this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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What types of websites do you build for more than $5,000?

What do you charge for monthly maintenance?

How do you advertise/get clients?

How did you start out your business?

Other people that don't fit the criteria feel free to chime in about your business as well.

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[–] Citrous_Oyster@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (44 children)

I sell static brochure sites for $3500. 5 pages. Every page after that is $100 per page. $500 fee to add a blog. Shopify e-commerce sites start at $8k.

I’ve done a few $5k+ sites because of the blog and extra page fees. They’re just static pages. Information only. They don’t have apps or booking or anything inside of it.

Lump sum sites have a $25 a month hosting and general Maintenance fee. Hourly rate for edits.

I offer an upsell for $80 a month for unlimited edits, 24/7 support, lifetime updates, etc.

Or

Subscription sites cost $0 down and $150 a month, 12 month minimum contract. Month to month after that.

In the beginning I just cold called from google and yelp. Then after about 30-40 clients the referrals started to come in and my website was ranking well locally. Now I get all my work from my website and referrals.

I started out by teaching myself web development in my car while I did Uber. In between rides I was coding and watching tutorials and doing online self paced bootcamps. After about a year and a half of that I got good enough at it to start freelancing. And here I am 5 years later with a full time front end developer job and I run my agency that makes 6 figures a year working it part time. The subscription account for about half my income. It’s passive and recurring. I do less than 10 hours of edits a year. Pretty chill.

Here’s an example of an $8k site

https://madscientistbbq.com

An example of a $6k site

https://striveptwellness.com

And a $3500 site

https://realdealpainting.net

[–] masterflex11@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (8 children)

No offence, but those sites don't seem any better than what you can do through Shopify, PrestaShop of Wordpress. I really don't know how people are willing to pay $8k for something you can quite easily achieve by even hiring help from websites like Fiverr.

This is an example of a $350 Shopify theme. Customizing the template is fairly simple to your needs and the administrative panel makes is very easy for someone not technical to set up stock and manage orders.

Not to sound negative and I applaud you for finding business, but what makes your business attractive compared to all the options out there?

[–] Citrous_Oyster@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

If that’s the type of site you want, by all means go for it. It’s a little bland for me.

And what you need to understand as someone not in the industry, dev work on fiver is an absolute mess and unreliable and you’ll spend more paying multiple people to fix what they failed to deliver or screwed up or not set up properly. Their support is non existent and when you need edits or have questions or need something fixed you will be ghosted. You’re better off setting it up yourself at that point. It’s a waste of money for a product made by someone whose goal is to spend a little time as possible to make as much as possible. That $8k site i linked already did their own Shopify site themselves. And they hated it. Hated the process. Hated editing it and it never looked good. They didn’t trust the overseas work or fiver and for good reason. That want something unique and on brand, that they don’t have to manage and edit, and that loads fast and works well. They can still edit their store on the Shopify dashboard and change inventory and all that.

When you have a designer to design it, me to code it, a Shopify dev to integrate the store, and a copywriter to write and edit the content, that adds up. And each are proficient and experienced in their field to do what they do at a higher level. People pay my rates because of the experience and knowledge I provide with the wealth of resources and people to handle all their needs and answer all their questions. we make a custom product for clients who want more than just the cheap theme or fiver work. They’ve been there and done that and it didn’t give any good results. So they come to us for something different. Something higher quality. And in a sea of mediocrity with builders and fiver work, we are unique in what we build and offer and actually deliver what they want. They give these fiver guys examples of what they want their site to look like, and they give them something that doesn’t look remotely like it but that’s the best they can do because their theme can only be stretched so far.

It’s cheap and easy to do your own site now days. But it’s not cheap to have it done right. It’s not always how it looks, but also how it’s built that makes a huge difference. And we must be doing something right because I haven’t done sales in 2 years. All my work is from referrals right now. So obviously it’s working better for them than their cheap themes they were using before.

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