Starting webdesign/WordPress business, I need some help please!

Hello every one,

I'm inclined towards this business model as it's the thing I did too many times before for years, but I have many questions when it comes to business, please help me.

1- Should I buy premium theme license for every client?
2- I think of providing hosting, does it worth the customer service hassle?
3- If I provided hosting, should I provide the client with the Cpanel access as I'm afraid noobs do catastrophic actions on the back end.
4- If I will get clients using cold calls/emails, how to find prospects with bad websites?
5- Many guides say that I should go niche like web development for dentists, etc.., what do you think of this approach? And if it's wise approach, which interests to Target in Google search ads?
6- Finally, How much should I charge for my service including a year of hosting or without? Bearing in mind the premium theme I will buy.

I'm sorry for asking too much, forgive a business noob.

Thanks in advance and warm regards ,

1. 50/50. Many clients will require custom\fresh\never used before theme
2. no
3. Yes, client have to have full access to his site
For other questions I do not know, they are very specific

Thanks for your help

infqx said:

1. 50/50. Many clients will require custom\fresh\never used before theme
2. no
3. Yes, client have to have full access to his site
For other questions I do not know, they are very specific

Click to expand...

You have 3 paths to go:

Service provider sites like fiverr or upwork. (You could take a look on craiglist and reddit).
Pros. They already receive customers for your gig
Cons. High competition

Advertise.
Pros. Instant leads
Cons. Leads are pretty expensive

Search on your own.
Make related searches about your targeted niche and call those with terrible webistes.
Pros. It's free
Cons. It's tought to cold call and get to the business owner to make a sale


Good luck

Thanks for your contribution, highly appreciated

Lilith55 said:

You have 3 paths to go:

Service provider sites like fiverr or upwork. (You could take a look on craiglist and reddit).
Pros. They already receive customers for your gig
Cons. High competition

Advertise.
Pros. Instant leads
Cons. Leads are pretty expensive

Search on your own.
Make related searches about your targeted niche and call those with terrible webistes.
Pros. It's free
Cons. It's tought to cold call and get to the business owner to make a sale


Good luck

Click to expand...

Keemaa said:

Hello every one,

I'm inclined towards this business model as it's the thing I did too many times before for years, but I have many questions when it comes to business, please help me.

1- Should I buy premium theme license for every client?
2- I think of providing hosting, does it worth the customer service hassle?
3- If I provided hosting, should I provide the client with the Cpanel access as I'm afraid noobs do catastrophic actions on the back end.
4- If I will get clients using cold calls/emails, how to find prospects with bad websites?
5- Many guides say that I should go niche like web development for dentists, etc.., what do you think of this approach? And if it's wise approach, which interests to Target in Google search ads?
6- Finally, How much should I charge for my service including a year of hosting or without? Bearing in mind the premium theme I will buy.

I'm sorry for asking too much, forgive a business noob.

Thanks in advance and warm regards ,

Click to expand...

Just my experience when I was selling websites on classified ads:

1. I would say no, as long as they don't know another client has got the same theme and is not in the same field/city (very often they don't know about templates and are happy with the mockup you let them see)

2. If you manage the hosting and everything and charge an additional €50 per month (many clients don't even know how to handle hosting or domain names) it's alot of passive income once you reach 20+ clients

3. No if you charge for a managed offer (indeed there is a risk they f* up everything in only 2 clicks), if they know how to handle hosting no need to sell them it's not worth it (if they have to buy hosting and domain themselves, don't forget to give them your affiliate link, I know 1&1 does pay very good commissions)

5. Pro of going niche is that you will only buy 10 or 20 templates for all your clientele (they will then have to chose, or you do it), and it's easier to work with the same clientele as you will get to know their needs and accumulate experience (in terms of webdesign and marketing for this particular niche).

And when you make another website with the same template or in the same field, you save time as you've done it already. Indeed, every time you do a website for a new field, you repeat your searches (templates, stock images, content, etc.).

6. Depends on the country, here in France you can easily charge €500 for a site with a premium theme, don't charge too low it's not worth the hassle (clients that want a site for €200 are often a headache)

@malkram thank you man for your detailed reply, you are awesome

But concerning themes, every website needs a new licence as I know from themeforest, then I had to buy licence for every website, or I'm missing something?

Warm regards

You have the files so you can upload them to unlimited sites. Well you are supposed to buy a licence for every website but nobody will know you bought only 1 licence for 10/100 sites. You think ThemeForest will ask your client whether his theme got a separate licence ? They already have to deal with all their themes being shared on download websites, and why would they waste time and money into suing small businesses (first they would have to find them) ?

As far as I'm concerned, I always used themes I bought once or even ones I downloaded illegally. And we are 99%. No reason to be afraid.

If you are to spend money, spend it on fiverr or other freelancers websites/sections to get your clients a logo and other graphics (banners, call to actions, etc.). You can even go to GraphicRiver (ThemeForest cousin) for that.

PS: forgot to mention an important point about pricing, you must first know whether the client provides or not the content (texts, photos, etc.), it's very important

@malkram thanks again for reply.
When I talk about licences, some themes doesn't work without entering the key , and I don't know how to null a theme and ready nulled ones are so risky, I tried myself and got hacked, also will not get updates.

Based on all these questions, you're nowhere near ready to start this, way over your head.

1 certain themes have licenses with no limit. I for example build almost everything on Astra Pro which have no limit to installs. But I mainly use it as frame and build the site from scratch with elementor pro. But you could use the "Hello" theme from elementor too if you custom build something and it's free.

2 hosting how? Reseller? Manage your own servers, you good with Linux?

3 how else would they create an email and ftp accounts and create new MYSQL databases?

You got money for the Cpanel licensing? You also have knowledge of WHM?

4 just browse the web, for example type dentist "town" and start browsing sites, the ones that look like shit you could email them.

5 never read that in any guide.

6 no one can give a precise answer it depends on GEO, design and marketing skills. My prices start from €499 and that's the absolute basic, on top of that I have many upsales and packages.

But as said, sounds to me you have a lot of learning to do first, don't just start and wing it.

This already one example you got much to learn.

Keemaa said:

I don't know how to null a theme and ready nulled ones are so risky, I tried myself and got hacked, also will not get updates

Click to expand...

That you even consider it for a client site..

@Billy Batts thanks for being honest.
However, I'm talking about reseller hosting for Cpanel accounts and managed VPSs, I have good experience with that.
Here is one of the guides talking about how it's better to be niche specific https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/steps-starting-successful-biz/

Is elemenator pro licence for unlimited sites?

Best regards,

Keemaa said:

@Billy Batts thanks for being honest.
However, I'm talking about reseller hosting for Cpanel accounts and managed VPSs, I have good experience with that.
Here is one of the guides talking about how it's better to be niche specific https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/steps-starting-successful-biz/

Is elemenator pro licence for unlimited sites?

Best regards,

Click to expand...

Ok browsed quickly, these kinds of blogs I never use, it's basic knowledge and written purely to fill their site for extra SEO.

But with niche they meant are you going to Target a specific niche to work in, for example, construction only, sports only etc, bad move IMO because you want to have a diversified portfolio.

Reseller can be a good thing but the affordable packages usually get slow fast. Better to build your own cloud network. I'm releasing an A to Z guide for that soon.

Elementor Pro use to have unlimited installs till people were massively reselling installs so they limited it currently to 1000 installs which is more than enough.

1- Should I buy premium theme license for every client?
If customers pay enough, yes. If not then free themes are sufficient.

2- I think of providing hosting, does it worth the customer service hassle?
I think of providing hosting, does it worth the customer service hassle?
Customers must bear their own hosting costs.
If they host with me it costs a monthly fee.


3- If I provided hosting, should I provide the client with the Cpanel access as I'm afraid noobs do catastrophic actions on the back end.
If I provided hosting, should I provide the client with the panel access as I'm afraid noobs do catastrophic actions on the back end.
Only with the warning " Improper or technical knowledge may lead to errors. Errors generated by customers will be charged".

4- If I will get clients using cold calls/emails, how to find prospects with bad websites?
Simply search for local companies.
Many have a hardcoded page from the 90s... (At least from the look)

5- Many guides say that I should go niche like web development for dentists, etc.., what do you think of this approach? And if it's wise approach, which interests to Target in Google search ads?
Of course you can look for niches. But if you are sure of your abilities. You can also use larger fields.

6- Finally, How much should I charge for my service including a year of hosting or without? Bearing in mind the premium theme I will buy.
I'll charge me 500€ to get a page online. Themes ect cost extra. Thus I come on 1000€ per web page

@JesterKI Thanks man for your detailed answers

1. If you want to build a company... think of as a group of systems that work together.

2. Services/Products each represent a different system where you have to charge for not only your time, but your vendors' time, website theme licenses etc. (These things are called COGS or Cost of Goods Sold) Then add 40% because if you actually grow a company, you will have increased overhead from taxes, employee burden, office space, software ... etc.

3. Build the systems and hire people do each part of the system... start with vendor / outsourcing agreements and then bring people in as it becomes cost effective to do so.

4. Whatever you do, don't do your own labor. Fill in where needed but always outsource time commitments either to employees or vendors. Your time is better spent improving the process / results / reporting / outbound marketing then it is working on individual projects. If you know how to sell your products..then that is what you should be doing... it will pay off much sooner. If not you will get caught in the treadmill of constantly switching from feast to famine as you take time off from marketing to finish projects and then switch back to marketing to get more projects. Believe me, I wasted years of my life doing this.. working nights and weekends for deadlines ... constantly working myself out of a job.

5. Create a plan for your marketing. Niche markets are better in my opinion because you learn a particular industry faster and can provide actual value to clients faster. You can always add another niche as your client base grows.

6. Focus on solving business problems rather than talking about buzzwords like SEO and 24/7 mission critical website hosting. There are a million companies already ranking for this stuff and you can catch companies earlier in the process with a little bit of research.

7. Learn the difference between B2C and B2B marketing cycles. Learn how to build a sales funnel that works. Learn how to add tracking to that sales funnel and produce meaningful reports for clients that don't just include pie charts. Extensive reporting will keep you and your clients focused and on the same page.

8. Implement contracts for everything you do. Especially hosting and managed hosting. If you ever want to sell your company, you have to think what is left if you leave? In most cases... nothing. Contracts have value and people in the market will count it as true cash flow if they are seriously looking to buy.

9. Have a goal of x number of monthly contracts to cover your operating expenses each month. Make that a priority. The quicker you do, the less you will feel pressure to take on low profit projects to cover this month's server bills.

10. Audit your expenses every month on the 1st... get rid of those software trials you forgot about or don't use any more.

11. Add products to your offering that you can sell over and over again.... think about Christmas banners for retail. Sell a photoshop file that has all the sizes for all the social media channels for example that a company can easily edit themselves if they want. You can more easily sell 1000 copies of that at $10 than you can 20 more websites at $500 apiece. Icon sets are another one. Go see what sells on Theme Forest and make something better for your niche.

12. Have a Great New Year and a Prosperous 2021!

Instead of buying licenses wouldn't a theme builder such as Oxygen do?
I don't use WP often, but recently had cause to look around and Oxygen caught my eye. While I'm no expert, it certainly seemed better than Divi,
With HTML, I look at what's on offer and then use them as a starting point for creating my own. Obviously I could copy them but simply use them for inspiration.
After looking at the Oxygen plugin, which you can use on unlimited (client) sites, I began to think that I could follow the same process.
Anyway, whichever route you go, good luck, I hope it all works out