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by hourislate 1813 days ago
This may sound crazy but developing a simple professional website for small businesses. Auto Mechanics, small manufacturers, mom and pop shops, etc. If you could do it for lets say $500-$1000 and charge like $20 for small changes, I feel like you could do well for yourself. A lot of these types of operations don't have the skills nor the resources to create an online presence (at least a decent one). An older guy I know who had a small Tool and Die shop was complaining to me that everyone he contacted wanted over $5k and said he just couldn't afford it.
2 comments

I did this back in college. I had a Perl script that takes in a text file (before markdown) and generate a static one page site for local small businesses. I started with $250, depending on complexity. Ongoing maintenance was $25 a year for domain registration/server maintenance/etc, plus extra whatever they want to add. I was making a good profit, but getting customers was my issue. I cold called a lot of shops and even handed out my business cards to other shops.
I do this now with avg. yearly maintenance of $80 per website. It brings in around $800/yr of side income. New clients usually come from referral.
The doing side is easy- there's endless options from off shelf templates to some generators. The problem is on the other side: if a business in 2021 still have no website, it's either they don't need it( e.g. a good builder) or they are decades behind with everything, including understanding what's the benefit of having a website.
There are a lot of auto repair guys (Owner operator types) that don't have a website. They either don't have time, know how, or want to spend 5-10k on a 5-8k page website. Yoou would'nt believe how many don't have a website and still do well. My barber has no website and if you walk in you're waiting 1.5 hours to get a haircut minimum. My Mechanic also doesn't have a website and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't mind one but the cost is prohibitive $6k plus for a few pages.
The thing is that just getting a website doesn't really help that much. I have a childhood friend,who managed to carve himself a pretty decent niche in rentals.He has no website, all the stuff is being logged on a piece of paper and the marketing can be summed up as a few Facebook post behind his house. So I could do him a website. But unless there's marketing, resource planning,some approach to existing clients,the business won't move a bit from where it currently is. And that's the problem most of those, who currently don't have a website face
Not really, it could be just like the person you replied to said that people are asking for too much. Not everyone can make a website for themselves, even if for us it may seem really easy.