[morganvachon]

Indeed, I've found the sweet spot for managing and hosting a website for a small business or individual to be around $10/month and I net maybe $5/month/client out of that after hosting fees and time invested. There's a plethora of "build it yourself" hosts out there who use economies of scale to offer simple shared hosting for under $5/month with a site builder engine that's good enough for the masses. Look at A Small Orange[1] as a great example of how to thrive while offering a good but cheap service.

It can be done, but given the small scale it's basically pocket money, not any sort of real income, unless you can build a brand and scale it up. That's the secret sauce: Marketing.

[1] http://asmallorange.com