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?
Reading your replies I appreciate that you're willing to engage in honest self-assessment and are processing criticism fairly well.
I'm also a 25+ year web developer and have run agencies. I hope this is helpful, please forgive the bluntness.
Update your skills. As others have suggested and your replies indicate you're aware, the design sensibility of the websites you're showing us is stale – decades out of date – and too far out of touch with modern professional standards to say nothing of client or visitor expectations.
You seem to have an old-school appreciation for web standards and wariness of prioritizing aesthetics over content, but much of what you've written here and in your marketing copy reveals a cognitive bias that you critically undervalue design. This is holding you back.
Browse modern and award-winning website design until you understand in your bones how what you're showing us today falls short, and then upskill your front-end capabilities to meet modern standards. You know your tags, now make really learning HTML5, CSS3, and modern Javascript a priority.
Keep the rest of your technology stack if you like. Clients and users don't care or even know if you're using PHP or the latest JS framework. WordPress shade doesn't belong in marketing copy. Small and medium business owners won't understand what you're talking about. But they've heard "WordPress", and if you can sell them one with excellent Core Web Vitals maybe just swallow your pride for starters since you need to build a book.
Stick to your principles that content strategy should inform design and not the other way around, but don't neglect modern aesthetics and conventions of usability. You have some catching up to do to produce work that doesn't just rank, but attracts, engages, and delights clients and users.
Rename the company. Including "Design" and "Photography" limits your brand positioning and skews perception of your service offerings. Keep your brand as flexible and adaptable as possible, and then optimize for SEO on individual service pages.
Rewrite your story. Remove references to "1996", "14400k modems", and the excitement of discovering HTML. This framing doesn't convey expertise through experience so much as a feeling of being stuck in the past. I say this as someone who was there too. I can tell from reading your writing that you understand you're selling your clients on increasing their business. Just keep in mind that's an aspirational vision of their story in which you're just a supporting character. You're an okay writer, but trim the fat. Yes you're trying to rank, but you also need to convert when they land and these walls of text are nonstarters. Cut your text in half, for starters.
Lose the 27 year old screenshots. Those are some big name clients, just show their logos instead.
Render real text, not headings as images.
Gotta go. Good luck.