This type of experience sharing is interesting, but only really useful to someone with very similar conditions. If someone is a "WFH" customer service rep who is expected to be manning the phones from 9-5 New York time, then I imagine it would indeed be very tough to work those hours while living in SEA.
Personally I do most of my work when it suits me, it's only scheduled meetings that can be inconvenient.
even with 3 kids in tow, you could do without a car.
Well, at what cost, though? You then either have to live in walking distance to all the stuff you and your kids need to get to - ideal, but usually much more expensive.
Otherwise, you have to rely on public transportation or taxis. Even if public transportation isn't dogshit (I've pretty much only experienced public transport good/reliable enough for daily use in Japan) it takes way more time than having your own car.
I live outside of the US and prefer to walk or bike when I can, but having kids without having a car would be terrible. I don't enjoy driving or the stress that comes with owning a car, but it provides a lot of convenience/utility which frees you from the frustration, stress and time cost of public transport.
I'm good at coding, especially front end stuff. Can do all of the adjacent stuff as well, from design to deployment and maintenance.
I've started by making static websites for small businesses. I'm comfortable with sales, but it takes time to find & research leads. I'm also offering to make simple web apps though it's not something I'm pushing, and I've considered offering consulting services (I have worked as a corporate consultant before)
I've seen you post some sensible stuff here and in other subreddits. What kind of advice/tips - or anything else - would you offer someone like me, an experienced solo web dev?
I personally offer my stuff as a service and not lump sum + billed hours. So I'm not saying $5k is necessarily a reasonable price.
Maybe you need to define better what you mean by a "basic 5 page website". There are many different skills that go into making a good website. If your site was built by a team of experts at UX/UI/Layout design, coding, and SEO, then a $5k cost might be considered dirt cheap. If your site is built by a dude who taught himself WordPress and did his best, then $5k is probably going to be way overpriced.
The result is not going to be the same between the two sites. Not in any aspect. The team will build a far more performant site, with a far better design and better SEO. How much those things matter depends on how important your site is to your business. Of course there are going to be great deals to be made, and terrible deals, but mostly, as in any industry, you get what you pay for.
It's not just basic websites, though. It's a service. As always, it's a consideration of cost and value. Sure, you can get something for a lower cost, but what value are you getting for that?
If you hire someone on upwork and he makes you a WP site, who's going to be doing updates and content edits? It might be easy enough to do, but it's something to learn, so you need to spend your time learning + doing the stuff. How much time does that take, and how much is your time worth? What is the quality of the UI/UX/Layout design? Does he do your branding? Does he help you with the content? What kind of performance are you getting with that site?
Those type of low cost service usually provide fairly low value. I'm a corporate web dev and I do the same type of static websites for small businesses as a side hustle. My value proposition is that the website is the core of the service, but I handle all of the tech and design stuff. I provide analytics. I ensure GDPR compliance. My sites look good on all devices and perform great. They are accessible and secure. The clients don't need to learn anything new, or otherwise spend their own precious time on their website.
This value proposition won't be worth the cost to everyone, and that's fine. The businesses owners who value their own time and are running at a profit are my target demographic.
I'm not actually asking those questions, those are just the thoughts I had. If you feel like any of what I said is irrelevant, well, you know your business model and market better than me.
A consultant designer is like a consultant developer. An external resource you hire who bills for the hours spent. So if you're charging £2k monthly, and according to you a designer in your market is £45 per hour, that means I could get ~40 hours of design work for the same cost.
I'm not a saas company.
Here are some thoughts I had.
Where are the pictures?
Who are you? This is sort of revealed in your FAQ section, which is the wrong place for it. Most visitors will never even scroll that far down, let alone open up the accordion. And those who do are rewarded with much too little ifnormation. You are the core of your product/service but all I can learn about you, is your name.
I don't really understand how this works. Why do I need to pay you monthly to get a design made? Why would I choose you over finding someone on upwork who can make me a design for a one time payment of $250? Why would I keep you on for months instead of getting a consultant designer?
Why do I need to go to figma to see more of your work?
Why do I need to go to some other website to book an appointment?
Your ATF content is.. I don't know. A bit too busy? You're squeezing in the features of your service in the hero, instead of using the hero to hook them in and then show the features next.
I'm not a fan of your font. It's not bad, but it's not great. I'm not really sure what you're going for, but your primary information delivery method is text, so make it as easy as possible to read.
I started looking at web dev/design companies in my area. Then in my country. As far as I can tell, almost all of them use WP, Wix or jQuery. The sites are, often, not great looking. Found a web design company's homepage with a performance score of 31. Companies in my target demographic usually have either no website or a terrible website lacking even the most basic SEO (Found a company website that doesn't even mention where they operate), with poor UX and outdated designs.
Like you, I'm always trying to think of things to improve, but I'm good with complex stuff so I've made myself an app that lets me build highly performant static sites incredibly quickly. Design and content takes time, but the actual code and deployment takes me virtually no time at all, unless I need to expand on my app to accomdodate some new design feature.
I spent about 2 months building the app and learning about website design, and how to operate a website. I'm still finishing up some touches before I start actively selling but... If you have technical skills, there's no reason not to give it a shot. The competition is abundant, but held back by poor quality and their outdated tools. I'm trying to leverage my high technical competence to save time so I can offer a (far) superior service at a better price.
This is probably not the right place for such a question.
But I am a developer, and this part here:
It's not a realistic concern. Or rather, if your idea is so good that this is a realistic concern, you should learn how to develop the app yourself. But I really, really doubt that is the case. Generally, ideas are worthless if you can't execute. Presumably your idea relies at least somewhat on your knowledge about psychology, and probably other knowledge/skills you have that a dev won't have.