An Inverse Business Model For Web Designers
My friend recently told me that he was planning on becoming a web designer. Up until now he had been working for a company that developed ‘defensive weapons’ for the military – missiles that would shoot other missiles out of the air for instance. He is a stone-cold genius who’s not only brilliant at electronic engineering, but who can also program in machine code and many other languages – there’s zero margin for error in the industry he was in.
So it’s not that I didn’t think he could do it or that he didn’t have the requisite skills – I knew that that wasn’t the case – but I was still worried about this choice of career simply because there are so many web designers out there. What didn’t help was that his girlfriend (who he was going into business with) wouldn’t listen to my advice to try targeting smaller companies through sites like Fiverr to begin with and only wanted to work with larger brands.
But I should not have underestimated him. My friend had a plan for a different way to approach a web design business, and when he explained his model to me I knew it could be a hit. Here’s that model so that you can consider adapting it into your business too.
An Inverse Business Model for Web Designers and App Developers
The problem that most new web designers have is finding work. They will post their adverts on forums and freelancing sites, but in 90% of cases there is always going to be someone who is either more experienced/professional than them or who is a lot cheaper. There’s so much competition in this industry that it’s almost impossible to stand out and get noticed.
To get around this problem though, my friend decided to turn this concept on its head. Instead of advertising his skills then waiting to be contacted, he would instead identify potential clients, develop a website for them, and then contact them in order to show them the finished article in all its glory and offer them a price.
Why It’s Brilliant
Now before you write this idea off as being stupid or too risky (as my girlfriend did), consider how you might react if this were to happen to you Imagine that you had just had some success with a new YouTube channel or a small shop that you’d opened up. Suddenly you start getting e-mails from people who want to work with you – which is exciting enough – and one of those happens to contain a completed site that looks beautiful and that perfectly captures your site and your business.
Some people might not be interested in this, but for the vast majority of everyone else it’s going to be incredibly tempting and hard to turn down – most of us are vain enough to love seeing a website with our face or brand on it that looks professionally made. Meanwhile you don’t have any of the stress of finding someone you don’t know to create a website without knowing how it’s going to turn out – you just have a simple transaction to go ahead with.
The key of course will always be in choosing the right people. Big businesses would probably rather handle their web design themselves, while smaller companies wouldn’t be able to afford it. The trick is to choose the ‘rising star entrepreneur’ – someone who has just started earning enough money to fund a website and who is likely to be excited by the prospect enough to make an emotional and impulsive decision to buy.
What if They Don’t Sell?
The concern of course is that the website might not sell, which would mean you’d wasted your time. This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds though – as if you can make a site worth several hundred dollars every day then you won’t be hurt too badly if you every now and then you get a dud.
Likewise, a lot of the materials you create will be recyclable. Build a generic blog for some YouTuber and if they don’t want it you can always replace the branding and sell it as a ready-made site on a webmaster forum.
There’s a lot of competition out there if you hope to provide a service online, but if you can appeal to the vanity of your customers and if you have the guts to take a risk then there area still ways you can stand out.
The author of this article is Peter Andrews, a freelance blogger currently working at Todd SEO Guy, a leading SEO service provider. Peter takes keen interest in ecoconservation and organizes beach clean-up projects with the local residents.
