Subscription Web Design Business Model? Here's What to Consider...

0:00it seems everything is going subscription based these days so why not web design does that even make sense to do is this something that you personally should consider and how would I personally go about this if I was starting a subscription-based web design business let's talk about all this first off let's talk about what a subscription-based web design service actually is this is instead of charging your client a one-time flat rate you would actually charge them a recurring monthly fee for their website so essentially the more clients that you add on the more recurring Revenue that you're going to have this means that when you first start off you're going to

0:37have a lower income but as you continue to build that client base your monthly recruit revenue is going to go up now of course like anything there are definitely pros and cons that are going to be involved in any style of business and I really don't think there is a right or wrong blanket answer for everyone across the board this is truly something that you have to analyze you have to decide personally for yourself if this makes sense for you and for your business so let's break down the pros and cons of this business let's start with first off this can potentially attract a lower quality client which is

1:14often a lower paying client and often they tend to be a more demanding client however because this is a monthly subscription this is something that they want their website to continue running so they want to continue paying for that and are not necessarily looking for work to be done every single month you also may not be able to upsell as much to this type of client and of course this depends and if you operate a business like this you definitely want to consider the types of clients that you are attracting how you are presenting your offers and how are you are really helping that their business grows so

1:47that you have more potential for upselling those particular clients and therefore not only adding value to their business but you're also adding more recurring Revenue to your business as well so this is one of those women win situations for me where I have less clients so I charge more so I'm earning what I need to but that also allows me to maximize the value that I am contributing to each business to each client because I'm not spread too thin amongst a whole lot of low-paying clients so it's not hard to find the subscription-based web design services that are out there and a lot of them are

2:23really just based on the ongoing maintenance and not so much on the value okay let's talk about the pros now of course a huge Pro and a huge attraction for this business is the ongoing monthly recurring Revenue that you're going to receive that will continue to build upon itself month after month now I personally would argue that regardless of what you charge a client up front that you should still be adding in recurring Revenue into your business and I've talked about how to structure this how to do this in a number of ways that I'll link to down below because we don't have time for that in this particular

2:56video now another benefit to this is especially for those of you who do not yet feel confident in selling you don't like the sales process you don't have experience in the sales process yet you don't want to put a lot of effort into it it can feel much easier or a much easier ask to go to a potential client and have them sign up for this recurring Revenue model because the price is often lower than that much higher one-time fee for the website now from the client's point of view this can also feel like there's less risk involved because they are paying a lower fee up front and not

3:28having to worry about paying a larger fee and not knowing what they're going to get at the end of that process but again this is something that should all be part of your website planning process that Discovery phase that you are going through with a client up front so that they do feel confident they do know what they are getting and then they see the value in your offer so now we've talked about pros and cons let's talk about some things that you should consider if you really want to do this business and make it successful one thing that is really true for any web design is

3:59business is there's always going to be a part of your time that is spent in attracting new clients especially with a recurring Revenue type of model subscription-based model there needs to be just as much if not more of a focus on keeping those clients that you do get so what is your process for making sure that you are retaining clients from month to month so that as you're bringing in new clients your revenue is it staying the same or going down because you're having clients fall off I would also place a large emphasis on really looking at how you can add value from a lot of the businesses that use

4:35this model that I was looking at there doesn't seem to be a big focus on the education on the adding value to the particular client and their business and really when you can provide this value this is where you can increase your Revenue dramatically from those clients that you've already worked hard to get you can add in some additional one-time fees you can offer them a number of recurring Revenue packages that add more value the higher the package that they go so whether they need help with email marketing social or so forth always consider how you are helping them to grow their own Revenue to make their

5:10website more profitable now another thing that you want to do with any recurring Revenue Services you want to make sure that you are automating payments never send them an invoice from month to month every time that you do that the client is reconsidering do they want to continue working with you so automate those payments have that automatically build to them have their payments automatically come in so it is not something that they have to think about on a month-to-month basis and when it comes to pricing make sure that you have a larger upfront fee for that very first month in order for you to put together the website after you set up

5:45that website that's when you can start to lower the fee on a month-to-month basis now personally for me if I was starting at this business from scratch what I would do is I would focus heavily on the lead generation and as I was getting the clients in I would be setting up a process for how I was building out these sites because really with this type of service you're not so much going to be building out custom sites you're really going to have a process that you're going to follow for every client that is coming in even though the look and feel will be a little bit different for the different

6:16businesses that you are working with but then once I get to a point where the revenue is enough for me to be able to hire out so that someone else can take over the building of the websites take over that process that I have been working on creating I will absolutely take that money and reinvest it back into the business because that now dramatically increases the time that I can spend on lead generation getting more people into the funnel bringing more clients in and that will help me scale up the revenue the monthly recurring Revenue at a much faster basis than if I'm doing the whole thing all by

6:49myself and I will get to where I want to be faster so ideally here what I'm building is a system for this business and how it is going to work and operate where I am not a requirement for that business so is this a business model that makes sense for you personally again there's no right or wrong answer here you really have to look at the different models and what speaks to you personally and what you feel comfortable with so consider are you doing this on the side of another job if so is this a business model of that after you're able to transition into your business

7:20full-time is this the model that you want to be able to continue with you also want to ask are you willing to take less money up front knowing that your goal is to continue to have your monthly recurring Revenue build over time as you're able to bring in more clients you also want to think about what type of client do you personally want to work with and make sure that this is a model that is really going to make sense for them as well and your income that's incredibly important so how many clients will you need and at what price to make the money that you want write it out

7:52play with a different number of clients play with the different number of prices so that you can figure out what you really need to make happen in order for this business model to make sense for you you also want to consider based on your schedules your ability how many projects will you realistically be able to take on how many recurring clients will you realistically be able to take on before you begin to hire out so whatever way you decide to run your business make sure you're making the decision based on your own desires and goals not what someone else is doing and then go all in with doing something

8:26halfway just to see what happens never gives you the true results of what is possible so I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the subscription based web design service let me know if this is something you've considered or you're doing now or you might do in the future and of course if you have any questions about it you want to talk it out at all go ahead and drop a comment down below as always thank you so much for spending your time with me and I'll catch you on the next one