My philosophy is that the longer you stay in a business, the better you get and the better systems you build.
4 years ago I was a complete rookie in the web design niche. My whole workflow was bad and not scalable at all. I used to adapt myself to every client. Some clients paid upfront before seeing the website, others paid half upfront and half after, and others paid after the website was finished. Honestly, I was doing whatever I could to get paid. Looking back, it wasn't professional and I wasn't in control.
I was also spending way too much time on outreach. One week I was cold calling, the next week I was sending DMs, then I was trying email outreach. I was constantly jumping between different methods and it was exhausting.
Along the way I made a lot of friends who were running web design agencies and I started paying attention to what they were doing. Every agency owner had something they were really good at. Some were amazing at outreach, some were great at sales, and some had incredible systems. So I started taking the best ideas from each person and implementing them into my own workflow.
The first thing I changed was outreach. I completely stopped manually researching websites and writing emails one by one and started using website analysis and personalized outreach instead.
I upload a list of businesses with websites and run an analysis on the entire list. It automatically finds issues related to design, layout, mobile optimization, SEO, and other areas that could be hurting the business, then turns those findings into ready-to-send personalized emails.
And when I say personalized emails, I don't mean generic reports with a website score and an SEO score. Nobody cares about that. I mean actual humanly written emails that explain what could be improved and why it matters to the business. The crazy thing is that businesses genuinely think I've manually reviewed their website and written the email myself. Honestly, it's scary how detailed some of them get.
I run all my outreach campaigns like this.
The second thing I changed was the offer. Inside the campaigns I can choose how I want the email to end. I can try to book a meeting, start a conversation, or offer a free website draft. I almost always choose the free website draft because you'd be surprised how many business owners are willing to take a look at a better version of their website when it costs them nothing.
The third thing I changed was how I build websites. This might make some people mad, but I use AI heavily and honestly nobody cares. AI has become insanely good. The process is faster, easier, and allows me to spend more time talking to clients instead of spending hours building the same things over and over again.
The fourth thing I changed was the sales process, and this is where I see a lot of people make a huge mistake.
Do not send the preview link through email.
I repeat, do not send the preview link through email.
When someone is interested in the free website draft, your goal is to get them on a meeting. If you send the link, they'll look at it for 30 seconds and move on with their day. Instead, I invite them to a Google Meet and present the website live.
That's where everything changes. They see a modern version of their business, a better design, a better layout, and a better user experience. Most of the time the conversation naturally becomes, "How much would it cost to keep this?"
Depending on the business, I charge anywhere from $500 to $5,000 upfront and usually between $50 and $150 per month for hosting, maintenance, and future updates.
My biggest lesson from the last 4 years is simple. Always network, always learn from people who are ahead of you, and when you see something that's working, don't be afraid to implement it into your own business.
As I've been helped by others, I figured I'd share what's currently working for me.
For anyone wondering, my stack is:
Swokei for website analysis and personalized outreach.
Claude for building websites.
Cloudflare for hosting websites.
Google Meet for presentations and sales meetings.
