3 ms·

Here's a trick that many companies use successfully. Step 1. If you do the same type of job repeatedly, create a "platform" (a bunch of re-usable code). Don't

Here's a trick that many companies use successfully. Step 1. If you do the same type of job repeatedly, create a "platform" (a bunch of re-usable code). Don't actually spend too much time on this. Step 2. Create a great marketing section on your site for this platform. Create sales materials. You will be telling clients: our "whatever-we-do-all-the-time platform" will save you tons of time and money. Step 3. Apart from the normal hourly development cost, you charge clients a licensing fee for the platform too. And: PROFIT. Now let's be clear: your platform doesn't have to be highly polished. It doesn't need to actually save you development time. It's a sales tool to increase your profitability. Pick something hot, like a "mobile platform" or a "social platform" or something like that. And make some pretty graphs for it.

rfnslyr 13y ago
My friend, who was nearly broke and strapped for cash started a web design agency solely based on Wordpress. Started at Wordpress themes online. Built 10 custom theme frameworks, for every client he just picks the one that best suits the job, adds a logo, changes colours, does a bit more tweaking and deploys at 5k/pop. In his first month he did 5 sites. A month later he opened his own agency with a few employees under him. All on Wordpress. +1 on reusable platform. So much time saved. The way he brought in clients was mainly via twitter and running searches. He searched for any tweets within his locale geared towards the web and hunted clients down, mostly through convincing them that they NEED a new website. For example, if someone or a few people tweeted about a small businesses shitty website "omg I wish xy pizza had order options on their site -_-", he would archive these tweets, compile a listing and other market research and pitch it to the company and score himself a new job. I hope this is at least of some use to OP. Social media + platform + hustle/hounding = $.

rfnslyr 13y ago

My friend, who was nearly broke and strapped for cash started a web design agency solely based on Wordpress. Started at Wordpress themes online. Built 10 custom theme frameworks, for every client he just picks the one that best suits the job, adds a logo, changes colours, does a bit more tweaking and deploys at 5k/pop. In his first month he did 5 sites. A month later he opened his own agency with a few employees under him. All on Wordpress. +1 on reusable platform. So much time saved. The way he brought in clients was mainly via twitter and running searches. He searched for any tweets within his locale geared towards the web and hunted clients down, mostly through convincing them that they NEED a new website. For example, if someone or a few people tweeted about a small businesses shitty website "omg I wish xy pizza had order options on their site -_-", he would archive these tweets, compile a listing and other market research and pitch it to the company and score himself a new job. I hope this is at least of some use to OP. Social media + platform + hustle/hounding = $.