How I made $1500 in one hour.
Hi guys, I wanted to talk about one project I have done, which took me 60 minutes of my time and brought me $1500, plus an additional $500 for every year to come, if things go on well.
All this started by pure luck, about 6 months ago. I was at a friend’s party, when I heard my friend saying to a girl “hey you have to discuss with Alan, it’s his job to make websites and stuff on the internet”. Then the friend introduced me to that girl, and we started to talk.
She was starting a business, she was organizing “risk analysis” courses, and she would have like to have a website to get some customers.
I asked her: “What do you want exactly?” She didn’t know… By experience, I know that when you create a website for someone, you have of course to give choices, but you have to take decisions on many things, because if you start to rely too much on the guy’s decisions, he’s gonna drive you mad. He’ll say stupid things like “Oh I want that you put the menu 15 pixels more to the left, people will find my website more user-friendly”. And then you’ll spend hours to find the perfect green gradient that he likes, and getting headache because of changing the HTML a thousand times.
Therefore, I usually ask for what content the person want, ask if he has some idea of the organization of the pages, and if so, that he draws screens on the paper, indicating how he wants things to be displayed. And if the person doesn’t know anything, I just ask for the content, what kind of colour theme he wants, and then I find a couple of templates around that color, show it to the guy for him to decide which one he wants. Then I create the website, show it, ask for remarks, and make the modifications if they are not too big, and nothing more.
But I have to be honest, normally I only create websites for friends or family.
Because this situation happened to me a couple of times: I’m discussing with someone, and when I explain I do internet stuffs, he mentions he would need a website, so he asks how much it would cost if I do it.
I ask what he wants, he says “Oh some website with pages to put information about my business”.
I see that it will take 1 or 2 hours to do the job, so I tell him “Yeah I could make it but for the time it would take, I can’t make you pay more than $50″.
Then hell happens.
The guy eventually wants some website with an online shop, and makes me change 10 times the design because he doesn’t sell anything and he thinks it is because of the design. And when the website gets 1 visit per month, the guy will complain, and if I try to explain that if he wants some serious SEO, it would take me at least a few days, which would cost him at least a thousand $ (and that’s a friendly price), then the guy doesn’t understand why it cost $50 to make a website and $1000 to get some visitors… and eventually things turn bad…
But one friend asked me once last year to make a website for his association. Because he knew about my stories, he asked me to give him some rates that would NOT BE cheap, but similar to other web agencies. He could pay the price, but he preferred to have me because he knew I was going to do something good.
So I set up some rates, there were cheaper than any other companies, but it was enough to cover all the extra time I would be spending on that project to make things go right.
- $300: website one time setup fees, advices, basic SEO and getting listed on Google
- $20 per website page.
- $500 per year maintenance fees (include hosting, domain name, and minor changes on the website, i.e. all changes must be equivalent in total to less than a page every month).
- $20 to create a new page on the website
- $10 to do major changes on a page
These rates seem expensive if you compare to some indian hired on rentacoder.com, but people who come to see me for a website are people who don’t know shit about creating a website, and they wouldn’t be able to work with some freelance guy, because they don’t event know what they want. Saying “I need a website” is one thing, but defining exactly what needs to be done requires someone in front of you who can discuss with you.
If you live in a populated area, chances are that there are many professionals who don’t have a website because they don’t know who can help them, or it is too expensive for them, so you could actually build a profitable business around this. Go to small shops, find a few clients, get started, see how you can adjust your rates, and if you do a good job for a fair price, you’ll get clients by word of mouth.
I don’t do it because I already earn enough with my internet stuffs, but I think that searching “offline” to sell your “online” skills is really a good way to make a lot of money.
The main reason why people will not be interest in paying for a website is, of course, money.
And this is where my little story taught me something interesting.
When I asked what content she wanted to put on the website, the girl showed me a brochure she was always carrying with her, it was 4 pages, plus an additional page with courses and prices.
Frankly I wasn’t interested at all to work for her, even with my “high” fees, so I just popped a random rate out of my mind… “I’ll do it for $1000, plus $500 yearly fees.”
I explained her it was a bargain, because she would have to pay at least $2000 or $3000 if she went to a web agency.
But I could guess she wouldn’t spend that much money, and I was expecting that she was going to forget about it.
Indeed, she said it was too much, she couldn’t afford it… But she asked me, “if I pay $1500, how many customers can you send me?”
Of course, I couldn’t know, and I was not going to lie to her.
So I proposed her a deal… “I’ll do your website for $100, and everytime you get one customer through the website, you pay me $100, until you have paid the full $1500. But because your investment is only those first $100, you will have a website which takes the content of this brochure, nothing fancy, you can’t expect to have it fine-tailored.”
She was selling her courses for $400-$2000, so obviously, it was a good bargain for her, she really had nothing to lose…
I thought to myself “Ok I don’t have a clue if she will ever get one customer, but at least I will get $100 to make a 5 pages website, and she gets her website at a killing price, that’s fair enough”.
Still I wanted to see if I could get her some customers… That meant getting some good traffic, without spending time on it. I used my personal backlink network to make her website rank well, and decided to look at adwords… It was damn expensive, something like $2-$5 per click! So I used instead the trick I explained in my previous post: Getting listed on Google Local.
The whole thing took me around one hour to setup (creating the website using a template, buying the domain name, setting my backlink system to send some links to her website, and filling the google local subscription form).
I made one change once, to her request, but otherwise I didn’t touch anything on her website since, I was quite happy because I made some money without headache. She was happy because she got her website at a great price, and she actually liked the template so she didn’t have any problem with the design.
But guess what? The best was to come… Customers actually found her website, and I started to get money from her for every customer… And today I have officially sent her 14th customer! I earned my $1500 after 5 months, and, I repeat, the whole thing took my one hour of work.
It doesn’t seem much, 14 customers is less than one customer per week, the average traffic is around 15 visitors a day, but all of these customers pay several hundreds for a course! So she’s very happy with my work, and I’m very happy to have made that much money without all the fuss I had with previous people.
If I was doing that kind of deal like ONCE every TWO WEEKS, I would make $3000 per month, plus the future $500, which comes automatically every year.
Even if you don’t have the backlink system like mine, just getting the website listed on Google Local will make your client appear on top of the search result page. If possible, be careful to choose businesses that are not yet listed (e.g., avoid restaurants, or any profession which is already full of listings in your area).
But I know, you’re like me, and even the prospect of making that much cash is not enough to make you move.
Too bad, but if you are really looking for some money, take the rates I wrote above, just spend one or two days and go to small shops, preferably during quiet hours, talk to the owner, make a deal like I did, to pay a bit now, and the rest when results appear, try to find a contract or two, and see if it is worth doing it. Just think that if you have a free day, instead of spending it in front of the TV, just do what I say, at the very worst, your time will have been as useless as watching the TV. Chances are that you will find one contract and make maybe a $100 now, and a couple of hundreds over the next months. Not bad, but even better, you might be luckier, make a couple hundreds now, that will result in a couple thousands. So think again how you would like to spend your next free day.
Tags: make money on the internet, online business, to make money at home, get paid, seo tool, how make money, earn money
