HELP NEEDED - How can I make $ by giving away FREE websites?

You won't.

You will be asked to chop, change and edit every single fault they find - for free.

If you want to make ANY money at all, offer a discounted website IF they do something else.

Offer them a cheaper lease to rent a website you will create IF they give you a referral, testimonial or take another one of your services.

I don't know what your skills are, I don't even know if you can make websites people would even want.

What I do know is if you offer anything for free you devalue yourself, what you do and you will not be taken as seriously as what you could if you did something to increase your credibility.

Want to offer something for free? Make a website that blows people away - but do it for your local business centre in exchange they give out your flyers for your business to other local biz owners.

Get creative.

Best,
Steve

Reciprocity has been a proven marketing theory that has worked for ages.....

How can you make money on the back end... There are several ways.....

First and foremost. This is the free version, I can make it look like this (show sample) but that will cost you $599 -$2499 pending on their needs.

For it to be seen you will have to have it hosted somewhere. We can do that for you. It's only $29 per month hosting. But as we both know.... A site doesn't do you any good if you aren't getting any visitor traffic, right?

Well, this is what we can do for you.....

Hosting.
SEO.
Google Places.
video creation
video optimization
add naseum.

affiliate hosting will give you $50-$65 once ... sometimes 2 months from the date of purchase (such as hostgator)

Or you can sign up to hostgator reseller acc and host their site for $20-$50 per month (actually, baby package is enough for start)


After he gets a site, offer him a Facebook page, for $149

Google places optimization and rankings
Video creation

hello friend
just making a website can not give financial benefit to clients so now you can charge for back linking or seo at the back end for their site as well.
enjoy your earning
vijay

lol I was laying in bed the other night and this popped into my head...

Let's say you did one "free" site a day, 20 days a month - you did the site free but charged $20/month for hosting. Now, I know $20 may sound like a lot, but for most businesses they won't even think about it. Anyways, each site you build will make you $240 over the course of a year. Theoretically making you $240 per day. The problem is you are not going to see this income immediately. Some may pay for a year upfront, some will not.

Now, after one month you have $400/month coming in without any further work (20 sites x $20). After two months you'll have $800/month in recurring income. Fast forward to month 12 and you now have $4800/month coming in - most people would kill for $4800 a month, especially PASSIVE income.

Setting up hosting is easy - go to Hostgator and shell out about $25/month. I used this in the past (although back then I gave away hosting) and had roughly 20-30 sites hosted on it. As your needs increase so will your price - but you'll be making the income to cover it.

What if you charged $30/month? $7200/month after a year! What if you did two sites a day and $30/month? $14,400 per month after a year.

Sure, some will drop off so you would need to replenish the pot to keep making this money. And i'm sure there are other things I'm missing - but theoretically it works. And it would be hard to imagine that more work wouldn't come in even if you never marketed other services.

I know this could probably work ok and others are successful, but aren't business owners quite skeptical about getting something for free that others charge $500-5000+ for?

Personally, I now hate building sites, even with Wordpress. It's boring. You still have to spend time choosing a theme, adding content, etc. Even a quick site is going to take 30-60 minutes to get up and running. Then after you have built them a free site, they will expect you to keep it maintained for free too.

Its like if a doctor offered a free medical check up to you. The positioning seems all wrong. I have a feeling that building free sites for business owners would result in a bunch of cheap clients that won't spend a dime with you later. Maybe I"m wrong though.