What Resources Do I Need For My New Web Design Business?

Delegate tasks, to others. You will not be great at 5-10 different services. Work on your business and not in it.

I have a friend, that hires high school seniors and college students and teaches them some wordpress installations and theme modifications and gives them all his web development projects.

Generate, the leads..make the sale and let others do the implementation....

In business, I would never outsource/delegate the marketing aspect, the rest I would....

*Backlinks
*Video
*Creating accounts (social media/video)
*Review sites
*Mobile

Of course, some of the aspects, you mention are related, to marketing a business...but the core marketing strategies (sales letters, design of postcards, direct mail aspects) I would do myself, because YOU know your business, better than anyone else....

Now, if you do not understand, marketing too well, then delegate that as well. Use your strengths and delegate weakness....

Spend the time, doing the activities..that bring in the most profits.

I would look up 'sourcewave' on Youtube they provide a lot of cracking SEO education for free-you might find it very American in flavor, but the actual information is superb.

Actually none of those things listed are necessary to have a web design business.

What you really need are:

* belief in your services

* prospects

* a way of beginning a dialogue with those prospects, whether it be through marketing or prospecting.

This is where people fall down with their businesses. They get all concerned about the technology. Technology is GLUE. You apply it LAST.

Get your processes down first.

You are on Step #3 and have skipped #1 and #2.

Many web designers sell without having their own website. They do just fine. How do you think people made sales prior to the 90s? I made sales without a website when I first got to the US. You'll always run into two kinds of prospects: 1) those who care that you have or don't have this or that, and 2) those who don't care. Identify and use this to your advantage.

I absolutely agree with Jason. Do not over complicate this and frankly if you do over complicate this then you become like everyone else selling this stuff.

You wrote "I recently set up a new site for my own offline business (handyman services) and despite being pretty basic and doing minimum seo, it's generating lots of leads and business for me."

Seems to me problem solved. My question is could you do that for someone else? If your not sure just try it even if you have no client for the new site. If you are able to repeat the success then your marketing message is this:

"I'm a handy man in city A just like you. I wanted more business but did not trust all these web developers and seo guys that kept emailing me. I rolled up my sleeves and recently set up a new site for handyman services and despite being pretty basic and doing minimum seo, it's generating lots of leads and business for me. I think I can do the same for you and it won't come at a price that these slick seo companies are trying to charge. If your interested let me know and I will send you a link to my site and share the results I have had so far."

As far as tools and other things that you need you should seek them out when you have a specific problem that you are unable to solve with your current knowledge. Trying to rank a video but can't then seek the info. Don't understand PPC then get the info. AFTER you know the info choose to do it yourself or outsource.

The big problem is that if you head down a path of learning everything you will be so busy doing that you will never get sales and frankly the stuff you learn will be changing constantly such as seo and you will just walk away frustrated.

Hi Tim,

I would recommend two resources in particular; Moz and Econsultancy. Both have extensive resources on pretty much every area of digital marketing - both online and offline training.

Much of this now can be done by yourself with your own time and resources. Like so much of the way the Internet, experimentation is probably your best route to success in terms of learning and results.

I would also recommend you that focus more on sales and outsource your work.
Offline customers are very hard to deal as they don't know much about web world so you will need hours to explain them.
Much of your time will be consumed in dealing with them.
However I'll strongly recommend you to learn all the work so that the freelancer don't scam you.
And you get your work on time and on good price.

Thanks
Nauman