Selling websites is a bad habit.
The quickest way to have a “feast or famine” style business is by selling too many websites.
Stop selling websites.
Think about it…
Websites take a lot of time – the design, content, client communication, build, revisions, conversations about hosting…
When I started my web design business, I’d end up spending 40-60 hours on a project that I only charged $2-3K for.
I could only take on a few of these projects before I was physically and emotionally tapped out.
So here’s what I did differently…
1. I had to recognize that nobody actually wanted a website.
Yes, they came to me for a website, but what they really wanted was more customer activity. I used to feel like I couldn't offer up any other solutions when a client would come to me for a website.
Once I realized that the client was actually just looking for more customer activity this opened me up to the possibility of recommending other services that could do this for them.
2. I had to commit to selling services that took less of my personal time
Instead of selling websites first, I found something I could offer clients that didn’t require me to trade as much time for the money I was making. In effect, I was able to make the same money, but with a lot less work.
3. I set a freedom number – my recurring revenue goal
I knew I wanted recurring revenue, but until I wrote down the number that I wanted to reliably receive every month, nothing else changed. I picked a number that would easily cover all of my monthly expenses and put the extra money in my pocket each month. This was my freedom number.
4. I figured out how many clients I needed
With my freedom number in mind, I decided on what I thought would be a good average dollar amount to charge each client per month. In a sense, I set a target for my average dollar sale. This helped me picture in my mind what each client I was going to serve looked like in terms of revenue earned from them.
5. I figured out what each client would get
With my average dollar sale target in mind, I imagined what services would typically be included for that client. For example, if a client was paying me $1,100 per month, what would that include?
6. And, finally I built a proposal to sell this package.
This is really an important step that was very easy because I knew exactly how much I was going to charge and what was included.
If you really want to scale past your current time limits and workload, you have to figure out a way to make money that isn’t tied to the amount of time it takes.
You have to build recurring revenue.
You have to get out of trading time for money.
You have to stop being trapped by projects that are hard to deliver and pay so little.
You have to stop relying on websites.
Are you selling too many websites? Is your business suffering as a result? Would you like some help figuring out how to change things in your business? If so, I’d encourage you to apply for a call with our director of coaching. Let’s get your business on the right track.
