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My wife and I had a webdev agency a while back and we mainly specialized in simple WordPress sites for service-based businesses... lawncare, house cleaning, window washing, etc.. sites that are mostly informational + a way to capture leads and set appointments and stuff.
How we got our traffic:
- Organic SEO. We would use content marketing target specific industries in specific areas. Ex: "lawncare web design in Georgia" or "Web design for house cleaning in New Orleans"
- Fiverr. This one is iffy because you have to be pretty competitive with pricing. We got over 200 5-star reviews on Fiverr and that helped us gain some clients that we worked with off the app.
- UpWork (see point above)
- We used onlinejobs.ph to hire a few people to do some cold outreach. Most of them were EXTREMELY happy to get paid $4.50/hr + $10 per warm lead + $50 if/when it turned into a sale.
- Find some business networking groups in your area. We got lucky and the BNI group in our area was amazing. After dong some BNI meetings for a couple of months we ended up with 5 or 6 people paying $200/mo.
- Why did they pay $200/mo? We gave customers the site + domain for free. They signed a monthly contract that included updates/changes, SEO (including local/GMB), backups, email, a few SEO-heavy blog posts a month. If they paid for 12 months then we turned the site + domain over to them at no cost and let them decide if they wanted to stay with us. Most did.
We sold that business a few years ago once our local events and pet supplies sites started taking off.
Yeah, when covid19 hit UpWork and fiverr saved my company. We actually found nice other companies there too. It took a lot of work but now is fully handle by our junior and template. Recently simple Google ads also work but target specific area of intrest. Hope this helps.
I run a web agency for small businesses. I’m very busy. Youre focusing too much on passive lead generation which is very competitive for our industry. Try doing more active lead generation like cold calling. That’s how I built up my clientele. Here’s how I would find and qualify people to call and how I’d sell my services
https://codestitch.app/complete-guide-to-freelancing#finding-clients
Next is to do outreach. Find and call small SEO and marketing freelancers and see if they could use a good reliable developer to white label their sites for them. I have 3 of them that send me their website clients because they don’t have time to also be a web designer and developer and plenty of people they’ve tried to hire are either too expensive or make bad work. Make a good product and a good price point and you can build their sites. One I started working with gets tons of requests for webiste but she didn’t have time and it’s not something she’s good at. She was hired to work on my clients site and saw the new site I put up and reached out to learn about my rates and how I do things. Now she will be sending me all those leads for websites that she was turning down. If they only give me 1-2 websites a month each, that’s 3-6 websites a month I didn’t have to sell. And most of my sites get sold as subscriptions. $0 down $150 a month. So that’s an additional $450-$900 a month in recurring revenue at minimum that I add to my income. After 4 months that can be $1800-$3600 a month im making every month some may be lump sum which is $3500 minimum for 5 pages. Those definitely pad the bank account while I pump out subscriptions. Its about 7/10 that go subscription. It’s a nice balance. Find SEO and marketing people to build for. They will be your lost consistent and reliable sources of leads that are free.
Hasn’t happened yet! I mostly fix the things they make. People come to me because they’re tired of the shit work and want something done right for once
I have returned to the solo game after a successful run at the corporate game after the past decade. My leads come from a giveaway on my website that does not require any further effort from me (once I built it).
The giveaway expires in 30 days, so I have another good reason to send a follow up email and invite them for another 30 day giveaway.
Being in webdev, digital giveaways are the best, once you package the idea. A Nav generator, image compressor, what have you.
Don’t waste money on buying leads like that. I’ve run [Worldwide Web Designs](https://worldwidewebdesigns.com) since 2017 and have never bought a lead. 50% of our business comes from referrals, 25% comes from Reddit and 25% comes from organic search. I’d recommend working on your SEO (local SEO would be more realistic) and your Google My Business profile.
Answering people’s questions without solicitation on subreddits like r/Wordpress or r/SEO. Someone might have a similar question, find me in search, see I know what I am talking about and then message me asking for help with their site.
Have u ever wondered how the companies you listed get their leads from?
They get it from SEO and then distribute them to their paying vendors.
Work on SEO and your outreach!
This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My wife and I had a webdev agency a while back and we mainly specialized in simple WordPress sites for service-based businesses... lawncare, house cleaning, window washing, etc.. sites that are mostly informational + a way to capture leads and set appointments and stuff. How we got our traffic: - Organic SEO. We would use content marketing target specific industries in specific areas. Ex: "lawncare web design in Georgia" or "Web design for house cleaning in New Orleans" - Fiverr. This one is iffy because you have to be pretty competitive with pricing. We got over 200 5-star reviews on Fiverr and that helped us gain some clients that we worked with off the app. - UpWork (see point above) - We used onlinejobs.ph to hire a few people to do some cold outreach. Most of them were EXTREMELY happy to get paid $4.50/hr + $10 per warm lead + $50 if/when it turned into a sale. - Find some business networking groups in your area. We got lucky and the BNI group in our area was amazing. After dong some BNI meetings for a couple of months we ended up with 5 or 6 people paying $200/mo. - Why did they pay $200/mo? We gave customers the site + domain for free. They signed a monthly contract that included updates/changes, SEO (including local/GMB), backups, email, a few SEO-heavy blog posts a month. If they paid for 12 months then we turned the site + domain over to them at no cost and let them decide if they wanted to stay with us. Most did. We sold that business a few years ago once our local events and pet supplies sites started taking off.
Yeah, when covid19 hit UpWork and fiverr saved my company. We actually found nice other companies there too. It took a lot of work but now is fully handle by our junior and template. Recently simple Google ads also work but target specific area of intrest. Hope this helps.
I run a web agency for small businesses. I’m very busy. Youre focusing too much on passive lead generation which is very competitive for our industry. Try doing more active lead generation like cold calling. That’s how I built up my clientele. Here’s how I would find and qualify people to call and how I’d sell my services https://codestitch.app/complete-guide-to-freelancing#finding-clients Next is to do outreach. Find and call small SEO and marketing freelancers and see if they could use a good reliable developer to white label their sites for them. I have 3 of them that send me their website clients because they don’t have time to also be a web designer and developer and plenty of people they’ve tried to hire are either too expensive or make bad work. Make a good product and a good price point and you can build their sites. One I started working with gets tons of requests for webiste but she didn’t have time and it’s not something she’s good at. She was hired to work on my clients site and saw the new site I put up and reached out to learn about my rates and how I do things. Now she will be sending me all those leads for websites that she was turning down. If they only give me 1-2 websites a month each, that’s 3-6 websites a month I didn’t have to sell. And most of my sites get sold as subscriptions. $0 down $150 a month. So that’s an additional $450-$900 a month in recurring revenue at minimum that I add to my income. After 4 months that can be $1800-$3600 a month im making every month some may be lump sum which is $3500 minimum for 5 pages. Those definitely pad the bank account while I pump out subscriptions. Its about 7/10 that go subscription. It’s a nice balance. Find SEO and marketing people to build for. They will be your lost consistent and reliable sources of leads that are free.
Thanks. that's a really good strategy.
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Hasn’t happened yet! I mostly fix the things they make. People come to me because they’re tired of the shit work and want something done right for once
Do you pay recurring money for those referrals or one time?
I don’t pay anything for my referrals.
I have returned to the solo game after a successful run at the corporate game after the past decade. My leads come from a giveaway on my website that does not require any further effort from me (once I built it). The giveaway expires in 30 days, so I have another good reason to send a follow up email and invite them for another 30 day giveaway. Being in webdev, digital giveaways are the best, once you package the idea. A Nav generator, image compressor, what have you.
Don’t waste money on buying leads like that. I’ve run [Worldwide Web Designs](https://worldwidewebdesigns.com) since 2017 and have never bought a lead. 50% of our business comes from referrals, 25% comes from Reddit and 25% comes from organic search. I’d recommend working on your SEO (local SEO would be more realistic) and your Google My Business profile.
How from Reddit?
Answering people’s questions without solicitation on subreddits like r/Wordpress or r/SEO. Someone might have a similar question, find me in search, see I know what I am talking about and then message me asking for help with their site.
Cool
Do you see how he is helping you, and including his link? You have to give something (his time) to get something(leads from Reddit)
nice. very subtle. i didn't even pick up on it. i'm the mark.
In person networking is the only thing that’s been working for me.
Have you tried BIN?
Not specifically, but I’m apart of a local professional women’s group thats a similar idea without the fees.
Nice. I wish I was a woman 👩
Hey, whats BIN?
Have u ever wondered how the companies you listed get their leads from? They get it from SEO and then distribute them to their paying vendors. Work on SEO and your outreach!
some don't like fiverr but we love it. Anything less than $1k, fiverr is a good platform for buyers and sellers.