Ask HN: Finding small, local companies who need websites?

[lampooned]

I want to stop doing overly complicated freelance jobs and just stick to small mostly static websites for local businesses. Instead of doing 1 or two big projects a month, I just want to do 4 small sites for a fixed price.

Any idea on where to find small companies in need of a websites locally?

[mooreds]

Join your chamber of commerce. Go to the meetings. Offer to do a talk: 'what you need to know about the web'.

[mingabunga]

Have a look at the yellow pages (not online) and visit all the companies who advertise a website. I think you'll find loads of them who say 'Under Construction' or who have a very basic website. I recall looking a few years back in the Yellow Pages Book and I was amazed at the amount of businesses who advertise a website but don't have one.

[davidrc]

Here a small Hack. You can scrape a local list of new incorporations, and set up a system to check for them on google. If one don't get results, could be interested in your services, so contact them. I think it's feasible, to scrape an official list and a small script that searches google from that list, as the names of the companies normally appear in the legal sections of web pages. Regards.

[JSeymourATL]

In terms of planning your day: start with the sales task first thing, 2-3 hours focused on selling and developing leads. Think of it as investment time.

Here's a good read on why people buy > http://www.gitomer.com/Jeffrey-Gitomer-Little-Red-Book-of-Se...

[danielhonigman]

Go to Google. Search for your favorite companies. See if they have Google Places pages, Facebook pages or websites. Chances are some of the smaller ones won't have the latter.

[mattmanser]

Buy google ads for "your town name web design" and variants. Or get to the top seo wise.

[Pikki1]

Please email me to: [e-mail] I could be your first customer.

[priorconsent]

Here's what I did. Even before getting an order or making a pitch, I pre-designed five Chinese restaurant websites. I sourced the images, wrote the copy and made a sample menu -everything. The websites were beautiful.

Where ever the restaurant's name was supposed to be, I put "YOUR NAME HERE".

After I completely finished the websites (it was a lot of work), I SEO'd them for local search.

Once all five websites ranked in the top 10, I went and visited every Chinese restaurant in town with a pitch and printed screenshots of each of the websites.

I told the owners if they wanted a website, they could choose one of the five. They were already online, ranking high on Google, and phone calls for orders like sweet and sour pork were already coming in on my personal line!

Their new website was ready for them to take over, right away. No waiting, no cognitive dissonance, they could have it same-day. Instant gratification!

I priced the websites cheap too, several hundred bucks. A steal.

Surprisingly, I didn't sell one. Not one. I practically gave one away for a bubble tea (I was so thirsty from pounding the pavement). Maybe Chinese restaurants weren't the right market. Should have gone with lawyers.

So I tried to rent the websites for only $25 a month. Their company name would be on the website as long as they kept up with the monthly payment. I thought it was a novel idea.

Again, not one order.

Moral of the story? There are two. 1) Wait until you get intent to buy and a deposit before working on a website and 2) don't put your personal phone number on a fake Chinese restaurant website unless you want phone calls from drunk people at one in the morning.

[BorisMelnik]

EXTREMELY difficult niche / industry to penetrate. I used to do work for Chinese restaurants as well and had a terrible time trying to even get some of them to listen to me.

[mrfusion]

So what are you doing now? It seems like being able to approach small businesses is such a valuable skill.

[priorconsent]

If you believe in what you're selling, and you are convinced it can help small businesses, talking to them isn't a problem.

I design social games and write ebooks, among other things.

[mooreds]

Wow, this is a great (sobering) story. What happened to them? Are they still up?

[priorconsent]

I took them down after about six months.

Yeah, it was a hard lesson to learn. I guess I was venting ;)

[mattm]

I'm curious, what were their objections to not buying?

[yen223]

If you were running a busy restaurant, and some guy knocks on your door and offers you a website RIGHT NOW, for a low-low price of $100, would you take it?

[mattm]

I'm not sure, that's why I wondered what objections he faced.

Having dealt with some small business owners this past year, I know they get hounded all the time by people trying to sell them stuff (advertising, marketing services, SEO, etc.). One fairly new (in business for 2-3 years) owner told me that it just becomes the default to say no, unfortunately.

On the other hand, this guy already did the work and proved that he was getting orders for their restaurant. It seems like very little risk.

On the other, other hand, restaurants do have razor-thin margins and a lot of small business owners really don't like paying for marketing.