The Internet has spoken:

Going niche is the only way to be successful.

To be clear, I don’t think that is true. There are lots of generalist web designers who make a great living. Still, the rallying cries to “go niche” should be ignored at your own peril.

Why?

Because unless you’re well connected in a locality or have a degree of influence with a large following already, standing out in a saturated industry like web design is an uphill battle only a few are willing to fight.

There’s one fear web designers have when it comes to going niche that I hear most often: What happens if that doesn’t work? Doesn’t it paint me into a corner?

The answer is: It could. But it doesn’t have to.

If you’re feeling like it’s time for a “switch of the niche,” give these four ideas a try:

1. STOP Everything and Just Create a New Landing Page

Sales funnels and landing pages have revolutionized the game for web entrepreneurs.

And yet, I see very few web designers learning how to utilize these tools in their own businesses.

If you want to switch the niche for your web design business, why not consider just opening up a new niche, first? In fact, I wouldn’t even touch your current home and information pages…

The very first thing I’d do is create a new landing page and start driving traffic to it.

Why? Because at this time, you may not even know whether or not this new niche is going to work out for you.

Do you really want to spend the time necessary to redo your entire website? Probably not.

Bonus tip: Make your website generalist then use landing pages and separate domains as your “Niching Mechanism.”

It’s a mistake to think you have to redo your entire website when you want to serve a new audience.

What if there are 3 or 4 different types of clients you’re passionate and proficient in serving, and that work is also profitable?!

You shouldn’t “pick one” just because some dude with nice hair on the Internet says to.

Create landing pages for each of those with a strong headline, a great video, some powerful sales copy, and an application form, and you’re off to the races!

2. Small Adjustments Often Beat Seismic Shifts

I’m an all-or-nothing kind of guy, typically…

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in this game is that even small changes and adjustments to what you’re doing could unlock the floodgates of new business.

For example, are you going to try the landing page strategy I mentioned above? You should.

Let’s say you do.

What if it doesn’t work? Are you going to burn it down and rebuild the landing page entirely, in a different niche?

NO! You mustn’t. You don’t have enough information yet. It hasn’t failed enough times, yet.

Why not just change a headline and run that same amount of traffic through it again? Did you know that could radically alter your conversion rate?

Did you know that JUST changing the colors of a button could do the same thing as well?

Did you know that—seriously—switching from sharp to rounded corners could do the same thing?

It seems silly, but very small, minute details you might have never considered can dramatically affect how people take action with you.

Now, I’m not suggesting you test into oblivion. Try a few things, and if it doesn’t work, then reevaluate. But you could be 2-3 different words away from changing your life—it’s that close.

3. Beware of Money Pits: Passion vs. Paychecks

When reconsidering your niche, you might be tempted to double down on the thing you are passionate about.

By the way, I think this is completely fine. I am definitely in the corner of your being very passionate about the work you’re doing.

Let me caution you, though, to be objective.

Not all passion centers are profit centers.

And in business, you need to make a profit, or you’ll be out of business. It’s really that simple.

If the niche you’re passionate about can sustain profitability as well, SWEET! Go for it, head first. Don’t look back.

Does an honest assessment tell you that’s not feasible? Then be real, and keep looking.

BTW: Need help deciding which niche to go into? This podcast episode will walk you through a very practical process to make your decision.

4. Try Your Hand at Niche Thought Leadership

Finally, you should consider—whether in your current niche or the one you’re considering a switch to—becoming a thought leader.

And I don’t mean in the sense of, writing blog posts on your web design site that gets into the technical weeds of how businesses in your niche can be successful.

That’s not necessarily bad to have; it’s just not what I’m after, here.

I’m suggesting that you, independently of the work you do, become a thought leader in your space who just happens to work with a lot of people in your space!

Start an online blog, podcast, or YouTube channel solely dedicated to your niche. Interview others. Share lessons and experiences you’ve learned. Tie those back into the work you do as a web designer and/or marketer.

If people see knowledge, influence, and passion in you, as a person, they will be more interested to work with you once they find out how you can help.

You only need three things to make this work:

1. Profitable Niche. This will take some time, so don’t bother trying this in a niche you know is starving for money.

2. Unique Angle. Any profitable space usually has lots of thought leaders already. You’ll need to stand out. For example, if you help life coaches, you could start a blog or podcast called “Failure to Launch: Successful Life Coaches and Their Stories of Failure” – I haven’t looked it up, but maybe even that has already been done. The point: You need an original perspective/angle on your content.

3. Social Distribution. This needs to happen in public to make sense! Blogging? Start on a platform like Substack. Podcast? Start on a platform like Anchor. Video? Do YouTube. You need to be in a place where there are built-in discoverability and distribution tools.

By implementing these unconventional tips, you can either stay or switch to a niche and make it profitable for your business.

Don’t give up! Niching works, you just have to be smart about it.

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In the final post of this series, we’re going to take what we’ve learned about using Upwork to build a profitable Subscription Web Design business and apply it to some very practical concerns. 

As a reminder, the past two newsletters can be found here: 

1. In Part 1, we discussed the philosophy of Upwork and how to overcome some major mindset hurdles as it relates to hiring people to work for you. 

2. In Part 2, we looked at why I prefer to work with Filipinos when the opinion is available to me, and how best to go about hiring people for your team. 

In this third and final installment, let’s talk about how you actually make “scale” start to happen.

Is it really possible to hire people when you’re charging monthly for web design work? 

Yep! And once you understand what makes this possible, I’ll show why it’s less about the people you hire and more about the system you create. 

Are you subscribed yet?! I would really appreciate your subscription so that I can send you awesome new content as soon as I have a bright idea!

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Let’s dive in!

How to Fix the Scaling Conundrum

“Steve, this is incredible!” I heard, as I quickly jerked the phone away from my ear so as to avoid lasting damage.

My best friend Jared called with one of those smiles you can hear and a level of excitement that comes along with only the best kind of news. 

“This is incredible,” he said, “I just made a nice profit and didn’t do ANY of the actual work! All I did was communicate with the musicians, make sure my client’s vision for the project was captured, and it is BETTER than I could have imagined! I definitely get it, now.”

When he said those words, my heart jumped a bit — he finally had the same “magic epiphany” that I’d had a few years before when I started hiring people for NorthMac Services. 

Jared is a highly sought-after studio musician and has a dedicated roster of clients who send him consistent work. 

As a multi-instrumentalist, a mild computer nerd, and with a lifetime of experience in the music industry, he has all the tools to complete projects for his clients by himself — and they sound amazing. 

Is that starting to sound familiar? Do you have the skill and ability to do everything yourself…and so consign yourself to that reality? 

Jared never really saw the value until he did it for himself, but the math is something quite simple to understand: 

Let’s say Jared charges $400 for a recording, and it takes him 6 hours to produce it from start to finish. For that time, he will make about $66/hour. 

Not bad. Not great.

However, let’s say he charges the same $400 for the song and pays someone else to do the actual work for $200. 

Now, Jared’s made $200… his hourly rate? By the time he’s worked with the client and the musician…probably $200/hr! Let’s say it took him two hours of work, that’s $100/hr. 

So:

1. His effective hourly rate just went up big time

2. He made money even though he did zero of the actual work

Now—your initial thought (and his was!) is perhaps something like this: “But, in scenario 1, I made $400! I only made half in scenario 2…I can’t afford that!” 

And this is the big secret of scale: If you only work two hours instead of six hours, you can do 3x the number of projects in the same amount of time. 

Are you getting this?!

That means for every ONE project Jared could do before (doing all the work), he can now do THREE (simply managing the project). 

In that same six hours, Jared has made $600 instead of $400 ($200 x 3 projects). And not only that, his quality of life has increased for two reasons: 

1. It is highly doubtful that he actually spent the whole two hours working on this. In all likelihood, it was a scattered 10 minutes here and then responding to emails, taking a phone call, etc.)

2. Even if he did spend the whole two hours, project management/oversight is a different kind of work than sitting in front of a computer and recording music—it’s much more flexible and adaptable to the kind of life you want. 

Why did I share this story?

Because you’re too close to web design! I needed you to see how this works in a different line of work so that we can apply it to what we’re doing. 

Once Jared did it the first time and saw what was possible, it changed everything. 

If you make a little less money per project, but you can scale up the number of projects, you can make more money for less work.

And that’s the magic.

So, how’s it work in Subscription Web Design?

Glad you asked! 

The short answer is: It’s exactly the same… kind of 🙂 

Here’s the long answer: 

If you’re doing traditional web design, the same thinking I described above can work for you right now. 

Quickly: 

If you charge $1500 for a project, and it takes you 30 hours to complete, you’ve made $50/hr. If you paid $750 for that work be done by someone on Upwork, and you simply managed the project, you might only spend 5 hours (if that). In that case, you’ve made $150 per hour ($750 profit / 5 hours of work), and got back 25 hours of your LIFE! With that 25 hours, you can do anything you want: take on more projects, spend time with your kids, etc. Do you see the power? 

Now, with Subscription Web Design, there’s one more variable we need to factor into your thinking: Playing the long game. 

In business lingo, we use a metric called Time to Profit (T2P). 

In the model I teach, I recommend you operate in 18-month “cycles.” If a client only stays for one cycle, you’re entitled (per your contract) to the monthly rate you charge for 18 months of payments. 

That means, for the next 18 months at least, you have a consistent income to plan for. 

If you’re hiring the project out (either in the same way a general contractor hires subcontractors or you have a dedicated team/employees), you will have to pay them “immediately” for their work. (I used quotes because your payment terms with them are negotiable and maybe they bill you weekly, monthly, etc.)

You will pay them during the timeframe of the initial build, which in my agency is 6-8 weeks. So, a couple of months. 

That means—and this is crucial to understand: You might pay them as much or more, for their work on any given project, as you make from the client for that project while the build is active.

Let’s be practical: 

If you’re receiving $250/month from a client, and you owe your team $250/month for their work (based on their hours), and it takes them 2 months to complete the project, you’ve broken even for 2 months, and not made any money.

Does that make sense? 

So for the first 2 months, you’ve made zero dollars. Sounds like a bad deal so far… what gives? 

Ah, but month 3 comes.

And what happens? You receive your payment from the client for $250… and for THAT project… you pay out (probably) nothing. That means you get to KEEP that $250. So your time to profit is 2 months. After two months, you are now profitable on that project.

See that? 

Let’s say you do as I suggest and offer 1 hour per month of monthly maintenance for that client, and your team works for that hour. If you pay $20/hour, you owe your team $20. 

$250 profit from client – $20 expenses to team = $230 profit. 

And that income rolls in for the next 16 months! 

That’s how it begins. After doing this for a while, the scales tip, so that some of your money coming in from other clients will go towards paying for other client projects to be actively developed, some of it is owners pay for your family, some of it is taxes, some of it is profit for the business, etc. 

I call this concept “buckets of money.” 

Eventually, the buckets of money will be big enough that you can be flexible and “move money around” (even if only in your brain) in order to accomplish the work that needs to be done. 

As your Time to Profit becomes a predictable number with more experience, you have: 

1. Some insight into how much money you can spend on new client acquisition 

2. How much money you’ll need to “borrow” from other profitable projects to cover the costs of your active builds

3. A better idea of whether or not you should take on a certain kind of project because it might fall out of acceptable T2P ranges for you

Now—one rather obvious caveat here is that, to get started with this, you really need to have dialed in your financial runway. 

Click here to read this post and get started building your own financial runway.

For now, let’s talk about what your business needs to look like after you’re operating this way for a while. 

The Service is the System — Not the People 

In his modern classic, The E-Myth Revisited, author Michael Gerber pulls no punches and uses the sort of “Real Talk” that would both embarrass most web designers and have them nodding in agreement at the same time. 

The “big secret” of the book is that a BUSINESS is not the same thing as a technician wearing every hat. 

In effect, that is a job, except with way more stress. 

He depicts what he called the “Franchise Model” using McDonald’s as his Muse. 

To summarize, when Ray Kroc bought McDonald’s, there was a downtown office that had the name “McDonalds” on it—but that building didn’t have burgers, fries, shakes, or silly hats. 

You see, the brick buildings with a play place, burgers, and fries make those items for the end consumer. At the downtown office, they made McDonald’s.

Put more specifically, that is where they made and refined the system that is a McDonald’s franchise. 

Does that make sense? Do you see how you need to spend time working on your BUSINESS instead of on the PROJECTS your business completes?

Now—the point is not to turn your web design business into a franchise. The point is that a business can be systemized to deliver consistent, amazing results for clients. 

Yes, I’m talking about Standard Operating Procedures

I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the E-Myth. It is a transformational book. 

However, I don’t think you should wait another SECOND before implementing what is probably the biggest practical takeaway from the book: 

You need to have Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for everything in your business. Even if you’re a solo shop. 

This is for two primary reasons and one secondary reason: 

1. Primary—the first person who should be delivering on your commitments consistently is YOU. 

2. Primary—the moment you start hiring, there is no faster or better way than to hire someone who can plug right into the systems you developed. 

3. Secondary—if you’re ever to (1) sell your business or (2) to create optionality in your life, freedom, travel flexibility, etc., you need a business that can run without your daily involvement. 

(How to make SOPs are beyond the scope of this post, but the quickest way possible to is to grab a Loom account and start TODAY making videos for every process in your business. You’ll have them when you need them. It could also be as simple as checklists. Not rocket science; you just have to do it.)

And this is why I say it’s not about the people, it’s about the system. 

Please, please don’t misunderstand my point: I love my people. They are high performers. They do a fantastic job. I literally couldn’t do it without them. 

But people will come and go. That is life. That is business. That is reality. 

And if your result ebbs and flows with each personnel change, the very soul of the work your business does will change with it. 

Of course, we do creative work, so there will always be those slight differences in the end product for customers. And it does behoove you to find folks who are good at what they do. 

However, FAR more important is that they are able to create an amazing, repeatable result for clients based on the directives you give them. 

And by the way, as far as I’m concerned, you can take this as far as you want. If you want all of your websites to look a certain way, then either create or find a design course that will teach them that and make it a part of your onboarding that they must go through this course. 

One of the most controversial (nevertheless true) statements made in the book is that if you want to hire massive talent, that often comes at a massive financial premium. 

It’s hard to find, pay, and replace those types of people. 

If, however, the work can be done by the person with the “minimum necessary amount of experience” you can: 

1. Find people with reasonable salary/pay requirements 

2. Train them to work well within your system 

3. Develop them from the ground up

It’s a net positive, for sure. 

Remember—your people matter, of course. But that is an entirely separate question from whether or not you are depending on people or the system. 

People come and go. The system is there to stay and be refined over the (hopefully!) decades of a successful business. 

Systems create a reputation for your business and a steady flow of happy customers that can either be your retirement plan one day or you can sell one day. 

Regardless, none of this is possible if you’re doing all the work in your business. 

That is why you should seriously consider scaling your Subscription Web Design business.

Last time, we began discussing how to use Upwork to scale up and build a successful business. 

I attempted to break some false beliefs you may have and point you to the reality of becoming a business owner: A successful business involves paying people less to do work than you are being paid for not doing the work. 

As counterintuitive as it sounds to anyone with the employee mindset, it is the only way. 

With most of the philosophy out of the way, let’s get a bit more practical.

Hey by the way…get subscribed if you’re not already! 🙂

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The Filipino Secret 

When I go looking for new employees, I ALWAYS start in the Philippines. 

Not because I have a particular obsession with the Philippines or its culture. I’ve never even been there before. 

But because there are some interesting things about the Philippines that make it particularly conducive to working with their people as an American businessperson. 

First things first — I cannot speak in the abstract before I speak in the personal. 

I love my team. Every one of them is so special and important to me. They are not “the help”. They are not servants or slaves. They are not underpaid. They are not forced to do “the dirty work” or any other nonsense you may hear from people. 

My people are first class, and I would go to the mat for them. And I have. And I’ll continue to. 

At the end of the day, it does come down to the person. I have some of the most amazing people on my team, regardless of culture. 

Let me also say, I also use people outside the Philippines. My designer is from Mexico and my advanced developer is Dutch but lives in Brazil! 

So, what makes the Philippines special? Why look there first? 

A Culture of Loyalty 

Filipinos are intensely loyal. If you treat them well, are sensitive to their needs, and simply care about them…they will do everything in their power—and I mean that—to ensure that you are happy. 

They don’t want to steal your money, your time, or your clients. 

They are not entrepreneurial in that way. They are proud of the work they do for you. They brag about their job to their family if they have a good boss. 

Because remote work/virtual assistance is the #1 Filipino export, they are very accommodating. My project manager, Brian, even works hours that put him up late at night/early in the morning for him, but they are normal work hours for me. 

That overlap is significant; even so, though, not a deal breaker if you become used to adopting asynchronous communication (which we do). 

Fantastic English

There are many different native dialects in the Philippines. 

Because of this, many/most Filipinos end up being taught English from a very early age, because it is a way of communicating across relationships with people that may come from different areas. 

Their primary languages are Filipino (basically an updated version of Tagalog) and English. 

Admittedly, some have better English than others. Some can type it better than they speak it and vice versa. 

My SEO copywriter is from the Philippines and writes incredible English. I’ve never heard her speak, but she probably speaks incredible English as well. 

This makes a huge difference considering that, if you’re reading this, chances are you work with primarily English-speaking clients. 

Worldview

This will not matter to everyone, which is fine. But I am a Christian and we do a lot of work for churches and religious organizations. 

It is helpful when the entire team can be “on mission” together. And chances are high that when you engage a Filipino, they come from a Christian upbringing/worldview. 

So if that matters to you, it is a huge plus. Even if that doesn’t matter to me, it should be a comfort that they have a religious worldview that asks of them to be morally upstanding and honest in their endeavors.

They are very trustworthy and it shows in their actions. 

The Right and Wrong Way to Use Upwork

Primarily, there are two ways you can use Upwork to find talent: 

1. Know what you’re looking for and seek out the talent

2. Post a job post out there and wait for responses

Within those, there are lots of different options: 

1. Hiring on the spot

2. Inviting to a project

3. Hourly pay

4. Project pay

5. Weekly pay

6. ETC 

Lots of options, which is great!

…and a little overwhelming. 

This is just my opinion, it is not science. But what I like to do is seek out the talent for myself and extend an hourly contract offer right away. 

The main reasons I do this are: 

1. I don’t want to field responses from people. 

2. I know what I am looking for, which has a lot to do with communication style and skill, which can often be told from the profile alone

3. It shows commitment – project invites don’t get responded to a lot of times. I want the worker to feel like I have searched them out and found them, and I’m committed to making something work if they are. Because it’s true!

A student of mine, Victor, is taking a different approach. 

He started by hiring two different workers to complete the same project. Found one he likes to work with, and plans to work with that one on future projects. 

And that’s just fine!

That worked really well for him, and it could work really well for you too. 

One big difference is the project was relatively simple and did not require specialists in any area. My team works on projects that usually require specialists in a different area (SEO, design, development, etc). 

Plus, we need a project manager because we have so many plates spinning. 

Not every team dynamic is going to look or work the same — but dive in and start seeing what works for you. It’s never too soon to start down this path.

Next up…

We’re going to close out this series next time, where we’re going to talk through two very important things. 

1. How do make enough money with subscription web design to scale? That’s one of my favorite topics, and we’re going to dive deep into it. 

2. I mentioned that we have specialists on our team. That is true. But it’s not always about the skills of the people…more sometimes it’s about the system itself. We’ll dig into how to build a system that works. 

Hope you’re enjoying this mini-series! 

If you want to work with me in a more intimate setting to discuss how some of these principles apply to your business, consider my mentorship program at subscriptionwebdesign.com.

As I work with students in the SWD Mentorship Program, I am delighted to find many people interested in scaling their businesses. 

I’m passionate about that topic anyway, but even more so as it relates to subscription web design. Why? 

Because it’s hard enough to build a subscription web design business, let alone build one with the power of scale built in. 

And by the grace of God alone, I have done both. 

One of the key tools in my Arsenal of Possibility is called Upwork. Our agency would not be what it is today without this incredible resource. 

So, how can you use it to build your own profitable subscription web design business? Let’s talk about it.

The Philosophy of Upwork

Upwork was formerly oDesk and in the past few years merged with another company called Elance. 

These are companies that have embraced what has been called the “Gig Economy.” The idea, in short, is that you should be able to find and hire talented people to do small to medium size tasks for you online. 

This contrasts with the need to acquire a service provider, sign complex contracts, and pay exorbitant fees, only to have a small bit of work done. 

For example, I recently needed a podcast introduction recorded. In the past, how would I gave gotten that done? 

I would have had to: 

• Somehow find a local recording studio that had access to great-sounding equipment

• Find someone with a fantastic voice for doing this sort of thing, and that person would also have to be able to read intelligently and make the introduction “come alive” 

• Engage the services of both those people, sign contracts, etc.

• Hope and pray those people could also help with the mixing and producing of the intro

• And more. 

The kicker is, because of my background in the recording studio industry, I would have had a way easier time than most people getting this done, and it STILL would have been a pain! 

The other day, I went to Fiverr (similar to Upwork) and typed in “Podcast intro for Christian podcast” and found the perfect person to do all of it in about 10 seconds. He’s a radio host on the West Coast of the United States. 

I paid him $50 and he did everything short of writing the script. Fiverr handled all the money for me.

That’s the gig economy.

What most don’t realize is that the gig economy can work in favor of business owners. It can big time work in favor of subscription web designers, too.

Now, over time, these platforms started allowing for the possibility of bigger and bigger jobs. 

There are now multiple ways to engage a worker on Upwork, for example: Hourly, Project-based, and even Weekly. 

There are multiple methods of discovery as well. You can search out talent and invite them to a job, hire them on the spot and wait for them to accept, or post your job and let them respond. 

Once you grasp the power of adding the gig economy into the back end of your business, you will never see it the same. 

Let me make one HUGE clarification right now, though, which we will discuss more below as well: This is NOT selling a job, telling people you’re doing the work and hiring someone to do it for you. I will not opine on whether that is ethical or not; it’s just important you realize that is not what I’m talking about. 

I’m talking about building an Avengers Team. Not pretending to be Iron Man.

Remote: An Opportunity, not a Concession

When COVID-19 first rocked the world, many learned of remote work for the first time. Even if they knew others had done it, many believed it could never be done in their role at their company in their industry. 

They quickly found that to be untrue. 

All over the world, teams and businesses made the adjustment because they were forced to.

By contrast, there are some companies (like 37signals, the makers of Basecamp) whose founders literally wrote the book on this way of working. They have been this way from the start. 

I am of the latter mindset. For me, remote is not a concession or a way to make my services more affordable or make the numbers work (although it does have those benefits). 

Remote is an opportunity. It is a way of business. It has unique advantages.

The easiest example is the minimization of distractions. Counterintuitively, many report they are able to stay more focused on their work and be more effective at home than at the office. 

Why? 

Because while home has its distractions and, sure, boundaries are needed, the distractions are far fewer than those at the office. 

Bothersome bosses, busy water coolers, and regular cake breaks eat up so much time and account for so much context switching that getting work done is almost impossible. 

When I was working full-time in IT, even before we had to navigate COVID, some people would occasionally work from home (if they were allowed). Their reason? They had important work to do and didn’t want to be interrupted by the office.

Let that sink in. Read it again until it does. 

If you structure your business right, remote is an advantage. Everyone can get important work done, distraction-free, and be more impactful. 

Power Dynamics and Pocketbooks

To round out this introduction to using Upwork, let us address what is (rightly) a concern people often have. I am going to give an archetypal paraphrase of the “objection” as I’ve heard it from many: 

I have a hard enough time charging money for my services as it is. How can I justify hiring others at a fraction of what I am being paid to produce the work? My clients could just go hire them directly. Isn’t it unethical to be hired to perform a service and then pay someone else way less to do it?

Lots there. Can you relate to this thinking? There are two unspoken ideas lurking behind that paragraph that, once brought into the light, may help your thinking. 

Idea 1: Foreign vs. Domestic Hiring

When you use a Gig Economy service, at least as an American, almost always there is the assumption that you are going to be hiring someone from another country. 

And FWIW, this is true, although it is also true that Upwork, Fiverr, and sites like them are replete with domestic talent. You can absolutely do exactly what I am talking about here while keeping your Avengers Team in the U.S., if you believe strongly that is what you want to do. 

I am a proud American; I also do not hold the principled belief that I must hire only Americans. (In my next installment, I’ll tell you exactly what nationality I think you should hire and why.)

For now, I’ll say this: I and my wife are the only two North American teammates. Everyone else is from outside of the U.S. 

And the reality of this is, I pay far less for the same—if not better—talent than many U.S. citizens I’ve worked with. Not only do I pay less, but what I do pay is considered very nice in terms of the localities where I hire. 

Thus, my business is creating well-being in the world and providing a solid support structure for the families of those I hire. My customers are getting a better product. And, on top of it, it is a more economical way to run my business.

So while yes, it is true that almost everyone on my team is from another country, it is not true that my clients are getting less value. For reasons I will discuss next time, I would argue they are getting more. 

Idea 2: The “Employee” Mindset

Also lurking behind the archetypal paragraph above is the mindset that most new business owners have because they’ve only ever been an employee. 

The sheer reality of running any business is this: 

If you only charge the customer what it takes to pay the person doing the work, whether it’s you or another person, you will go out of business.

Why? Because you are not accounting for expenses, profitability, future growth, savings, or taxes. 

When I worked in IT full-time, the number I was paid as an employee is peanuts compared to what a person doing billable work was charging. Clients were paying, in some cases, 10-15x what it took to pay the people doing the work to make the result happen. 

Not because they are greedy and unethical! Quite contrary! They wanted to do the best work possible for clients, and that is impossible to do if you have no margin with which to build a successful Avengers Team and design systems they can use to deliver results. 

So here’s the mindset shift: Whether foreign or domestic, if you want to scale, you will have to become okay with paying employees far less than what clients are paying you. This is true if you’re a plumber, lawyer, course creator, or web designer.

Again, this is just the reality of business. 

But—where, then, is the value? Couldn’t your customers just hire your employees directly? 

We’ll answer that question—and many others—next time. 

If the most important lesson I learned about financial success in business is to embrace recurring income, the second—by a high margin—would be the need to have multiple income streams. 

I read somewhere that most successful entrepreneurs have around 7 income streams producing at least some measure of profitability for them each month. 

This is a far cry from most people who have but one source—their full-time job. 

As you can imagine, this is not a financially secure position! 

In today’s creator economy, this “multiple streams of income” mindset is prevalent. We can—and should—take advantage of it in Subscription Web Design as well! 

Why You Need Multiple Streams of Income

There is nothing complicated about this. 

The reality is, oftentimes, streams of income dry up! 

A product or service becomes irrelevant, the economy takes a turn that renders a particular widget less useful, or perhaps another solution has come along that has knocked yours out of the running for your market. 

What I’ve described here is not a problem with your particular widget; it’s just the nature of business. 

If you have multiple streams of income, you need not worry when one stream dries up. The other streams will sustain you until you figure out the next thing. 

What This Actually Looks Like

There are actually two different ways to look at your Income Stream Diversification (ISD). 

1. Entrepreneurial – eISD

2. Business – bISD

Your eISD is the combination of income streams that support you—the entrepreneur. 

These extend beyond your subscription web design business into other areas of your life. In your eISD, your web design business writ large is simply one income stream.

I’m an open book, so while I will not share numbers, I will share my income streams with you: 

1. NorthMac Services (my web design business)

2. Books (I write ministry-related books)

3. Subscription Web Design (my information business)

4. BuyDemoTracks.com (my music demo marketplace company)

5. Article Production (I write for a top online Christian magazine)

6. Affiliate Income (occasionally I make affiliate sales from my YouTube channel)

(To be honest, as I’m writing this, I feel like I’m forgetting something — but I do believe this list is accurate!) 

Think about it like a garden. I am always tending to the field of each of these income streams. Some grow slowly, some grow a bit quicker. Some are fairly stagnant. 

Over time, those which do not produce fruit will go away and be replaced with something else. 

And sometimes, things will surprise you. For example, a couple of those are turning out to grow a bit quicker than I thought and really turn into something sustainable. 

Not nearly enough to be a full-time income of their own yet, by any means, but they have visible potential. Pretty cool! 

NOW — within a few of those is bISD.

So items 1, 3, 4, and 6 each have multiple income streams within them. If you were to put it all together, there are roughly 12-15 income streams flowing into my portfolio and helping to build my future and support my family. 

How to Get Started

Want to do this for yourself? Can you see how creating 12-15 income streams could change the game for you over time? What about creating 5-7? Or even 3?

Since (at least for now :]) I am not necessarily a business coach, I am going to keep my recommendations limited to what is possible inside a subscription web design business (so, bISD instead of eISD).

But don’t be afraid to branch out. No one questions my commitment to each of the things I do. It may appear on the outside that I have divided loyalties, but don’t worry about what other people think. 

(Lots of people think Elon Musk has divided loyalties right now, but he’s the richest man on the planet and has successfully built the electric car and commercialized space industries. He’s probably a’ight, ya know?)

Broad Opportunities 

So let’s swing for the fences and see what opportunities exist for web designers. And since we’re subscription web designers(!), we’re constantly searching for opportunities that we can attach monthly recurring revenue to. 

Web Design

This one seems obvious enough! If you haven’t already started offering subscription web design, go back to the basics and start there!

My course and mentorship program can help you get started, and of course, all of the other free posts and podcasts we’ve put out. 

Marketing

Not everyone wants to get into marketing — but if you have that inkling, it’s definitely an open door you can walk through. 

Can these services be offered subscription-style? Absolutely.

In fact, this is fairly normal. Although, the context in which it is normal usually involves extremely high-priced and all-inclusive retainer deals. 

I went down that path for a little while and decided to back away from it in favor of a more modular approach.

Brand/Website Strategy

If you zoom out from web design just a bit, there’s the whole question of how the brand (and website) should look/act. 

Believe it or not, this can (and perhaps always should) be separate from the actual web design itself. 

Many web designers are including this when, in reality, they should be (1) charging for it as a separate service or (2) working in conjunction with a partner who focuses on this piece of it.

Copywriting

Your business could have a copywriting division. Provide copy for the website of course, but you could also strike a retainer deal with clients to do copywriting for them on social posts, sales letters, and more.

Social Media Design

This is probably my least favorite option (which is mostly because I personally dislike social media), but the fact remains that most brands need a strong social media presence. 

And often, the one they have is not branded very well with the rest of their materials. You could design their social media accounts and help them post consistently with on-brand communications.

Exploration

OK — now let’s dive a bit deeper and see how you could take one of these options and turn it into multiple income streams by itself! 

Let’s just take web design, since I know many of you want to stay in that lane and not necessarily branch into marketing. 

Do you think you could create 3-5 income streams that focus on website design work alone? Here are some potential opportunities: 

1. Web Design

Need I say more here? 

2. Monthly Audits

You could use a service like My Web Audit and offer regular website audits that ensure sites are running in tip-top shape. 

You could include this in the price of your SWD package, but I don’t think you have to or that you even should!

It’d be perfectly acceptable to provide this in your sales process as an optional package to help keep a website running in top-top shape. And boom! You have a new income stream. 

In fact, I think there’s even a case to sell this as an entirely separate service on your website. Perhaps someone already has a great website built, and they just need someone to make sure it stays performing well and competitive. 

Sell this service to those customers, and convert them into SWD clients later.

3. A/B Testing

This one’s cool. The “technical” term for this is conversion rate optimization (CRO). And this is another path where the sky’s the limit. 

Firms are charging many thousands of dollars per month (and sometimes a percentage of sales) for CRO work. But you don’t have to start there! 

Charge a reasonable monthly fee to try new things out on your client’s website and test for better conversations. Page builders like Divi make this easy, and there’s special software you can purchase if you want to get more advanced.

4. Maintenance Packages

For those clients who either downgrade from your main subscription plan(s) or who come to you in need of maintenance but not necessarily a website, keep this option only. 

Using the Maintenance Only model, you can create an entirely separate income stream and build that up over time.

5. Email Capture Campaigns

There is arguably nothing more important for a website to do than capture potential leads. 

Email is the best way to do this, for sure, and the number of websites I’ve seen with no way to capture email is stunning. 

Create an “Email Capture” add-on that includes a lead magnet, opt-in forms, and a 3-5 email onboarding sequence. Perhaps the customer gets a new one every quarter for as long as their subscription is active? 

Summary

As you can see, the opportunities are there to quickly move beyond accepting money for website design only. 

You can become a more well-rounded designer/agency, still staying within the bounds of on-site working, while creating multiple income streams and further creating stability and sustainability in your business. 

You got this!