service discounts or prices they'll come calling or email you to make that change.

How do you compete with some larger businesses? You can tell them you will do the work, you are always available to speak with via the phone, and no one will work harder then you to make sure they are 100% happy. Also, turnaround time is important. If you offer in your package that you'll have the site built in 10 days but turn it around in 3 or 4 days that will impress the client. Once you get the hang of building Wordpress sites you can do it very quickly.

All that for $500?

Ain't gonna work.

Just noticed this after I reread your original post. You should take it down because your reputation is extremely important and business owners talk. If you aren't comfortable yet in doing this then you shouldn't be advertising your services yet.

I think you don't need any experience in coding or all the work required in setting up small business websites, because now a days you can outsource any requests your clients make.

What you need is the right pricing, contacts from warriors, and the ability to sell. That last one is the big one.

However despite this, I think your just not ready, and waiting a bit more could be beneficial, but then again you can do anything my friend

That service, creating Wordpress blogs is pretty saturated and there are a large variety of price ranges. If you've never done this before professionally, don't you think it's a better idea to actually start getting clients and making money before you quit your job.

Will you be homeless if you can't pay your rent? Do you have someone who will buy the food for you? Someone else to pay the bills?

It's not just risky to quit your job before you are making money ... it's foolhardy.

Hi,

You could approach your family or friends or anyone local
that owns an 'offline' business & tell them you'll do a site for them
for FREE in return for a fantastic review(s)

This will make it much easier for you to go around your local
area & show them what you are capable of doing & how pleased
other business owners have been with your work.

You can then get your foot in the door as that is the hardest
challenge.

Once you have a few clients under your belt, you can start seeing
& charging monthly service fees, upgrades etc whilst adding more
clients to your list.

Hope this helps you out in anyway.

It's not where you start, it's where you finish that counts!

All the best
Gavin

what do you have to lose? in case you can't do what a customer requests you simply outsource - go to odesk and hire someone for $10 an hour or less. the only question what usually bothers me is:
how do you get clients? have you thought about that (yet)?

Yes you can succeed by creating websites for small business owners. The biggest challenge for you will be to find clients. Small business owners do not want to invest in marketing. Most of them get plenty of excuses for it. So be carefully with them. Many of them want a lot for nothing.

Best advice I can give is go for it.

Don't quit your job just yet but get a few clients who you can get started with. As for the coding part, I see no reason why you cannot outsource any work in that area. There are plenty of Warriors experienced in that area that I'm sure would be willing to strike up a business partnership with you should you ever need help.