Why Most Web Designers Can’t Make Over $50k/year
This isn’t a glass ceiling. It’s very easy to see. Just do the math.
If a business owner wants a website there are a bunch of options. Wix and Squarespace are options in the $250 price range for DIY people. It’s not hard to get a WordPress site for around $500 – $750 from a freelancer on Fiverr or Upwork. Local freelancers working with local clients tend to charge about $1,000 for a website. So, if the deliverable is just a website you can’t charge much more than $1,000 because of all of the other low-priced alternatives.
So, let's go over the five shifts you need to make to bust through to much higher income goals so you can build your own 6-figure web design business.
The Math Doesn’t Work Out
Let’s suppose you land one client per week. That means you build, launch, and invoice a new website every week for an entire year. If never get sick and never take any time off that means you’re launching 52 websites per year for a gross revenue of $52,000.
Then, factor in your costs. The biggest expense is going to be generating enough leads to close a client every single week. Of course, there are other expenses to like your software, your computer, your internet, phone, etc. All of that is going to add up to several thousands of dollars.
So, add that all up and it becomes clear that you can’t make more than $50,000 per year as a freelance web designer because the price per project is just too low. Furthermore, most web designers are not able to generate anywhere near the number of leads required to land a client every week. In reality, web designers can realistically
expect their annual income to be more like $35,000 per year. That’s the bad news.
Web Designer vs Online Marketing Consultant
The good news is that your web design skills are still valuable. But you have to make a transformational shift to how you deliver your skills.
The days of:
- Meet with the client
- Get the copy for the website
- Build and launch their website
…are over for anyone trying to make a decent living as a web designer.
The shift is to upgrade from being a garden-variety “web designer” into being an online marketing consultant. The truth is, if you build websites you are already offering “marketing” services. Let’s take a look at how you can expand that into your own 6-figure business.
What Is An Online Marketing Consultant?
The way I’m using the term, what I mean is that you have the ability both to recommend effective lead generation strategies AND you have the technical chops to pull it off. I often refer to the combination of lead generation and marketing strategies as “business consulting.” Then you also have your technical skills so you can implement the strategies you are recommending.
The Two “Stacks”
Marketing skills and business development strategies are the two “stacks” we focus on in DoubleStack – both for you AND for you to leverage on behalf of your clients. The goal is to make sure you’re comfortable and confident executing a wide variety of marketing techniques, tools, and platforms.
Then we focus on the changes that need to take place in your business to find your ideal, high-value, long-term clients.
5 Major Areas Of Transformation
It’s not complicated, but there is some serious work that needs to take place concerning how you position yourself and your business in the market. You can’t just raise your prices and hope for the best because you won’t land clients like that.
The five main areas we focus on transforming are:
- Your messaging
We work on what you need to say on your website to attract the right type of leads
- Your pricing
We substantially increase your pricing so you’re focusing on five-figure projects
- Your client meetings
You develop a leadership framework for meeting with your clients and you’ll learn “The One Meeting Close” technique.
- Your proposals
You don’t really write web design proposals anymore. Now you’re developing business plans.
- Recurring revenue
You develop monthly retainers with your clients which dramatically reduces or even eliminates the need to constantly hunt for new leads.
Ready To Level Up?
When you’re ready to level up you can book a 45-minute call with me and we’ll develop a step-by-step plan to develop the foundation for your own 6-figure web design and online marketing business – for free.
This call is totally free because it is for you to get clarity on how you (with your unique skills and interests) can reach your income goals as fast as possible.
After the call, you can take the plan we develop and work on it yourself. Or, if you want help implementing the concepts into your business we can talk about whether or not you'd like for me to personally mentor you through each step.
Either way is totally cool. The main point is just to stop burning yourself out with low-budget clients and one-off projects. Instead, let’s get you positioned to offer more value and better serve your clients because it’s much more fulfilling that way and you’ll make more money too.
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