I have been self-employed since around 92, I have more failed startups under my belt than some you have had sex. My current business is 13 years old but it still makes me just a living,
I grew it from me and one bloke to 13 employees. Now here is the thing, when I had all those employees I earned less than I did when it was just 2 of us.
I didn't get to do much except sales, admin and fixing stuff those 13 Guys fucked up. After doing some sums I let attrition do the job and reduced back to a solo outfit.
Now I am tired before I start my day, my back hurts and lifting stuff that just two years ago was a breeze is no longer as easy. This is an age thing, I realised the other day that my pension plan is good for just about 3 hours. https://dustfactory.co.za You can look at my website here and until about 3 years ago it was supplying too many leads for me to reply to. COVID broke that., but I am tired more than not getting enough work. .
I ran a web dev company before this one in a small town in Africa and clients were limited, too much competition, people offering work at stupid low prices and I got tired of counting cents, so I went back to my trade.
I used my skills developed during that period to out perform all my opposition on the web for the woodworking business. The most important thing that I learned in the business was saying no, or even fuck off. You cannot offer value and quality if you are too cheap.
I have moved to a big city, reduced overheads and can now retire about 3 hours before I kick the bucket. I really don't want to get back in the death spiral competing with people charging too little for their service, mainly because I am convinced that a website that doesn't bring results is not an investment for any business.
I have started updating my skills again, updating the CMS that I built and have been using. also have registered a few domains to build sites on as test beds.
The numbers below are based on exchange rates and are in no way accurate, they are just an example. My question is as follows, let's say the cheap blokes are selling web sites for $100 and they place them, charge for hosting about $7 a month, but are doing no SEO, no forward planning, just put it up and forget it, How much should I be charging a month for full service?
Would you be willing to pay $250 a month for a site that includes all the SEO stuff like semantics, includes me sorting out your local SEO stuff, creating content regularly or would that seem like too much of a difference. I am assuming small businesses as clients.
Next check out my website and tell me if it creates confidence. Note not all the content is complete yet, but check out these pages please.
https://centuriondesign.co.za/
https://centuriondesign.co.za/pages/SEO.html
https://centuriondesign.co.za/pages/web-design.html
Tell me how I could improve them, What could I do that would help you make a decision?
a) Thanks for your input, I really appreciate it.
OK I get that, Selling websites bad idea, selling results good idea.
Explain what you mean by outdated, may point me at a couple of sites that are not outdated.
From an SEO perspective text gets results, It has done so for me for a few years. My wood working site has given me results because I supplied better information than any other local woodworking business. I am moving on from that purely because my body is no longer as co operative with the heavy lifting and stuff.
I will make changes to that get started button tomorrow, that is a must obviously.
I will look for some UX training and see what the latest ideas are, I have always felt that
Optimization these days isn't the same thing as some old brochure labeled " what is SEO?' keyword packing has long been considered black hat, , it hasn't really been effective since the days to ask Jeeves.com .. new relevant high quality content or copy is important. But the key is consistently publishing new high quality content through the various platforms that are available on social media and otherwise. I should probably know, you can have chati PT right? Most of the content for you and have it programmed ahead of time schedule to match peak traffic hours, or at least to match the hours that are appropriate to your market demographic. Anyways, let me know if you're interested in talking
Wordpress has a lot of templates/plug-ins and you can optimize the sites very easily.
But wordpress sucks
Ex: https://stripe.com/
Toolkit that gets you there: webflow.com
Note - not affiliated, just have a student account that I putz around on. Like it way better than anything else I've used.
SEO gets people on your website but it doesn't get you orders if the website is not good.
No it generates the leads and then I go do the sale.
sadly this is not how it works.
There are like 30 people telling you that your website is not good. You come here telling that there is nothing wrong and we just don't understand ignoring all legitimate critisism.
Meanwhile you say that you have founded countless startups which for some reason all failed and you have trouble making money.
I feel like there might be a connection here...
Also, did you design around the mobile site? Or is the site just automatically adjusting? Things for mobile makes a big difference