Affordable Website for Your Startup Business!

[lilith71]

Hey sweaty startup members! I just discovered this subreddit in an r/Entrepreneur post. I absolutely love the ideas going around in here and it seems like a lot of you are actually making money with these hustles rather than just fantasizing about them like r/Entrepreneur tends to do!

I wanted to just throw out there that if any of you are looking to start a business, or maybe just want to upgrade an outdated site, I’d absolutely love to provide value to you in the form of a website!

I occasionally do Wordpress and Shopify websites, however I’ve recently started designing with a newer website framework called Webflow. This is very easy to host on and arguably more user friendly than Wordpress, if you ever need to do updates after I create your site. Hosting through Webflow costs around $15 monthly for 10 pages or less so it may be more affordable than what you currently host on!

I’m mostly looking for small businesses that will only need around 5 pages on their website, but I’d be willing to do more! I’m in a pinch for money right now(college student) so I’ll make your site for a price you can’t refuse! Probably around $200 because although I’d like my prices inexpensive, I also want to provide you with a very high quality and professional website. If you look at the sites people are making for ~$100, they usually seem very unprofessional and thrown together quickly.

Additionally, in creating your site I will come up with the copy(text) myself, and design any graphics that are needed, so long as they aren’t crazy complicated.

Just last night I finished my first site with Webflow, you can visit it here: [www.homeswype.app](www.homeswype.app) - it’s for an app that I’m working on in my spare time. I created all the assets you see in that site besides the icons, if that gives you some perspective as to what I can accomplish for you. Also, I love creating animations so I’ll make sure your site has a spark to it aswell!

I’d highly appreciate if you gave me a chance at creating your site. If you absolutely hate it, no charge! I want to make web design a full time career for myself in the near future so offering this service allows me to build up my portfolio aswell. I don’t have a portfolio quite yet, but I’m working on it!

 

[villianmade]

@lilith71 With pricing like that, you’re creating a race to the bottom for everyone in the web dev space

 

[lilith71]

@villianmade I disagree. Others can set their prices to whatever they please. I’m new to designing In Webflow and I think my pricing is accurate to my lack of skill and lack of a portfolio.

 

[villianmade]

@lilith71 You can surely disagree since you’re new to all of this, but when people go looking for $200 websites, well, they get what they pay for is al I’ll say to that. Even with a webflow project I’d never dare to charge under $2k because any less isn’t worth the time spent to make the sale, plan, build, and launch any website.

 

[lilith71]

@villianmade Alright mate, you sound pretty well versed in this area. What would you recommend I do to find clients? This post hasn’t generated any traction for me.

 

[villianmade]

@lilith71 Best advice for anyone trying to start out like this is to do some cold calling/emailing. Start local, scour your area for businesses that either don’t have a site or have a dated site, and call as many as you wanna fit in a day. My original comment was honestly to get you some perspective on the US market, it’s already hard enough for us devs to compete with overseas prices and to have Americans(I only assume you are based in US) undercut prices like this affects the market as a whole, even unintentionally. Know your value and the value you are bringing to a client. If you don’t feel it’s okay to charge 2k for a site yet, start at 1k-1500 a site, or do subscription based pricing and manage hosting for them since webflow makes this extremely easy to do with client billing. It’s a lower barrier of entry for the client and they can pay 150-300 a month to keep you on retainer, you may end up doing some smal changes or upkeep, etc, and you can generate a minimum of 1800 annually per client this way, so it all evens out to the same price for them, but passive income for you. Now rinse and repeat 10x and you’ve got some nice side money if college is your main focus.otherwise if you wanna scale that up, it’s not uncommon for one freelancer doing this to have 30-40 clients under them on subscriptions generating passive income even when they are done and launched.

 

[justinson]

@villianmade This is true across industries. I work in residential remodeling. And a couple of side hustles. In each industry there is the big fish that charges a ton. With a ton of overhead. The medium fish who charges a living wage rate with a medium overhead to cover. And the unlicensed uninsured amateur little fish who charges pocket change and doesn't cover overhead and wonders why he cannot cover overhead. Charge the correct rate and move onto the next one.

 

[lilith71]

@villianmade I actually really love this advice and I’m glad I asked you about this. I am in the US market and I’m in a small city that has a lot of local business with bad websites, so this could work well. I’ve never made anywhere near $1000 for any freelance work I’ve done so charging in that area just feels so weird to me and I think imposter syndrome is somewhat at play. I’ll give it a try! Thank you.

 

[villianmade]

@lilith71 I think that’s what’s happening, impostor syndrome is too real, especially in tech. It’s always super important to know your value as a freelancer and how that value reflects as well as impacts the market as a whole. Best of luck to you!

 

[justinson]

@lilith71 I agree with @villianmade. Charge the market rate and move on to the next one. If the client wont bite on your rate, they are not your client. Only hire clients that are in your best interest Clients who choose the lowest bidder never settle for lowest bidder workmanship. Everyone wants the best product they can unreasonably obtain. You have a skill set and want to monetize it. Good for you.

Think of it this way aside from the market. What it means to you specifically . If you charge $100 bucks and you get a client that wants the lowest price. What does that get them? How many revisions? How much content? What if they don't like what you built? How many hours of work are you going to put in? Lets say you have 20 hrs of free time this month. And you work 20 hours for $100 bucks. How much is that per hour? Or you have 20 hours of free time and Charge $1k. How much per hour? Which site goes into your portfolio?

Also which client will give you a referral to the next client? The $100 guy? Or the $1k guy? Which referral would you actually want?