I think that's where we make our money as being a "consultant" and offer other services to help make them money and not just being a service provider doing websites. You can show them that you will build them a site that will increase their revenue, not just look good to the eyes.

The biggest thing is not just looking for a client that is trying to find a budget website, but one that wants to grow their business and will pay to get the help they need from you to do other things.

Hey Chad! Hah. I'm downloading your FB WSO right now.

Yeah, this is true. I'm going to stay away from using CL for business now.

I do have a decent lead from CL working for a restaurant.

I'm going to focus in on businesses that do $1,000,000+ in revenue per year.

Has anyone tried contacting online stores? There's got to be a market for that. Just because they own an online store doesn't make them IM savvy.

Possible market there?

For example: I emailed this owner yesterday..


http://www.bridalexpressonline6.com

The website isn't great at all, buts there potential!

I'm looking for ways to work out commissions + monthly flat fees.

Any ways to build residual income

I have listed basic websites on cl for $197 and $50 per month for a very basic site for sites that I lease.

yes, right now I've never had an issue charging what I do, but it could definitely come up in the future. Maybe we should include a short point like Tim mentioned above.

They are paying more for our superior skills , knowledge , and the fact that we offer local support, face to face, business owner to business owner and we have their best interests at heart.

That's why I'm all about being "a partner" in their business and not just a service provider.

I offer websites for free on CL - just pay hosting

At one point I looked at the model of selling websites cheap on craigslist, with the hope of monthly hosting fees and potential upsells and it led to headaches.

People that are going to come through those doors are not going to appreciate the value of what you are doing. Trust me, you don't want to be the "walmart" of web design. It is so much easier to be talking to people who already understand how important websites are, and have invested in something already, compared to those who are still on the fence about websites in general, and interested in the lowest price possible.

Matt

M_Jones is brilliant - that is a brilliant model to use. Webhosting can be a recurring income, though the returns are small through affiliate income, but if we can build a business that automates the building of simple websites that comes with the purchase of webhosting packages through a certain web host package link, outsource the building of the website entirely - it can be very viable.

traffictipsnow, do you only do website creation? From your post name, you seem to also suggest that you can help with building traffic (potential leads and prospects and customers), so perhaps instead of just being the drone worker trying to sell website design, try to reinforce that you are selling them a solution, which is to garner more leads, build credibility, and increase sales.

I've a friend in FatPixel who sold a single page website to Bosch, and audio company, for a sweet $25 Grand. That's a whopping $25,000.

Maybe it'd be good if you also took up extra time to learn more on selling and copywriting and marketing, as well as offer better "packed" packages to potential clients?

Also, why not consider the larger companies? Usually SMEs squeeze you like mad, as far as I know. You can try putting your wares on freelance sites such as elance, freelancer etc and slowly work your profile and portfolio from there too. Why not pitch to larger companies?

The thing is, the world is getting real flat. With influx from phillipines, china, india, thailand, who can do tech work for real cheap, we must be able to work with these changes, to our advantage.

What do you think?

I found most of the website designers on CL will make your site -- but have little to zero SEO. Check out their portfolio.

I spoke with one designer from CL in my area and she snickered, "SEO...really, what is S-E-O?"

She poo-poo'd the whole SEO thing. She kept praising her "artistic abilities"...

See, most web designers are "artisits" or graphic people.... I tell prospects, "They're great designers but unfortunately they know little about MARKETING (i.e., getting your site in front of people.)

They get it.

If you position yourself well and offer a myriad of additional services, a website can serve as a loss leader to get your client on board paying you money.

I'm working on a sales letter that I'm going to send to select local businesses. The main point of the letter is you can spend $1,165 a month to advertise in a news paper that has 260K circulation, or you can spend $600 a year (+$200 setup fee) to reach 239 million in the U.S. alone. This is for a very simple (text & pictures only) 5 page website. Then you sell the email capture and marketing, facebook page, twitter, backlinks, local listings, seo, ect. They rent the website for $50 month. I own the site and the domain name. Stay two years and you can buy the site for ? (still trying to decide on that price). Course I'll build you a site with flash, video, what ever you want, but that costs extra!

3 sites a week @ $600 X 40 weeks = $72,000 set up fee
3 sites a week X 40 weeks = 120
120 sites X $50 a month = $6,000 a month rent

I Googled local dentist in a town of about 20k. The local biz results showed 7 dentists. Only one had a website!

"The average value of a patient from the the Internet Dental Directory is $3000-$3500 initially, but about 10% have long term (2-year) worth of $15,000-45,0000." Go to Google and type "life time value of a _dentist-chiropractor-ect_ patient to give yourself a selling point. (I love Google!!!!)

Think you can up sell a website to a dentist at $200 month by showing him how ONE new patient (@the low end of $15,000) will pay for 6 years of web hosting? Then you add all the extras. Should be easy to get $1,000 a month from a very .

Bigger town, bigger practice, bigger price tag.

Hey,

But how much months can be spend in performing seo on one site that will be soled in @200 later.

Hey Steve,

Yes, I've been drawn in by this model, but my experience has been that if people already don't have a website at this point in the game, they probably don't want one.

Now you've got to:

1) convince them why they should hire you AND
2) convince them why they need a website in the first place

That's just my two cents, I've done better targeting people that already have sites,

Matt