[jason_pomerleau]

There is lots of opportunity out there, but it depends on what you mean by ‘small business’. Super small companies (under 10 to 15 people in this context) are usually best off with SquareSpace or Wix. Companies slightly larger than this invariably end up wanting/needing things that these platforms can’t offer, and have the kind of budgets that can support a solo operator or small team.

At this level, you are competing with advertising agencies and marketing firms. Or you can turn those ad agencies into your clients - many don’t do the kinds of volume to support an in-house team.

I did well over 200k last year building, fixing and maintaining WordPress websites, working from home in a region with a relatively low cost of living. I expect to do even better this year, though I have resisted the urge to grow via hiring - I prefer to pick and choose my projects and be exclusive. My clients are a mix of agencies and “mid-size businesses”. I turned away another 50k of opportunities that didn’t feel like a good fit.

Beware though: success depends on more than just being able to build nice websites. You have to know how to sell yourself, manage customer expectations and a whole slew of soft skills to position yourself as a trusted advisor and expert. You need to understand your customers business, their challenges and pain points, how their customers think and behave, etc. Etc.

[mark_l_watson]

+1 for pointing out that soft skills are as important as the technical aspects of what is mostly a small project consulting business. Self evaluation for soft business skills can be difficult but one (obvious) metric is how often do you get continued work from existing customers. I would also say that concentrating on helping current customers is usually a better strategy than constantly chasing new work.

[0xabe]

Yes, and interestingly enough, this advice can be found in The Internship (aka The Google Movie) [0] towards the end with the pizza parlor.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/

[dehrmann]

Soft skills are important period.

[stefanfisk]

I don't know where you're located, but the situation is about the same here in Sweden. If you know how to sell yourself and get a nice network going you can be a one man army making enough to be in the top 1% of earners nationally.

But, consulting pays about the same, and since the contracts are usually for months if not a full year the situation is a lot more predictable.

[jason_pomerleau]

Yes, if you search my comment history (not much there, I don’t generally have much to say here), you’ll find me lamenting that lack of predictability compared to my consulting friends with 1 or 2 anchor clients. But, I believe I have a more resilient business - not one of my clients represents more than ~12% of my revenue.

[jv22222]

> Beware though: success depends on more than just being able to build nice websites. You have to know how to sell yourself, manage customer expectations and a whole slew of soft skills to position yourself as a trusted advisor and expert. You need to understand your customers business, their challenges and pain points, how their customers think and behave, etc. Etc.

Those skills are hard won. Sounds like you could create a great course and monetize it.

(Not talking about udemy etc, talking about a high end course with sensible price points in the hundreds or more)

[sopooneo]

I agree. Having started on the path to gaining those soft skills myself, I would now be more likely to pay solid money for a course on the topic. Hard won indeed.

[lgregg]

thefutur.com has a lot of content for designers selling services which can cross over into web design/dev.

[hanoz]

If (I assume) your skills are on the coding and architecture side of things, how so you cope with the visual design side of things, for your "build me a web site" clients?

[jason_pomerleau]

I do both, and I’m not actually super awesome at either. It turns out to be less important than many think. My design work is professional, but isn’t going to win any awards. My dev skills are pretty good within the context of WordPress - there isn’t much I haven’t done on that platform. But I’m pretty sure I’d be laughed out of the room at a Google or FB. I was a senior engineer at a BigCo but my role there was more leadership and PM than coding.

[raihansaputra]

If you're open to share, why did you decide to leave the leadership/PM role for freelancing?

[jason_pomerleau]

I desire freedom and autonomy above all else. You don’t generally get that at BigCo.

[kayoone]

love how self reflected and content you are about your situation. Kudos!

[ianai]

If he’s maintaining sores then maybe that’s already done.

[zuttton]

What does maintaining sores mean?

[oldmanpants]

I think “sites” fat-fingered with auto correction

[aasasd]

You know how people keep patching things up for years without ever taking the plunge and resolving the problems?..

[eps]

sites

On a qwerty keyboard o is next to i, r is next to t.

[vram22]

Or he may have meant 'stores'.

[mxuribe]

> ...over 200k last year building, fixing and maintaining..., working from home in a region with a relatively low cost of living...

THIS! My goal is to move away from my full-time day job and concentrate fully on my current side hustle...and arriving at or close to where you are now - both income and low expenses/cost-of-living, etc. Even if i'm a little under the 200k, that's squarely within my goal. I applaud you on having reached this, and wish you continued success!!!!

[pacomerh]

I'd hate to call it "hustle"

[aliswe]

"Side hustle" is some kind of SV slang for money-making side project. The SV-specific part is that it's not meant in a dishonest or otherwise negative (rather humoristic) way.

[prudencii]

i feel like it's not even fair to call it a side project when you're doing it full time

[gremlinsinc]

Whats your hourly?

I'm more laravel/mobile/node/vue/react, and I find I under-charge, but I think if I were doing WP I'd need to charge even less... Currently my best-long-term client pays $40...but I feel I want/deserve 60-70 and trying to land that for my next couple clients... do people pay you more than $40/hr for wordpress or do you just charge per project?

[goatherders]

You are grossly under charging. The first advice I give any dev is to up your rates by 25%. Period. You will not lose any clients. I promise. But $40 an hour for those skills is nuts. In the US WordPress providers typically charge $80 and I tell all of them - ALL - that they should be at at least $100/hour.

[MrBra]

So how much will a finished WordPress website end up costing? Just considering 20 hours will make the website cost $2000, and after that work the client will usually ask for other features and little touches here and there. Are you sure that this is what you can ask for a smallish WordPress website? I've read many times that this segment is usually called the "$500 WordPress website" segment... I think that when you start going over $2000 people start expecting a custom built website with completely customizable design/structure/graphics... at least this is my impression regarding website market in Europe. Does anyone feel the same about it?

[goatherders]

There is a market that will pay 500 that I would stay away from unless you can also get ongoing revenue as well (hosting, support/updates, content creation, etc). There is also an segment that already knows "a few thousand" is the starting cost of a quality site.

[rograndom]

You are probably undercharging. Not parent, but my WordPress specific work was either a flat fee for standard stuff (setting up a site, installing and configuring an existing theme, plugins, etc), or $50/hr for customization either through writing new plugins or adding functionality to an existing theme via PHP or CSS.

Laravel or other custom work starts at $125 for clients I'm expecting volume from or $150 for one off projects, again given in estimates as a flat fee for the project. If I expect something will take 8 hours to build, then I'm giving them a quote of $1200.

You can scaffold up a lot of CRUD stuff in Laravel in 8 hours.

[gremlinsinc]

Where do you find clients? My bread/butter is basically reddit - /r/forhire, Upwork is total shit, so I don't even login there anymore.

I'm wanting to potentially do some sort of hosting/support plan...and work on a site that has a ton more inbound marketing related articles on my biz. Then hire some offshore or jr devs or techs wanting to become devs to support the easy issues, I'll take care of the harder stuff, or hire some tier 2 people to do that... basically have something like $200/month for hosting, unlimited non-coding issues, change fonts, update settings, fix white screen of death, etc...w/ backups/malware scans/etc... -- the idea being get some recurring income.

Then I can up-sell people who need custom apps, full-design, etc... But before I can move into agency, I need solid/steady income. I had a bunch of imposter syndrome/depression but I'm depression free since August (therapy), and I've lost 90 pounds, and just have more energy, and I'm a lot more focused now, and just want to take freelancing to where I know it can go.

[goatherders]

This business model is tried and true (WP Curve, GoWP). In fact GoWP has a great white label solution to handle all the maintenance you speak of at a fair cost. I used to combine their service with hosting on WP Engine (which included Sucuri for security) and have a ready made MRR model for WordPress.

[jason_pomerleau]

Depends - it ranges from 90/hr to several hundred or more. Some things aren’t priced hourly, instead I charge competitive market rates and focus on workflow/efficiency improvements for additional margin.

[danielvf]

If you are US based, you can charge more than that, even in a low cost of living area. There is currently quite a bit more work than devs.

[potta_coffee]

Question wasn't for me, but I charge $50 hourly and I know I'm undercharging because my clients end up being surprised at how cheap the invoice is.

[drewmol]

If you uped your rate to 75, they know your value and probably wouldn't jump ship. Even if 25% did you still make more with less total hours and more potential revenue for any referral business you get. You also get the benifit of not feeling under valued which can drive you to increase the scope of services you provide to existing clients.

[akudha]

I did well over 200k last year building, fixing and maintaining WordPress websites

Does this involve making themes? Plugins? Is it only client billing or are you selling anything else like, reselling themes, affiliate etc?

My clients are a mix of agencies

I've heard this mentioned many times. How does one get agencies as clients?

[yuchi]

You contact them. They are typically pretty vocal online, so finding them is not that difficult.

[akudha]

You mean, cold email them? Just pitch them and ask if they have surplus work?

[hobofan]

Either cold email them, or try to get an intro through your network (= how you would contact any business for anything). Then you pitch them your skillset and your daily/hourly rate, and they'll decide to place you on their freelance/consulting roster or not.

There is a small split for how you would freelancing vs. consulting via agencies in my experience.

For consulting, you will usually only be brought on if you have a special skill set that the agency themselves can't fill out, and often only if their client specially requests those services. So consulting work via agencies is much rarer in my experience.

For freelancing, as long as the agency is doing well there is almost always something to do, and ~20% of their tech teams consist of freelancers, so it's not really "surplus work" but more their part of their normal mode of operation.

Of course, all of this are just anecdotal data, and may vary widely from region to region.

[snowwrestler]

Yes. Agencies pitch all the time to find their own clients, so they are not averse to getting pitched themselves.

A cold email better be great to work. A better bet is to go to meetups and local conferences for like Wordpress or SEO or digital marketing. You’re likely to meet some agency folks or people who contract with agencies. Chat them up, offer to buy them lunch, stay in contact.

Or, just look up agencies who are hiring for developers. Contact them and offer your contracting services.

A good portfolio is key. Strong client references are even better but it takes time to build those.

You can also do thought leadership type stuff like blog about topics, or participate in regional online communities.

[akudha]

Thank you for the comment. This is new to me, will try this out. Are you a freelancer too? Is this how you got started?

[snowwrestler]

I got started in tech the old fashioned way: by hiring into a 1999 dotcom with minimal qualifications.

I’m familiar with agencies because I have hired and worked with a lot of them recently.

[dwd]

Get out to networking events, local business chambers, local community organiations, etc.

For example: One of our oldest business associates, who has passed over a lot of work over the years, we met volunteering for the local seafood festival.

[nprateem]

How do you disconnect? As a solo guy charging retainers for support, etc. how can you take a couple of weeks off? Do you always have to check your emails even when you're on holiday or do you have someone else who can hold the fort?

[jason_pomerleau]

Vacations haven’t been quite the same since I went solo. I have to be connected. That said, virtually all my clients are willing to wait for non-emergency stuff until I get back, so in most cases I don’t have to work a lot while I am away - maybe a couple hours over a week in total. I’ve never taken a 2 week vacation (I’m 44) and wouldn’t know what that even feels like.

[sixtypoundhound]

Curious - which is a more profitable relationship, the agencies or serving a mid-sized business directly?

I imagine there's a longer selling cycle for the mid-sized business, offset by higher pricing? Which group is harder to serve? (eg. more iterations and drama inserted into the job vs. shaking hands, getting it done, and getting paid)

[jason_pomerleau]

Agency work is less profitable and higher hassle. They tend to want to “manage the project” and many of them do it rather poorly.

My sales cycle is very short. I usually close the sale in the first meeting - or walk away knowing that a PO is imminent. Or I finish that meeting knowing that there’s no real opportunity there. Over many years I’ve developed a pretty good instinct of what is an opportunity and what isn’t, and where there’s a good fit and isn’t. Wish I could be more prescriptive, but it seems to be one of my magic powers.

[sixtypoundhound]

Thank you - matches my expectations.

The older I get, the more I value clients who are willing to shake hands once and let us handle it from there (or better yet, send me an email before a project and a check after it).

Having some 23 year old AE clumsily attempt to "manage" us is a recipe for imminent violence.... (us => spouse and I)

[maratd]

> Agency work is less profitable and higher hassle.

I agree with the first part, but disagree with the second. Rather, partially disagree. Most agencies are inept. There are some out there that run a very tight ship and it is a pleasure to work for them. They tend to be larger and have a system for handling contractors.

That said, since it's always less profitable, you're always better off having your own clients.

[mrhappyunhappy]

This has not been the case for me. One of my best clients is a small agency that does not have an in house UX designer. They pass 100% of their UX work to me at the full price I decide. I had a very candid conversation with the owner and he was adamant about paying whatever to make me happy about the work to stay long term. It has been a win win relationship with them over the years. I charge a premium they are happy to pay and the work brings major wins for their clients which allows the agency to get even better and bigger contracts.

[honopu]

Mid size biz like the biz to biz approach. Agencies generally absorb a lot of the budget for creative directors, market research, etc and don’t leave a lot for actual development. Ideally you get in the position where you’re directly affecting income, that’s measured, by your efforts. That’s when you can charge based off of the value you’re providing, instead of an hourly rate.

[sixtypoundhound]

I think a lot of mid-market web agencies suffer from this issue (going to one of my favorite patio11 articles): https://www.kalzumeus.com/2008/01/28/why-you-shouldnt-pay-an...

[Zealotux]

Impressive figures, congratulations for growing your business that much. I've always had a hard time being taken seriously when I was doing Wordpress websites, may I where do you get clients? You should share your experience in a blog, I'd love to read that kind of stuff.

[jason_pomerleau]

100% referrals from happy clients, or people I’ve worked with in various contexts over the years. If you do great work and manage clients properly, word gets around. A client with 20 staff - in a year, 2 or 3 of those people will be working for another company. If you’ve left a good impression, over time the network effects take hold. The trick is to survive long enough to reach that point :) the first couple of years were tough.

[dwd]

That is very good advise.

The junior marketing person you are working with at one company a few years later may be head of marketing at a much larger company.

It can also work in reverse when your contact moves on and their replacement comes in with a pre-existing relationship with a competitor. Then it's nothing but work to keep them - same can happen when a small business sells and you have a new owner to build a new relationship with.

Have a client that is in the process of selling to what will be the fourth owner since I built their management software 12 or so years ago.

[gist]

I think what you have done (and are doing) is great first off. However a few questions.

1) Why do you use your name for your site ( jasonpomerleau.com ) rather than something easy to remember? For example I run into cases where people are going to need a wordpress site but no way I am going to remember that when I need it.

2) Why does your site have a big picture of you as the homepage image? And I do mean a big picture of you? What is that your unique selling point?

Not intended to be snarky and what you have done is great just curious.

[jason_pomerleau]

1) Businesses in my markets like to deal with humans. They’re not hiring a company (well, they are - I have a numbered company that is generally only of concern to the financial and legal departments) - they want to work with me. There’s no need for me to be memorable in any other way. Plus I really suck at naming things. :)

2) See 1). By the time a prospect reaches me, there’s already been a warm introduction of some kind. The big photo is the human you’re going to end up working with. I’m not super handsome but nevertheless i think it communicates that human component rather well. I do get teased occasionally about my “Steve Jobs” headshot but it doesn’t seem to have impacted sales.

If I was trying to grow and build out a team I would have taken a very different approach.

My growth strategy is oriented around productivity and workflow improvements, not adding heads. I’ve managed to become very fast and quite efficient, such that I usually blow my competitors completely out of the water. I’m only one semi-ugly dude, and thus every component of what I do has to be ruthlessly focused on what matters most.

[tastroder]

Love that approach but fyi: first time visitors using Chrome on Android get to know your left ear exclusively, the rest of your face is cut off on mobile.

[gist]

> There’s no need for me to be memorable in any other way.

I know a great deal about this topic. It always pays to make it easy for people to find or remember you. Even if you get primarily word of mouth.

> Plus I really suck at naming things. :)

Well then you should do what people who use you are doing. Find someone who does and pay them for the advice (per what I say about 'it always pays to make it easy for people to find or remember you).

Even if you already have more customers than you can service having more potential customers allows you to charge a higher price for what you do. There is no reason to have friction in marketing. It's not the same as HN trying to use a hard to find name to keep people out and have only higher quality comments (reason it's still probably news.ycombinator.com instead of something easier to find for newbies)

[ovx99]

I've been doing wordpress sites as a side gig for a while but I'm stuck with really onboarding enough new clients who have enough budget to work with. Could you elaborate on how you get new clients as well as charging the rates you do? And it's all non-local clients or how many are local face-to-face type businesses? I live in the middle of nowhere so there's not even that option.

[thrav]

Out of curiosity, $200k revenue pre-tax? Or $200k take home in your pocket after operating expenses, taxes, health care, etc?

My friends who have consulted have pulled in some seemingly hefty sums, only to feel like they came out behind a good salary with good benefits.

[ryanwaggoner]

It’s not fair to compare pre-tax salary with post-tax cash flow from your business.

Generally you pay less in taxes for an equivalent net profit as a small business than you would with that amount as a pre-tax salary. You pay slightly more in SE tax (~8%) but you get access to other write offs that more than make up for it, especially with the recent tax reform (huge deduction for pass-through businesses). And you can take as much time off as you want, which may cost you, but the flexibility is nice.

And operating expenses for most consultants are very low. For me it’s just been a new computer every couple years and a tiny bit of software and hosting. Basically nothing.

Healthcare is a big one though, if you’re not covered via a spouse or something.

[skinnymuch]

But a good salary is pre-tax too unless you’re talking about the actual paycheck which is far lower than listed salary.

There are benefits. Like matching 401K, paid vacation (though if this isn’t long enough it can be a negative), and mainly, health insurance. Those should be counted for a normal salaried job. Otherwise taxes should be compared the same way, no?

[danielvf]

If you are self-employed in the US, you pay an additional tax before you even start your regular taxes, and this tax isn't affected by your personal deductions.

You also need to pay for your own computers, SAAS services you use, etc. The more you make, the less this becomes an issue.

[skinnymuch]

The additional tax being social security and Medicaid? That’s 7.5% extra. And like child says half of it is tax deductible.

How can a 7% difference mean you compare non tax salary to taxed self employed income? As was the point of my comment. It doesn’t make sense. The disparity is way worse if you do that.

Also it was never said to compare revenue to salary. I assumed profit would be compared to salary.

[mrhappyunhappy]

You can business expense just about anything. Also 50% of your Medicare and ss contributions if I remember correctly. Insurance premiums also 100% deductible.

[wastedhours]

> I turned away another 50k of opportunities that didn’t feel like a good fit.

Interested in how you off-board those opportunities? Do you have a referral network who'll take on the lower-end prospects, or just offer them some guidance?

[jason_pomerleau]

Depends on the opportunity. Sometimes I’ll refer them my competitors, or an agency if I think their needs are beyond what a solo operator can deliver.

[tenaciousDaniel]

Wow, that's quite an income for Wordpress sites. Well done! If you don't mind my asking a couple questions:

1. Are you based in an urban area like SF or NYC?

2. How long did it take you to build up your clientele?

[jason_pomerleau]

1. Windsor, Ontario, Canada is where I am based and most of my clients are, though I do have customers here and there all over North America. One is based in Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Canada. Now THAT is far north.

2. Several years. First couple were tough. I took a 66% pay cut on Year 1 from my role as a senior developer at a Fortune 50 company.

I should add - I’ve never met about 30% of my customers in person, and interact with them strictly by phone. I’m presently sitting in Mexico on vacation, and met one of my clients for the first time in the airport in the way here.

[fredsted]

What kind of companies are your clients?

[jason_pomerleau]

Insurance brokers, container shippers, various industrial markets, trucking companies, university faculties, law firms, economic development organizations, non-profits, small municipalities, biotech firms, marketing/ad agencies, construction companies, architects - I could go on and on. The one thing they have in common is that they’re big enough to have a budget for my services.

[Diaznash]

Wow! And after doing wordpress for a while, I can't imagine getting even close to that. Are you hiring or looking for someone to throw some projects his way. I can be of help.

[jason_pomerleau]

Unfortunately no. I’m a solo operator for many reasons, and have decided that being responsible for the work of others just isn’t for me. Any referrals I do make tend to be ones where there’s a clean break, and the referral is local.

[goatherders]

Email me. I regularly have WordPress work to subcontract out.

[theNJR]

I am. Do you have a portfolio?

[namanyayg]

Not op, but a full-stack web consultant with 7y+ experience. You can check some of my work out at https://nmn.gl/.

[wordpressdev]

How do you find clients? Can your mantra work from someone outside US trying to offer exceptional services? :)

[goatherders]

Here's how we do it on the low end: - email a lot of business owners: "you're site could stand some help. Care for me to send some ideas?" - those that reply affirmatively, you send ideas and end with a CTA to schedule a call. - those that accept a call, you chat about their business and goals and how you might help - you now have a pipeline.

My company targeting this kind of cold outreach can typically pull one or 2 recurring paying client out of 100 cold emails. That's 100 outreach which products approx 15 people who give the affirmative reply (15%) which leads to 3 or 4 calls which leads to 1 or 2 clients.

It's a slog. But the math works and we have a system down for the outreach so it's very repeatable.

[wordpressdev]

Good to know the old school way still works. Kudos.

[kpennell]

Hey Jason, which wordpress stack(s) do you use? Do you have favorite tooling?

[calibas]

If you recommend SquareSpace and Wix, why not Wordpress.com?

[jason_pomerleau]

As selfish as this sounds, because then it’s harder to make a clean break, because I’m still a WordPress guy and I can still help, right? I’ve learned that working with super small businesses it can be quite difficult to make money, because my fees are coming out of someone’s household income, which brings with it entirely different working dynamics. A simple example: having to take 5 minutes to explain a 30 minute invoice. Doesn’t sound completely unreasonable until you try to scale it up, at which point you find yourself bleeding to death.

[werdnapk]

I've found Wix to be painful to use (so slow). Godaddy website builder has been my go to for (very) basic sites these days.

[acct1771]

Or Weebly.com

[victor106]

Can you shed some light on how you find clients?