Web Design Business with Josh Hall

In person networking and referral groups remain to this day the best way to start getting clients, get more clients by expanding your network and get better clients by way of referrals.

There are a lot of different ways to get clients in person and virtually, and I’ve done many but if I were starting as a web designer today, my FIRST priority would be to join a networking group. More specifically, I would invest in a referral group like BNI.

Referral groups differ from networking groups in that they are there to help members give and get referrals. It’s what led to over 50% of my web business revenue and it’s the strategy that is working for many members of my community Web Designer Pro.

One of my community members who this strategy has worked so well for is Mike Albuquerque who, last year, tracked that he brought in $208,000 worth of web design revenue (website builds, hosting and maintenance plans and growth services) that all stemmed from his networking BNI referral group.

In this podcast chat, Mike graciously opened up on exactly how he hit this huge milestone. 

We cover:

• How Mike got into networking despite behind a massive introvert
• How long it took for him to start seeing results and an ROI
• What he would do differently and the same if he started networking today
• The big difference between networking events and referral groups
• How becoming a connector led to referrals and huge boost in trust with leads

And a whole lot more.

Again, there are tons of ways to get web design clients but if you’re in an area where you can join a BNI group or any similar referral networking group, I recommend it. It’s the quickest ROI, it’s what worked for me and tons of members in my community including Mike who is already on track to well exceed his 2023 revenue based off of referrals.

If it worked for me and Mike, it can work for you! You just need a little patience and persistence for networking to pay off but when it does…hot dog it’s awesome.

A big thanks to Mike for being so transparent with his numbers and sharing his success in what’s worked for him!

Get all links and resources mentioned along with a full transcription at:

https://joshhall.co/338

The Web Design Business Podcast is available on:

Apple - https://apple.co/36wnnc3
Spotify - https://spoti.fi/36ttME

or wherever you get your podcasts

View all Web Design Business Podcasts with show notes and full transcriptions at: https://joshhall.co/podcast

Ever had a client ask “How long would it take to get to the top of Google?”

Ah, I can see your head nodding along now.

As web designers, we can’t expect clients to understand how long SEO results can take. We know nothing will lead to instant results and due to all the variables, competition and goal of the client, it may take months to see results…but there are some quick wins that you can implement to help clients see progress fairly soon. By fairly soon, I mean less than a couple weeks or even a few days depending.

In this podcast chat, Barb Davids of compassdigitalstrategies.com sheds light on some of the proven strategies she’s seen and implements for quickest SEO wins including:

• How to tweak existing blog post page titles to see results
• The different between heading title and page title
• Why you DON’T want to change an existing URL
• How to mix in video and blogs to get quicker SEO wins
• Onsite tips and tricks you can implement on you or your client sites today for better rankings
• And a whole lot more

While SEO is ever-evolving and challenging in a landscape of algorithm changes and Ai, these best practice principles continue to stand the test of time and are all what I implement in my web presence.

If you get some quick SEO wins using any of these tactics, drop a comment and let us know what worked for you!Get all links and resources mentioned along with a full transcription at:

https://joshhall.co/337

The Web Design Business Podcast is available on:

Apple - https://apple.co/36wnnc3
Spotify - https://spoti.fi/36ttME
or wherever you get your podcasts

View all Web Design Business Podcasts with show notes and full transcriptions at: https://joshhall.co/podcast

Recurring revenue…the two most lovely words in web design (or any business for that matter.)

Having enough recurring income to cover my family's bills is what changed the game for me, it’s what helped get us through a 56 day NICU journey and it’s what ultimately led to me creating my first course on how to launch and sell website maintenance plans.

One of my students Marc Hyde went through that course back in 2021 and within three years, his maintenance plan is now over 30% of his business revenue. And he’s on track for well over 6-figures this year in 2024. Recurring revenue allowed him to grow his business to become profitable and stable enough to go full time and now support a wife and family of 8 kiddos.

Today, he’s on the podcast sharing exactly how he came into web design, built, launched and sold his maintenance plan to clients and now how he’s offering his new passion for SEO and marketing plans alongside his standard web design and maintenance plans.

We cover everything from:

• Having a people and results-first approach to sales
• How he launched and built up his recurring revenue through maintenance plans
• Where to draw the line between maintenance/support and growth plans
• How to build relationships with clients to retain them
• How to get better referrals from current clients and more

Marc is one of the most engaged members of my community Web Designer Pro™ and is a great example of every sense of the phrase. I hope you enjoy learning from him and take from his example of putting an emphasis on creating recurring revenue through better client relationships!

It all compounds to a stable, sustainable web business very quickly.

Get all links and resources mentioned along with a full transcription at:
https://joshhall.co/336

In the early days as a web designer, it’s common to say “yes” to any project that comes your way just to make some money and build a portfolio. But it doesn’t take many “bad client experiences” before you’re ready to weed out those bad-fit clients.

But what makes a client bad-fit? Are they cheap? Do they not understand your value? Are they a bad personality fit? Are they super-intensive with communication and a drain on your mental bandwidth? All of the above?

If you seem to attract a lot of these folks, it’s because you don’t have a weed-out funnel (or filter in place. And that’s exactly what we cover in this podcast episode.

I was recently on Kady Sandel’s Profitable Graphic Designer Podcast sharing the ins and outs of my weed out funnel and I’m excited to share that conversation with you!

There’s no right or wrong way to filter out leads but I’m sharing, in depth, what worked for me and what works for hundreds of members of my community Web Designer Pro™.

We cover:

• How to identify bad fit leads from one email
• Whether or not you should have an in-depth contact form
• Overview of my “potential client page”
• How to know if a lead is questionable or qualified
• How to attract those high-paying, awesome clients

We also dig into how to stand out in an oversaturated market of web designers, nightmare client experiences that led to me being more stern about weeding people out and more!

Want my proven, weed out process for your business? I’ve packaged up my funneling framework for you!

Included is:

• Full video training (18:50)
• My potential client page (and examples of other real world potential client pages)
• Email template for questionable leads
• Email template for quality leads
  
  

Normally this is $47 but you can snag it now for only $7!

Use coupon code FUNNELCLIENT40 to activate your discount.

https://joshhall.co/product/web-design-client-funneling-framework/

Get all links and resources mentioned along with a full transcription at:
https://joshhall.co/335

View all Web Design Business Podcasts with show notes and full transcriptions at: https://joshhall.co/podcast

Ah privacy policies…your favorite aspect of web design, right?

Yeah me neither but day by day, it’s an aspect of websites that becomes more and more important with new privacy laws being passed in the states along with other countries, even outside the EU with regards to GDPR compliance. 

So, to help us make sense of where things are at with website privacy policies, I’m excited to bring back on to the podcast, my friend and privacy policy expert Hans Skillrud of Termageddon.

In this chat, we cover:

• How to better understand what we need to do as web designers for privacy
• How we can help clients by selling privacy policy plans to them
• The difference between privacy on contact form submissions versus cookie contents and “behind the scenes” privacy and much more

I highly recommend using Termaggedon for your auto-updating privacy policies. You can use it as an upsell on your hosting/maintenance plan or sell it one off to clients so they don’t have to worry about it!

It’s what I use on my privacy policy page and what my agency uses as an upsell for our plan.

Get all links and resources mentioned along with a full transcription at:
https://joshhall.co/334.

View all Web Design Business Podcasts with show notes and full transcriptions at: https://joshhall.co/podcast

This is probably ignorance on my part but my eyebrow always went crooked when I heard digital agencies, hosting companies, saas products, or any online entrepreneur talking about how they’re a “green” company.

It’s not like we’re a manufacturing company or chemical plant with waste and pollutants. We work on a computer at home…so how can we “go green?” Use less paper? Recycle old equipment? 

What else can we do?

Well, it turns out there are a lot of ways to contribute to sustainability and to do our part in protecting our environment even while working from home or in a coworking space as a web designer.

That’s why I’m excited to bring back onto the podcast Adela Mei, a trusted source for this topic because, while she’s a web designer and strategist, she came from a previous career in environmental work and saw much of what most of us don’t see first hand while working in the amazon.

From what we as web designers can do day to day to help contribute to sustainability, to the surprising toll data storage takes on the environment globally and more, I found this conversation very educational and eye opening.

And side note, if you heard the recent podcast on getting grant funding, one aspect to help your cause is to have green initiatives in your business (and on your website). So you could take what you learn in this convo and apply it to your green page if you’re looking for just one additional aspect to help you get grant funding in your business.

We cover:

• Going Green as a Web Designer
• Impacts of Green Web Design
• Personal and Business Environmental Responsibility
• Green Practices for Web Designers
• Going Green in Technology and Business
• Sustainability and Green Business Tips

If you have any other tips for “going green” as a web designer, feel free to drop us a comment at joshhall.co/333.

View all Web Design Business Podcasts with show notes and full transcriptions at: https://joshhall.co/podcast

I recently did a live training on how to Scale Your Web Design Business for Brad Hussey’s web design community CreativeCrew.

We did a live Q&A session afterward and had some amazing questions come in. Brad and I got to riff on scaling a web agency, the lessons learned from our experience, what we both may have done differently and what we felt worked really well.

I’m pleased to share the entire Q&A portion with you here in this special edition episode of the podcast!

We cover topics like:

• How to delegate sales or marketing in your web business
• Whether you should say “I” or “We” on your website
• How you know when it’s time to scale
• How to stay profitable when hiring out work and much more

Get all links and resources mentioned along with a full transcription at:
https://joshhall.co/332

View all Web Design Business Podcasts with show notes and full transcriptions at: https://joshhall.co/podcast

One of the benefits of being a web designer is your option to build recurring revenue. As a WordPress web designer, I learned that one of the best ways to do this was to offer a hosting and maintenance plan. Or “care plan” as it’s more commonly referred to these days.

For years, it was my assumption that if you use self-hosted platforms like SquareSpace, WixStudio, Webflow, Showit, etc then you can't offer care plans because there's no plugins to update or advanced security to monitor. 

But I was wrong...you CAN offer care plans (even if you're NOT using WordPress!!)
A great example of this is Eleanor Mayrhofer, a SquareSpace web designer and member of my community Web Designer Pro™.

On a recent weekly coaching call, Eleanor and I chatted together about how she could build up more recurring income as a SquareSpace designer and we came up with offering an “SOS” plan.

​​SOS stands for "Strategy, Optimization & Support"
Eleanor launched her SOS plan and literally overnight generated a few hundred dollars per month of recurring revenue with this plan and her clients are loving it! 
She’s on the podcast this week pulling back the curtain on her plan!

We cover:

• What she includes in her SOS plan
• How she prices it
• How she sold it to existing clients and got several signups
• How her SOS plans work alongside her growth/marketing plans
• How she’s protecting her time with this new service by going slow and steady with promoting it 

Get all links and resources mentioned along with a full transcription at:
https://joshhall.co/331

View all Web Design Business Podcasts with show notes and full transcriptions at: https://joshhall.co/podcast

I’ve met a lot of 6 and 7-figure agency owners over the years and there’s always often a recurring theme…many are completely burned out, disgruntled OR they’ve sold or left the agency altogether.

It’s probably the main reason I personally prefer the “small shop or studio” route as a solopreneur web designer with a lean and mean contractor team but at the same time, there’s value in truly creating a “business” in the form of an agency.

But…are ALL agency owners burned out? No - despite meeting many owners who fit that profile, there are the exceptions.

One is Greg Merriless of Studio1Design.com who’s been running his 7-figure agency for over a decade and most impressively is one of the few who is NOT burned out! Maybe it’s his chill, Aussie presence or maybe it’s how intentional he was about building an agency that is profitable, sustainable and geared around the work he WANTS to do in house.

We cover a lot in this one including:

How his 7-figure agency began getting high-profile clients
How to focus on your core services (and hire out the rest)
How to build partnerships with agencies who you can collaborate with
How to find and hire a team
Staying profitable (even as a team of 20+ employees)

And more.

Honestly, how amazing is it that through this podcast, you and I can learn from multi-7 figure agency owners who literally share exactly how they’ve built and scaled their business?!?!? It’s just too cool. I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did.

Get all links and resources mentioned along with a full transcription at:

https://joshhall.co/330

View all Web Design Business Podcasts with show notes and full transcriptions at: https://joshhall.co/podcast

I recently caught up with my friend Shannon Mattern, fellow web design business coach who has a group coaching program called The Web Designer Academy. We often talk off-the-record but decided to record our most recent catch up, an honest conversation about what’s working for web designers in 2024.

Shannon and I are both in a unique position to be able to oversee many web designers, some early on in the journey making less than six figures and some who are established web biz owners running six and multi-six figure agencies. So we both have a good pulse on what’s working for web designers today. And that’s why I’m extra excited to let you in on our recent catch up.

Some of the topics explored are:

• What tends to hold web designers back from 100k
• What designers who are making 250k-500k+ are doing
• Tips for getting past pricing mind trash
• Thoughts on niching by gender (or whether you should niche by personality type)
• Web designer work life balance tips and a whole lot more

Personally, I love having conversations with friends in the industry with no specific topic, agenda and I hope you do as well! If you do, leave us a comment for this one at joshhall.co/329 to share your thoughts.

Get all links and resources mentioned along with a full transcription at:

https://joshhall.co/329

The Web Design Business Podcast is available on:

Apple - https://apple.co/36wnnc3
Spotify - https://spoti.fi/36ttME
or wherever you get your podcasts

View all Web Design Business Podcasts with show notes and full transcriptions at: https://joshhall.co/podcast