How I built and scaled a profitable web design business selling to local / regional SMBs.
by Nick SergeantI started FLX Websites on a whim back in 2019 when a friend asked me "can you build me a website for my business"?
To which I replied: "that is essentially the only thing I actually know how to do".
So began my focus on creating well-designed and very accessible websites to small, local, mostly-brick-and-mortar-style businesses in my region of Western NY.
I'm looking forward to sharing more of my journey here on IndieHackers. For two decades I've wanted to build my own startup. I never had any idea it would end up being the most basic tech product imaginable: selling websites to small businesses.
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Hi Nick, are u hiring? I am a web designer and junior dev from Bali.
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Not started my business yet. I am currently doing market research.
I estimated minimum potential monthly revenue to be 12,000 USD. pretty close to the revenue you have mentioned above.Based on your experience, how long will it take to reach 60K USD per month? Is it even realistic?
My vision is to automate this business with employees, so that I can work on my startup ideas.
But initially I am starting it with few of my friends.Any advice or comment you would like to give me for this plan?
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I estimated minimum potential monthly revenue to be 12,000 USD. pretty close to the revenue you have mentioned above.
It took me 4 years to get to ~$12k MRR:
I estimate I've spent about 15 hours per week on average, so 3,000+ hours of my time over those four years. The first few years I was doing all of the development work nights-and-weekends, and then a few years in I hired a development contractor to do all of design-to-layout code.
If you have the frontend skills to turn designs into layout code, and the backend skills to build a framework for hosting, maintaining, and updating websites, all you really need is a designer and/or design service. I started with 99designs and that's a great option to get started.
But to answer your general question: it's going to take a long time. This type of business is very hard to scale quickly but totally possible once you have some momentum.
Based on your experience, how long will it take to reach 60K USD per month? Is it even realistic?
Seems possible within 5-7 years but will heavily depend on what your market / niche is and how you structure your pricing. I went for very small local SMBs and kept my pricing extremely competitive, so MRR has taken a while. And for the first few years I didn't even charge a setup fee - I paid for my outsource/contractor costs out of pocket and made up my investment over months of payments.
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Is it hard to get new clients?
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Word of mouth / referral is definitely our primary method of getting new clients. Selling to small businesses in a specific local/regional area is a big help here - everyone talks to each other. So as long as you're putting out a good product, word gets out.
I do maintain a pretty active Facebook page and have a marketer who helps me come up with social post content ideas and creative. Occasionally I will boost a post on Facebook for ~$100 and that almost always results in at least one decently warm lead that I close maybe 50% of the time.
Facebook is ideal for my business because it's all about the local small business community, and that's where they hang out.
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Other than word of mouth and Facebook ads, have you tried any other channel to acquire new clients?
From your experience, what will be the best way to get my first client?
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You could volunteer to design, build, and host a custom website for a local youth sports team or organization (for free).
They're always desperate for help and they aren't going to be super picky on design. This was actually my first client and how I started thinking I could build a business around it.
Spend out of pocket for a nice design via 99designs, build yourself a platform for hosting websites in your language / tool of choice, and build it in mind to support many websites on different hostnames from the same repo/deployable.
Most of the time when you volunteer for a youth org they are going to promote your business everywhere - on their social, banners, etc. Good way to get those first referrals.
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I often see that most agencies showoff very fancy projects with 3d stuff and complex animations.
Does it increase the revenue in a positive way?
Or is it just bluff? not needed at all-
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Depends on your audience, but my clients only care about 1) a decent looking website 2) someone local to talk to and make updates/recommendations 3) a good price.
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Do you control their hosting? how is the cost of hosting handled?
If they fail to pay the subscription, their website goes down?-
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Yep. We have two platforms: one is Next.js + Directus hosted on Vercel. The other is Django + Wagtail hosted on Render.
Both platforms host many websites. There are ~30 on each. Choosing to host many websites on a single codebase/platform/deployable is one of the best decisions I've made.
If they fail to pay the subscription, their website goes down?
Yep! After months and lots of customer support, of course.
how is the cost of hosting handled?
We pay the hosting bill, not the client. Client just pays us a single monthly fee for everything.
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Out of 100 clients, how many will discontinue the subscription and after how many months?
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We've only reached 45 clients so far. In about 5 years I've only lost two: 1 was a brand new business that underestimated their potential income and could no longer afford the monthly payments, and 1 was a pretty successful HVAC company that bought into a large marketing firm to handle all of their marketing (paid, organic, and website).
So churn has been very low. It's quite painful for small businesses to deal with website provider changes (finding a new developer, potentially a new hosting platform, domain and DNS issues, etc.).
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what kind of small businesses do you generally deal with?
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I would say ~60% of our clients are construction, contracting, or cleaning companies. Service industry companies are our bread-and-butter. Below is a list of example sites we send to potential clients for each pricing package (which are roughly delineated by how complex we perceive the site to be):
$199/mo package
- https://tee-edoff.com
- https://solarcleanny.com
- https://nexgen.org
- https://triton-refrigeration.com
- https://bfieldsenterprises.com
- https://rochoodcleaning.com
$299/mo package
- https://excelsiorpestgroup.com
- https://flxhomesolutions.com
- https://lake2lakecontracting.com
- https://balthasarindustries.com
- https://bwexcavationllc.com
- https://marksengineering.com
$399/mo package
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impressive
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