Earn From Web Design Services With These 4 Little Known Secrets

If you’re a web developer, and you want to earn serious money creating websites…

Then this is the ultimate guide on how to do it properly…

So let’s get right into it…

If you want to earn serious money through this, then there’s 4 big problems that need to be addressed in order to make this possible…

First problem is how to eliminate back and forth with a client, as this is something that will cost you lots of your time, energy, and most importantly money…

Second problem is how to deliver on your service in a timely manner…

Third problem is how to charge a premium price for your service and have prospects lining up to pay for it…

Then finally the fourth problem, how to get clients in the first place…

These are all problems you need solutions to in order to earn money with this service…

You want to remove back and forth with clients as much as possible…

You want it to take as little time as possible to deliver the service…

You want to earn as much as possible from your service…

And you need a system for generating clients…

Let’s start with the first problem then, how do we eliminate back and forth with a client so we don’t waste our time, energy, and money from dealing with this problem…

Well you want to sell the service as taking everything out of your prospects hands, and you want to place yourself as the expert in this field…

The things you need from them are everything that's required to build the website to completion, this should be what's absolutely required and not things like designs and copy, these things you can take into your hands to avoid things dragging on…

By establishing yourself as the expert, you can take on the design and copywriting work of the website…

This way you’re not waiting on the client to send you anything design and copy related as this stuff can drag on, so by taking it in your hands you’re not wasting time…

If they want to manage content on the site like a blog, again remove things from their hands as much as possible so they can focus on their business…

Provide them with website maintenance where you can charge them every month for them to send you say blog posts and you plop it on their website…

You want to establish what content will change over time and make it easy for yourself to add this in when they send you this…

This allows you to take things out of their hands, and charge monthly maintenance for their website…

Then here’s another thing you need to do in order to remove back and forth, you need to have a setup fee…

The way this works is that you can have a setup fee from $1,000 to $2,000, and you reward fast action by offering to waive this fee if they take action on the initial setup immediately…

This way they have an incentive to not slack off and waste your time, and get this done right away so that the website doesn’t drag on and instead you can deliver the service much more quickly…

Having things drag on again wastes your time, energy, and your money, so you need to prevent this at all costs and this is a great way to do it…

Of course sometimes the clients won’t be able to do it right away as they’ll need to talk to some business partner, their spouse, or whoever it is first before they commit, and that’s okay…

You can setup another call and offer to hold the offer to waive the setup fee until then…

Now if it takes longer than a week to get what you need with scheduling follow up meetings and email follow ups, then you don’t want to work with these clients…

They will lose you more money than you will make from working with them…

You need to be the authority and expert, they got on a call with you because they have a problem, they need help getting their business to grow through your services, and you have the solution…

You want your time respected and don’t want to reward clients who aren’t serious, or worse, don’t take you seriously…

For this setup, you can have a breakdown of steps and questions that you can write down answers to which should be things that you need to develop the website to completion...

This can be things like setting up a Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics so you can have these things ready and they can have analytics on the website, getting an email setup for a contact form to work on the website, getting domain records setup, having business related questions so you can have all the info you need regarding their business, their logo, images, and anything you need to completely develop the website...

Then things like images they might not have ready, so you can have a deadline a few days or a week from the meeting to have them sent by for the setup fee to be waived...

These are things that help see if a client is serious and get things moving along, and if things are dragging you can just let them know you don't think you'd be a good fit to do business together or something...

Then another thing that helps get things moving along is taking a percentage of the payment upfront, and a percentage when the project is complete...

If you're charging say $10,000 or less, you can have 50% paid upfront, and 50% paid when the website is launched...

If the website is more than this you can do something like charge 40% upfront, and 60% when the website is launched...

I've also seen some people charge based on milestones, but this I think is a bit tricky, the idea is I want an application that's ready to deploy in a particular industry ready to go before the development even begins, and then I just need to edit the text and styling to fit more with the business itself...

This makes a milestone a bit tricky, so having a percentage paid upfront, and a percentage paid when the project is complete is a good way to go...

This is another thing that gets the project moving along as the client needs to commit a bit to get things started, and this also helps avoid you building an entire website and then not getting paid anything for it because the client changed their mind about wanting the website...

At least if that happens, you may have wasted some of your time, but at least you didn't end up with $0 for your wasted time...

If a client has a problem with this you can literally explain that it's to avoid you developing an entire website and then having a client change their mind at the last minute and you ending up wasting your time and losing lots of money in the process...

And if they still happen to have a problem with it then that's actually good, because you just found a client you absolutely don't want to work with and that would have probably done this...

Then another small side note, if the client is stingy about your pricing, again don't work with this client, let someone else deal with them because they will be a headache...

These types of clients want to pay as little as possible, and expect you to do 100 times more than what was initially agreed upon...

This deals with the first problem, now let’s look at the second problem, how do you deliver on the service faster…

You do this by not developing your website from scratch for every client you work with…

You want to have a website with a template and all the logic needed ready to go before you even start working on the website for the client…

Development work takes a long time, from having elements in place, responsiveness, and any necessary integrations and logic, so you don’t want to be developing this from scratch every time otherwise it will take a long time to deliver your website…

You might love building websites from scratch, but I’d suggest you only do this if you want to earn far less with your services…

My philosophy is build once, and reuse forever…

And think about it, if you spend a few months building an incredible website that you can reuse as a starter template, don’t you think it’ll be worth far more than anything else you spend a few weeks on developing from scratch for a client?

It will definitely be worth a thousand times more, so instead you want to spend a long time creating a solid website template with the responsiveness, and all the logic and integrations in place from the get go, this way you’re spending little time on development and more time on the other important parts of the website…

Another good way to speed things up is when you’re starting out, you want to pick an industry to focus on, do your research on that industry, and gear your web development services for that industry…

When you understand an industry, you can create a website that’s geared towards driving sales for those in that industry…

This leads us to the third problem, how to charge a premium price for your web design services…

You can charge a premium price when you have a premium service, but how do you create a premium service?

By understanding and giving the prospect the solution to the problem they are looking for…

They may be looking for a website for their business, but the problem isn’t that they need a website, and the solution isn’t that you build them a website…

Websites are used for businesses, so your prospects are business owners, and so you need to think about why they want a website for their business…

Is it to have a nice portfolio that showcases their business? Probably not, and if that’s the case then maybe not the kind of client you want to take on…

Business owners want a website to help drive more revenue to their business, that should be the purpose of the website, and if it isn’t fulfilling that purpose, your website is useless to that business and a waste of money…

This also means you need to understand not necessarily how to build a website for a business, but instead how to build a 24/7 working sales machine for this business through your website…

You need to be able to create something like this, and by understanding how to build something like this, you can have an offer that is much more powerful and magnetic than a simple web service…

Instead you can offer something like “We beat the conversion rate you currently have through our system or the service is free”…

This also means you better know how to build a website that converts well or you’ll be going out of business…

But from analyzing the websites of many businesses it’s definitely not hard to beat the conversion rates on most websites…

You want to have a powerful offer, not a weak offer with no risk reversal that’s easy to refuse…

If there’s no risk reversal for the prospect, if there’s no powerful guarantee, then that basically means that if you don’t get them results you pretty much scammed them out of their money…

If you get your client no results, you’re pretty much telling them “too bad so sad, better luck next time I guess, and thanks for the money”…

What I recommend then is when starting out, pick an industry, and research that industry very deeply…

You want to understand the target market of that industry, where that market gathers, the things they talk about, the dreams they have, their fears, objections, goals, and so forth…

You want to have a really good understanding of this market, because this will make writing copy on the website for this market much easier, otherwise you’re just making assumptions and writing what you think you know about that market in that industry…

You want to record your findings somewhere so you can refer to your findings later and make it easier when writing your copy…

This step is time consuming if you want to do it properly, this is why I suggest when starting out pick an industry to focus on…

Later once you have more resources to work with and can outsource this step, then you can focus on other industries…

Otherwise it’s best to avoid doing so or your service will take much longer to deliver, and the goal is to reduce the amount of time it takes to deliver our service so pick an industry when starting…

You also want to do an analysis of the businesses that are doing well in that industry and look at what they’re doing…

What kind of ads are they running? What pages do those ads bring you to? What are they using for generating leads?

These will give you ideas of the things to include in your website that will help your client get more revenue from implementing your service…

You also need to understand the process of how to get clients for a business…

If you can solve this problem consistently for clients, then you have a premium service you can offer…

This means that instead of charging $2,000 or less for building a website for a client, you can instead charge a minimum of $15,000…

And if you think that’s a lot to charge, consider two things…

First that there’s agencies that charge $8,000 or more for just a single landing page on a site, because they know that one landing page will bring in sales…

Second consider that if you target business owners that are doing pretty well but could be doing much better with a proper website, you think that’s out of their budget? Probably not even close…

Maybe if they’re just starting out, or self-employed it might be, that’s why you don’t target those people, but instead you target business owners that do have a budget and would be happy to take you on your offer…

Because your offer is no longer “hey, I’ll build you a website, it’ll look pretty, though I don’t know if it will do anything for your business”…

Instead your offer is something like “We beat the conversion rate you currently have through our system or the service is free”…

This is a much more powerful and magnetic offer, and suddenly $15,000 doesn’t seem like a bad deal at all…

Maybe it’s not even enough for an offer like this, and honestly you could charge more for an offer like that…

Business owners that want to drive more revenue through a proper website would be crazy to refuse an offer like that…

Because you could even craft the sales copy in a way where either you don’t deliver and the service is free, or you do deliver and the extra revenue they get from the website pays for the service itself…

This makes it feel like a situation where they win either way, because they do…

So you need to target the right kinds of people and give them an incredible offer, and not target the wrong people and have a weak offer that’s easy to refuse…

Target those who can afford your service, and those who would also benefit greatly from it, and present a powerful offer to them with risk reversal through a powerful guarantee instead of some weak “satisfaction” guarantee…

This is how you can charge premium prices for your web development services and make far more from a single client, which also means you can afford to spend much more in paid traffic to acquire a client…

This will bring us to the fourth problem, how do you get clients in the first place?

I will tell you that a portfolio website is not the way to do it, a portfolio website is great if you want to make next to no money for your services…

In fact a portfolio website is great for any business that wants to make no money, this is not what gets you clients…

When showing your credentials it's far more important to show results that you've managed to get for past clients, or showing logos of known companies you've worked with, or the number of clients that you've worked with, these are things that actually make a difference...

Clients don’t care about your portfolio, they care about their problem and if you understand this problem and have the right solution…

And you need to sell them on this solution through the sales process you bring them through when they land on your website…

This is what you’re offering, so you need to know how this even works in order to offer it in the first place…

Understanding this problem and how to solve it is what will help you get more clients in your business, and also help your prospects get more clients through your services which is a massive benefit for both you and your clients…

The way you get clients online is by having a proper sales funnel in place with all the elements in place…

These elements include an opt-in page for generating leads where traffic can be directed to and email automations that trigger for nurturing these leads…

A long-form landing page with a call to action of booking either a consultation, strategy session, appointment, or whatever is relevant for the type of business…

A questionnaire that follows the landing page for qualifying leads and email automations that trigger when the questionnaire gets filled out but no booking was made…

Also when this questionnaire gets filled out, this should end the email automation that is meant to nurture leads, as this is a lead that doesn’t need any more nurturing…

And finally the booking page where the consultation, strategy session, appointment, or whatever it is gets booked, and if this happens it should also end the email automation that triggered when the questionnaire got filled out…

This step should also trigger email reminders that get sent as the day of the call gets closer…

These are the elements that help with getting visitors to become clients, but each of these steps are deep, so I will need to dive deeper into each one…

Before I do however, I want to explain why a process like this should be used in the first place, why not just bring a prospect straight to your landing page and offer your service directly from there?

Why have an opt-in page? Email automations? A long-form landing page where you offer a free consultation, free strategy session, appointment, or whatever? Then bring them through a questionnaire? Then a page where they can make the booking?

Well because most people online aren’t looking to get sold right away, they are sceptical, and often looking for information…

If your sales cycle is bringing them straight to a page where you just want them to buy, they’re going to leave and not come back…

You need a longer sales cycle to convert these people, if you don’t have this you’ll never convert these people, you’ll only convert those who are ready to buy what you offer right away which is a small percentage of the market, and this makes you miss out on a huge opportunity of those that are not at that stage…

Now that you understand why you want a system like this, let’s look at the first step in this process more deeply…

The opt-in page, this is where you want to bring traffic to…

This traffic will typically come from ads, and the ads can be seen as the first step in this process…

The ads are there to build curiosity and get someone to click on them, then the opt-in page is where you sell someone on becoming a lead…

Here you can use a lead magnet funnel, where you offer some free value in exchange for a name and email…

You might be thinking what’s the point of this?

Well, email marketing is by far the most profitable form of marketing, and by getting someones email, you can now market to this person whenever you want…

They are off whatever platform was used to get them to your site, and are now on your platform, where you have your rules, and can say to them what you want…

Now you also don’t want to be pitching these people constantly when they enter your email list, you want to have most of your emails provide value to them, and have only a few of them pitch your offer…

It’s important to note that the job of the opt-in page is to sell someone of giving you their name and email…

It is not enough to have a good lead magnet and think your job is done and you will get a bunch of leads now…

Headlines and sales copy is vitally important, you want powerful magnetic headlines, and the use of numbers also helps greatly…

You want your headlines to build curiosity and be irresistible to the target market that lands there…

Both your lead magnet and opt-in page need powerful headlines, weak headlines like “5 best ways to do X” will do nothing for you…

This is plain and boring, you want your headlines to bring excitement and curiosity to what is being offered even though it’s free…

Yes you still need to sell hard even if it’s free…

The sales copy is important and in it you don’t want to reveal everything or else there won’t be curiosity, and again writing sales copy becomes much easier when you research your market properly…

If they land on your opt-in page and don’t give you their name and email, then retargeting ads are a great way to get them back there…

People have very small attention spans these days with all the entertainment and social media apps, so bringing them back to the next step in the sales funnel is important…

This is done through retargeting ads, and once you have their email, then email automations can be used to nurture leads and bring them back to the next step of the sales funnel…

You also want these emails to be automated since this means you write these emails once, and they work for you forever without additional manual work on your end…

Then for writing these emails, just keep in mind what the goal is, for this first step the goal is nurturing them and bringing them back to the next step in the sales funnel, so keep that in mind when writing these emails…

This brings us to the next step, the long-form landing page…

This is the page where you sell someone on your free consultation, strategy session, appointment, or whatever it may be…

Again, just because you slap the word free on there doesn’t mean everyone will be lining up to book a call with you…

You need to sell hard even if this is free, and you want to sell the value of it, literally put a price on how much this is normally worth…

Add some bonuses they get with this call and how much that's normally worth...

Inject some scarcity with the call like "only 5 spots left this month", or whatever it might be, because if there's no scarcity the prospect will put off taking action and never book the call...

This should also be a call that provides value to those who book a call and shouldn’t be a sales call, it should be about the prospect and helping them, and at the end you can give them your offer…

Also tell prospects what to do, tell them "go ahead and book in your free X minute consultation, and I'll speak to you soon"...

You want to establish yourself as the leader and lead them to take the next steps...

Then when it comes to copywriting, this is a deep subject so I can't dive very deep into here, so I suggest you learn this skill...

Also the call itself has a lot to it, so won’t dive too deep into this, but the idea is you always want to provide value, there’s lots of objections to these calls since the last thing someone wants is to schedule this and have pushy sales tactics thrown at them…

So you need to understand the objections that exist and remove these objections to have prospects feel that booking this call won’t be a sales call and will be about them and providing value to them…

Also you might be thinking, I have to get on a call? Can I just do things through email or something?

No, if you’re offering a premium service, you’ll have to put your big boy pants on and get on calls, sorry…

Value you could provide during these calls are things like some market research for their industry, competitor analysis in their industry, and a suggested strategy they can implement to help drive more revenue which they can try to do themselves or hire you to do…

If you start by picking an industry and targeting those people, then providing this value is easy since you did your market research and competitor analysis in that industry already…

Make sure to always focus on the prospect, they don’t care about you and all the great things about you and your business…

They care about finding a solution to their problem, and therefore things should be about them, they should do most of the talking, and by asking the right questions you get them to talk themselves into needing your service…

Also headlines on a long-form landing page, again, super important…

Don’t want weak headlines, don’t want weak copy, or this will be a bottleneck in the sales funnel…

You want to have this page focus on selling someone to book a call with you, and you want to make sure to have retargeting ads and email automations bringing leads back here since they’re bound to get distracted by something…

Once they click, you bring them to a questionnaire, this is to pre-qualify them and build the value of the call even more, this shows that you don’t just work with anyone and that you’re the real deal…

If they reach the end of this questionnaire but don’t book in the call, you want to trigger email automations where the goal in this case is to book in this call…

How do you do that? Well by bringing in some urgency…

Maybe make them feel like you’re holding a spot in your calendar open for them, and that you’ll have to give it to someone else if they don’t book the call…

When you write email automations, it always helps to keep in mind what’s the end goal of this automation? This is what helps you when putting these things together…

Same goes when writing any copy at any step in the funnel…

When writing an ad, your goal is to get them to click the ad, so remember this is the strategy…

When writing the opt-in page copy, your goal is to get them to download your lead magnet in exchange for their name and email, so gear your copy around that goal…

When writing your long-form landing page, your goal is to get them to book a free consultation, strategy session, appointment, or whatever, so gear your sales copy around that goal…

So in this case, our goal is getting them to complete booking their call, so gear your retargeting ads and email automations around that goal…

Then once they book in the call, you’re not done yet, cause you need to make sure they don’t get distracted and show up to this call…

So this is where having a few emails get sent out as reminders as the time of the call draws near helps with making sure they get on the call…

A software called Calendly helps greatly with this whole process of booking these calls and having these reminders get sent out…

As you can see, getting clients from a website isn’t some task that’s as easy as grabbing some website template, slapping on some weak copy, and calling it a day…

What business owners want from a website is for it to help drive revenue to their business…

So when you provide web development and design services, you need to offer a solution to the problem they want solved if you want to charge premium prices…

Otherwise you simply won’t be able to charge premium prices…

There we are, now you know how to solve these 4 big problems so that you can earn as much as possible from your web design services…

Also one bonus thing to add, you want to keep in mind that the value of the website is determined by the value it brings to a business…

It’s more important to understand how to implement a sales process with a website than how to build beautiful looking websites with all the best frameworks…

Because the sales process is what actually drives revenue to a business, not pretty designs…

Hope this helps shed some light into how to better structure and go about providing web design services…

Also keep in mind, if you currently don’t have the skills to do some of the things I outlined in this blog post, then you need to take the time to dive deeper into these topics…

The more value you can provide the more you’ll get compensated…

And by understanding the things I went over in depth, you will be able to provide that value and as a result get compensated far more…