How'd you get your first client?

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Or maybe I should ask, do you think there’s a market for professionally-built websites for under $1k USD?

We’re based in the US and company management gave me the go-ahead to offer web dev for insanely low prices, but have seen almost no interest and I think it is actually the pricing that is killing interest.

I’d like to show what is possible with Wappler even on a small budget, but so far paid ads aren’t working and I had hoped to avoid the job-listing type sites.

Any advice, encouragement, or direction welcome! Thanks.

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You are not paying for technology, you are not paying for time… You are paying for experience and expertise. Professional will deliver you are technology product in a timely manner, but for decent money.

In short: CHEAP / FAST / GOOD QUALITY - you can choose only 2 of them.

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Realise a real project to show what you can do for 1.000 usd.

Let people understand that they can have more than a simple static website.

And try to make a modular offer. Basic module, back office etc

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Thanks for the advice – and I think you hit the nail on the head here. We feel we can exceed expectations in all three areas at this point at a very low price for most sites. But I think the truth of that triad is so generally accepted as universal that we may be facing an uphill battle if we want to remain low cost. Thanks again for the sage advice!

Perhaps I’ve underestimated the importance of a portfolio – and definitely of the importance of what is essentially an online brochure. I think I’ll throw a site together for the service today rather than just leading to a landing page for the special offer. Appreciate all your helpful ideas!

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There is not an official way… you must find your way, there are some things we can suggest.

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Ask yourself how fast you can scale a website that have dynamic content coming from a database, where you might need a CMS to manage both the front and backend and then you still need to build the back and frontend yet of the site, base on each client designs and requirement.

Then asked yourself after doing all that work to buildout almost 3 different systems just to make the thing work is it worth a $1000.

If your answer is yes to all, then I will send whatever work I got on my plate to you.

I would say focus on providing value for a client and charge your work base on that. The website space is already saturated with template websites where any one can buy a website template from Wix or Webflow or whomever. But it take real work to build something unique from the ground up that is going to add value for a client and if you are adding value for a client then you deserve to get paid for that. Just focus on what you can offer and package and sell that, build your portfolio, look for websites that needs remodeling and offer some free work etc to get you to that place where you have real testimonials this way you can use those as momentum to get new jobs.

Good luck, been a web developer is nice but this journey will take everything you got and you will break a few times before making it but your passion for the thing will always keep you going.

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Thanks for your thoughtful reply!

You clearly know where the pain points are on building sites - for us, we cut the “every page has a user admin mode” from our offerings to hit our price point. So rather than a full CMS, sites we build at discount allow editing on sections of the site that need to change often rather than every element.

I threw together a quick page for the service today based on some other feedback and am curious if this will take off. We’ve had good success developing this service as we tested it with clients, so I’m going to gather some testimonials and add those.

Thank you again for your advice and perspective. I’m a few decades into web dev at this point but have been surprised there’s seemingly no market where I thought there’d be an eager crowd of customers.

Thanks again for all the helpful advice!

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Shockingly to me, less than 24 hours in after taking the advice in this thread and some from friends with marketing background, we already have 3 decent leads via the new (and very rough!) website.

I suspect that the ad and landing page just wasn’t enough info to convince those who click-through that we were offering something real, not a bait and switch. We knew people would like the option because we finally were able to work for friends and family under this model.

I didn’t expect the need for a totally separate website for this, but I guess it shows keep trying until you find what works!

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