How to Break Into Freelance Web Design and Earn Recurring Revenue with John Wooten

Sarah St John: 00:01:04

welcome to the frugal preneur podcast. I'm your host, Sarah St. John and my guests today used to be a full-time musician and Marine, but as now the owner of a custom web design firm called artillery media. Welcome to the show, John Wooten,

John Wooten: 00:01:20

Sarah. Awesome. Thanks for having me glad to be here.

Sarah St John: 00:01:23

I know I just did it a brief little introduction, but I'm curious to learn more about. how you went from a musician and a Marine to starting your own web design company.

John Wooten: 00:01:32

Well, I, yeah, you know, a lot of musicians make great web designers because they get in these bands and the bands need a website and someone has to figure it out. A lot of musicians are, are tech savvy. They're, working this, gear on stage, or they're working with recording equipment on a computer. So they kind of. Tech savviness, but they also care about style. Right. They care about how they look, they're got their show clothes and they got everyone's instruments or a certain color trying to match up and all that stuff. So there's a lot of web designers that I know who, like, yeah, my first band, I was in needed a website and that's how I got in, I was doing the MySpace page and I thought we should probably get a website to But yeah, so the Marines, oh man. So coming out of high school, I was big into sports and I thought I was going to go to college to be a physical therapist. I thought I was going to go stretch out Michael Jordan, other NBA stars come to find out after shadowing a physical therapist for a few days, I was like, this is not for me. And then I switched to marketing and, but to help pay for college. I actually joined the Marine reserves. A lot of people don't know that the Marines have reserves. You know, everyone's familiar with the national guard where you have your one weekend, a month, two weeks in the summer the Marines have the same thing for their reserves. You go to the same boot camp as everyone else, and you go to the same combat school and then you have to train for a certain job that a reserve center in your area supports my reserve centers about an hour away. And they supported five jobs in the Marines. All were like electrical. And then after about a year of all that training, can't come back home to Nebraska. And I do one weekend, a month, two weeks in the summer. I did that for a six year oh six and a half years. Cause my last year I got activated, he got sent over to Iraq. But I graduated college while I was in the Marines. When I got home from Iraq, I told them, Hey, I'm, I'm want to be done. I'm going to try to go start this new business idea that I have building website. At that time. I was also in a band, so I was in a band. That was a kind of part-time when I left for Iraq. When I came back from Iraq, that band actually got to, full-time, which back then meant traveling in a 15 passenger van. And I think we were all making between a thousand to 1500 a month. But since I had built my web design business to about a couple of a. I could swing it as a young, single 20 some guy. So then on the road I would just work in the van on my laptop and I would work it through coffee shops, go play shows at night, and eventually that band died out. And I got asked to join another band that was able to pay me almost full time with my web design. But in between those two bands, I took a full-time job at a place called Arbor day. Great nonprofit. All about planting trees. Thought I would love it. It was a web designer position. There were six people on the team. I had a cubicle, this is a serious, my boss was like 10 feet from me, but he would just, I am me like you would not come over to my desk and talk to me and my cuticle, he would just, and I could see him. Like I see you. So after six months in that job, I just got bored of it. I thought I would love it. I thought this is it. I'm going to work on their family of four website. All the same branding, all the same theme. But after six months, I was tired of looking at nature, photos of trees and the color green and dealing with their logo. I wanted variety and I also knew that there were folks out there living life on their schedule. They had that life of freedom that I wanted. And what's funny is while I was on that cubicle job one Friday afternoon, which I don't know if you ever worked the cubicle job at a corporate place, but Friday afternoons, they might as well let you go with. Because nothing's getting done that actually be a great perk for a company and say, you get off at noon here on Friday, because we know you're just going to cruise social media that rest of Friday afternoon. So I'm cruising social media Friday afternoon, and there's this band that I was following and I clicked on one of their videos. And so to set the stage I'm in my cubicle and in my cubicle I've written down freedom on a note card and I actually wrote down the date. What I was getting paid per day, based on my salary on another note card. And it was on the wall. Cubicle to try to motivate me, to keep building websites, to get my business full time so I could get freedom and get out of this job. So I'm watching this YouTube video and the band lead singers on the slopes out in Colorado about ready to go down the slopes. And he takes off his ski goggles and the band manager's recording and the band manager asks. Hey, man, what are we doing today? And I'll never forget this. Cause this is like The trigger for me. He said, we're out here on a Tuesday morning while the rest of the world is working. That's when we play. And then he put his goggles on and went down the hill and I was like angry. And motivate the same time. I wanted that freedom that he had to go ski on a Tuesday morning while everyone else was in the cubicle. Like I was working. And right then I went home. I wrote down freedom on more cards. I put them in mirror in my bathroom. I put them on my nightstand. So when I go to bed and wake up, I see these freedom. That's all I saw. And that's what got me motivated to work up that web design business even more so cut to six months later at Harvard. I went and put in my notice because that band that I watched needed a drummer and I joined that band. they couldn't pay me quite. Full-time pretty close. But again, the income from the web design is what got me to be able to leave that corporate job and go tour. And so that's kind of.

Sarah St John: 00:07:00

Awesome. I love that story and I was actually going to ask what instrument you played. But you, answered that for me. I actually play the drums as well, which is pretty rare for a female. So I just fell in love with drumming at like 13. And I thought about joining a band, but that just never worked out. But I'm curious, these bands that you were in, would any of us know any of them

John Wooten: 00:07:20

probably not. they're both Christian bands. It was the Christian rock band that, that never got signed. the one I've been in since that story, I said, I joined that band in 2010. So I've been in about now about 11 years when I joined, we were a five-piece band. We're a two piece band now. So I actually play keys and drums. And depending on which part of the song is I will either be behind the keyboard or I'll move to the drum set to finish the song out. That's a Christian band as well. It's called the Vota V OTs. And we were signed for a while and we still go out on tour. We actually just did a tour with a, guy named Peter furler who you succinct for the bigger group called the Newsboys. Right. So some, Christian folks might know a couple of those names, but most folks won't know Mona who we are.

Sarah St John: 00:08:04

And I think, I think Peter Fuller is the cousin of SIA. I think that's what I, what I heard. But yeah, I'm familiar with Krisha. I, now I haven't heard a vote. I'm going to check it out now, but I I actually skill it is my favorite band of all time. And there, there are several others that I like, like need to breathe in for king and country. And so I'm familiar. The other two bands that you were in, I'm just curious what their names were just in case.

John Wooten: 00:08:26

I've only been in two bands. Well, two bands that you would, that you would know, the first one was called fate of angel. So when I was in that band, we played several festivals. when I played in Voda, I still do vote a V O T a Voda band.com. That one, I've played lots of festivals with them. And so I've I mean, I've met that need to breathe guys. I've met John Cooper and the skillet people. One time I did a workout with the drummer from the Newsboys Duncan Phillips, him and I did an insanity workout together. And that was a, a bonding moment for sure. Hung out with Switchfoot backstage with just at the festival, you're all kind of gathered there together. So yeah, it was some, some super cool stuff. So actually the singer and the band. And so we're a two piece span. Now he actually filled in a guitar for Newsboys for three years. So he was doing the whole private. showing up five minutes before they go on getting, getting handed a perfectly tuned guitar from the stage hand as he goes on stage. And now he has to fly with me and not have that. It helps set up gear and help tear down and all that stuff.

Sarah St John: 00:09:29

Wow. That's awesome. That you're able to still do that, like balance that with the web design And that's neat that you've kind of always been doing both of those,

John Wooten: 00:09:38

web design is unique. For that to happen in that the big power of web design in my opinion is the long-term play. I call it is the monthly recurring revenue you can build up by offering hosting and maintenance plans. It's really hard to find that in other creative industries. So for example, photography, nobody wants to pay monthly to have access to their wedding photos. And if they stop paying, they don't have access to anymore. that's not how it works. Or if I want a two minute marketing video from a videographer, I just want to pay the one or two grand or whatever it's going to be. I don't want to pay monthly. And if I stopped paying, I don't get access to that video anymore. But website hosting it's a necessity. You need website hosting for your website to be alive. Every website needs it. So I equate it to car insurance. I tell people, Hey, during the pandemic, you might've canceled a gym membership. Right. And for a few. But you didn't cancel your car insurance. You still needed to get a car to get around. same thing with this during the pandemic, I knew a companies that put a pause on social media marketing because they felt like it wasn't the right time. I knew some co-work spaces that had some monthly folks cancel for awhile, and then they individually, they came back. But None of our clients canceled their hosting. In fact, COVID just showed everyone how important their online presence is. So building that recurring revenue over the past five, six years when I started offering hosting and maintenance plans, that has really given me the freedom, especially now. To start every month, not from zero, but to start with enough money, to not even take any more work that month. And I can just keep playing music or doing whatever now website works still comes in, but it's that, security blanket of, oh, no matter what, I'm not starting from zero every month. And so I think that's a big separator that folks are like, they're creative, but they're also tech savvy and they like, oh, I want to be a freelancer, but I don't know what industry to go in. I think that's a good. Differentiator for web design. If you're interested in that.

Sarah St John: 00:11:31

it's interesting that you mentioned the recurring aspect of it because I've thought about, cause I like designing websites myself. I'm sure they're not as good as yours, but I do like, because I did check your website out. It's really cool. I create decent enough websites and I've thought about doing it, But like you said, I was thinking of it more in terms of, okay, so you, charge the 500 or whatever amount as the one-time fee to create it. And then I was like, but then, like you said, the recurring, but if you do like the hosting and the maintenance, you probably use WordPress, I guess. Absolutely. Yeah. And so as when you say maintenance and things of that nature, like maintaining their plugins and that everything, the security everything's up to date, because a lot of people that confuses them, they don't even know they're supposed to do it. Right. And so, and then as far as the hosting goes, so how does that work? Do you have your own actual hosting company or you, host it through, Whatever, but then you. The latter, I

John Wooten: 00:12:28

guess. Yeah, we resell. So we use a company called site ground. I've used many hosting companies that I've been doing this for 15 years and I've used many and site ground. I've never had to call them one time. I know the GoDaddy holding music. I have called blue host one-on-one and others. I've never called SiteGround and their chat is unbelievable. Their chat. I've never waited more than five minutes to talk to someone. And they're just their customer service is off the charts. But so obviously. we know, that you can go out and you can buy hosting for, probably cheap hosting for as little as five bucks a month, right. Or seven bucks a month. SiteGround's a little more cause they're of they're more premium. So that's why I tell people, Hey, when you're selling hosting main security plans, you're not just selling hosting. You're also selling you going in, or maybe through software going in and. Keeping those plugins up to date for them keeping up to date for them. Yeah. Cause the number one way websites get hacked is outdated plugins or themes or WordPress. And why that is, is when WordPress or a plugin or a theme. When they come out with a new update, they say, Hey, here's a fresh, cool new update. Here's some new features, but here's all these security issues that we fixed. Well that tells all the hackers what was wrong with the last version. So they write a little box. to go out and exploit those old security failures. And so folks who are late to update are the ones that get hacked. And as you said, clients are either confused about it, or they just don't know that Olympus is to keep that up to date. You know, some folks don't even keep their phone up to date. Right. Or their computers. So they, don't know. but it's a necessity. And so many clients There are so down to pay a monthly fee for their website because it's that important to them that that stays up and they need you as that go-between they don't want to call the hosting company and figure out the terminology and deal with them. They don't want to do that. And if you get in the right industry, a lot of. Recognize that their time is best spent doing their thing that they're good at in their business and not finagling with a website.

Sarah St John: 00:14:29

I think a common question probably is, well, instead of hiring someone to, you know, create a WordPress website I could just pay 10, 20 bucks a month for like Wix Weebly Squarespace, one of those. So what can you tell someone who, has that mindset or thinks that.

John Wooten: 00:14:47

Oh, no, I feel you, especially when you're starting out and you're dealing with kind of the, I think everyone, when they're first starting a service business like this, whether it's photography, videography, or social media, web design, you're going to have those lower budget clients at first. And so you might have some of that competition of, well, I can just go do this. I can just go. You're gonna try to make $500. I can just go to Squarespace and, and do it. A couple of good news about that is the market for websites is vast. There's more than enough room for anyone who wants to hop in and be a web designer because every business, solo, preneur entrepreneur, they need a website. Now, if they're tech savvy, sometimes if I get an entrepreneur on the phone and they're tech savvy, I might say, Hey, here's how much I am, but you sound tech savvy. So you could go to Squarespace and pay 30 bucks a month, but they still don't quite understand that. Flow of the page, the best layout. We use StoryBrand framework to, mold all our pages, to tell a customer story as they're going down the website and using certain strategy that we know works to get. Click on that call to action. a newbie. Doesn't quite have that, or this person might not have that. Also, if you don't know things like how to optimize your media, optimize your images, not take a gigantic photo that you took on your phone and throw that on your website. And then wonder why is my website running so slow? Well, you got 20 photos that are five max each. Your website is going to be slow. There's things that they don't know about that, but I think ultimately it's a, you going out and finding the clients that recognize that they need you as the expert to build that site for them. I remember when GoDaddy ran the Superbowl ad. Man, I spent three years ago. And it was a dollar, get your website up and running for a dollar a month, or maybe it might even be for a dollar for the first year. And one of the guys that I work with texted me and said, what are we going to do? Go daddy's offering websites for a dollar. And I said, the people that want to do that, number one are not my customers, but after they go out and try to build their website with GoDaddy, some of them are going to be our customers because they're going to realize I can't do this on my own. It looks. I'm going to hire a professional. And so a lot of folks that go to the Squarespace Wix route I think some of them realize that like, wow, this is. As easy as I thought, but we do combat, we do battle that this idea of, since, a Squarespace site, you can just change designs that with just changing a theme or then, Hey John, with my website, we're almost done, but can we change some things really quick? isn't that just an easy thing to do? So you do kind of combat that.

Sarah St John: 00:17:21

Well, and I think another thing too, is with WordPress sites that you can, and so customizable, the plug-ins and the themes, and, if you need a pop up or a. Call to action or, whatever it might be. And there's some things I used to have, I think I never tried Squarespace, but I tried Wix and Weebly. I used to have a site on both of those, and it wasn't until there was a specific plugin that I heard about that I wanted called Simple podcast press. It was a podcast player. I switched to WordPress just because of that plugin and I was overwhelmed at first with WordPress. It was more of a learning curve, but now I'm glad I did. And just all the plugins and customization and whatnot. So I think, yeah, like anyone who doesn't want a cookie cutter website, one that actually is designed to, you know, convert or get leads

John Wooten: 00:18:09

That's an excellent point. Scalability. So scalability on the WordPress site is, options are, unlimited. So say eventually you want to have a membership part of your site. Well, there's a membership plugin that you could have where you could charge, paid access to certain parts of your website. We have an online course that teaches people how to build websites and we have it's built in WordPress and we have a membership piece. Controls that access, whether you're not you've paid for the course or not. And then there's a course plugin that we use to build the course. So if you want to have online courses in your website, Squarespace really can't do that. They can't do the membership either, or say you want a business directory, say you're a, county and you want a website or a city and you want a business directory. Well, there's a business directory plugin for WordPress that you can use them. There's not one for Squarespace. I don't know if there's one for Wix or Weebly or not. But Hey, if you're brand new startup and you don't have a budget for a website and you just need a simple landing page, I mean, there's solutions for that. even convert kit as landing pages. Now a lot of them do and Squarespace, Wix Weebly. Those could be great options for you. But he has. I would say, get started on the right foot, hire professional. It's going to go a long way. You know, sometimes there's a photographer that I use that I hire and I don't even want to tell her my ideas sometimes because I just know her ideas are better and I don't want to stifle her or put her in a box because of what I think I want. And that's kind of the clients that I'm looking for or that the ones I really try to find are okay. Who understands that there's two types of websites. There's a brochure style website. Here's my website. Here's what I do. here's how to contact me. And it's kind of a business card brochure website, and I guess I have to have this right. I can't just get by with my LinkedIn and Facebook page. I need to have this website. And so in the customer's mind, if you sell them a brochure website, they look at it as an expense, right? Well, there goes a thousand dollars or whatever, or 3000 or whatever it is, or you can sell them a business building tool, a website that is driven by strategy, and that has things on there. That'll help them get more leads and turn those leads into customers and using the StoryBrand framework and everything like that. And so when they look at it that way, they look at it more as an investment of, Hey, I'm going to spend several grounds, this website, but it's going to make me X amount more because it's built with strategy, especially when you add things like email sequences on top of it, the website can truly be a machine on its own, knowing that you can send someone to the website and say, take our quiz. There's another plugin that Squarespace pride didn't have take our quiz. on our break into web website. If you go there. You can take a quiz to see if web design is good for you after the quiz. And based on your answers in the quiz, you get put into different email funnels. So if you identify as a photographer, you're going to get put into an email funnel. Where are you going to get 13 emails over 45 days that are a lot of them are focused as you as a photographer and how it's going to be an easy transition for you to come into web design. If you identify as a stay-at-home mom, though, instead of photographer, your emails are going to start out with, Hey mama, or Hey lady. And those are written by Kelly, my partner in breaking the web. they're written for more of that. Hey, you want freedom? You want to be able to take your kids to school. You want to go on field trips. So those emails, the photographers. Identify with. And so knowing that when we send someone there and they take the quiz, I know that they're going to, I don't necessarily have to follow up with them because the email sequence is going to follow up for me. and they're going to hear about price, objections, and how to get over that. They're going to see several success testimonials. They're going to see how we can help them in their specific situation where they're videographer photographer, creative stay-at-home mom. I even have a landing page for music. That just talks about how you'll make a great web designer, probably. So when you sell the website, that way, that sounds way more powerful as a tool and a, website machine then. Yeah. I can get you a website that have your a Google map of your location and your, address and phone. So, yeah, I think it's all in how you set it up. You're able to charge more for that tool and they're more willing to pay you, especially monthly to keep that machine running. So I think that's a big part of it.

Sarah St John: 00:22:20

Yeah. And that was a long rant. Oh no, I appreciated that. I think that definitely helped Give the differences between, you know, a Squarespace type of site and, a WordPress site or one that, you would hire someone to do. Or one thing that really bugs me is when I company just has a Facebook page and they think that's all they need. So if you decide to start a web design company, what is the best way to get clients would reaching out to these Facebook pages that don't have a website? Would that be a good place to start or is it likely that. Someone who doesn't even have a basic website, isn't gonna go for that.

John Wooten: 00:22:55

in our course, I do all the technical training and then Kelly does all the business training. She actually has an MBA in business administration and she actually built her business twice, once in Nebraska. And then she moved to Colorado and then restarted one there and built it. So she's got tons of. In our course, there's a prospecting page or a prospecting module that has some worksheets that just have man 60, 70 ways to drum up business. But some of the key ones from there are well, and it's, typical, but you start with your warm market, just letting people know your first, couple of websites might even be for free just to get experience under your belt. my first two were free. I'll tell you what they were. The first one was the recording studio recording, and they didn't even have a website. I was like, y'all need a website. I'll do one for free because You have cool. I to take pictures of your stuff. It's really cool. And then my dad, my dad's a local small church pastor at the time. It's medium-sized now. And I was like, dad, you need a website. And then word started to spread. I had portfolio, I did a custom home site for another friend. He knew somebody, they talk. So what I say is, Hey, start with your warm market. First, you're going to get a couple of leads from there. You're going to do a couple of sites from there. Get them to leave Google reviews. That's huge at our artillery, my design company, we have over 125 star Google review. We have no, no 4, 3, 2 or one. So when someone Googles web design, Nebraska or Midwest, and they see that big list of everyone, right. And how many reviews they have? I think the next one is like 30, so they see 120 and they're like, wow, these guys must be great. So that's one way. The second way is you can go on like a Facebook local business committee. get involved in that. Go look at their websites. One key thing is to look at their website on tablet or mobile, and if they're not optimized yet for mobile, then you can hit them and say, Hey, I don't know if you know this, but over half of all, traffic now is looked at mobile and your site isn't. I can help you with that. we can do a new website for you and it'll be responsive. So it's going to look great on tablet and mobile. Some of our students have had a lot of success that way getting three, four clients, and then those people spread the word about them in that small business group. And they get more business that way. It's funny that you say some businesses only have a Facebook page. So back in 2006, 2005, I think I was in that fate of angels band and we were in the studio recording an album, and I remember. I remember we were all in the control room. And I remember saying, you know, guys, because a lot of bands only had MySpace pages, but we had a MySpace page and a website. And I just said, you know, guys, my space might not be around forever. And they laughed at me. They laughed at me, which I get because at the time every band was using my space and it seemed like it would just never go away. But then things went south and it just, went away. And I mean, dare I say, maybe Facebook won't be around forever or here's another trick that I do to help people realize that Facebook is not the best place for them to solely have their presence. When you're on Facebook, you have distractions. So they could be on your business page and then say, oh, my friend's birthday is today. Click and. on your website, that's not gonna happen. or they're on your Facebook page reading about what you do. And then a friend messages them and oh, they go check that out and then they kind of not make it back to your page because how do I get back there? Oh, I got to search for them. Versus once they go to your website, they're on your turf. They're on there until they. To leave, so yeah. Rip MySpace.

Sarah St John: 00:26:20

Yeah. It's kind, kinda like the whole owning. House versus running a house or owning land or because like you said, I always make the comparison to MySpace. MySpace went away overnight, practically same could happen to Facebook. Now I think it's good to have a social media presence and have a Facebook page and all this stuff. But like, if you're just depending on that, I mean, even if they don't go away, I mean, you're not getting. Access to like customer information like emails and if I'm looking for some local place to fix my AC and all they have is a Facebook page and no website. I automatically rule them out. And I don't know if other people operate that way, but that's at least how I am. So

John Wooten: 00:26:59

a big quote that I am, that I use, that, that speaker friend of mine, he kind of came up with and maybe he borrowed it from somewhere. I don't know. But it's your perception determines your reception. So in his example of that quote, he's saying, so if let's say you're a motivational speaker and I'm looking at booking you for my conference, If I go to your website at your motivational speaker website and it looks amateur, it's inconsistent in how it's designed. Your about me is like 10 paragraphs long. Then I'm going to assume that your speech, your motivational talk is amateur it's cluttered. you're going to ramble on just like your 10 P but if I come to your website and it's clean and your promo video is at 10 minutes long, it's a minute and a half. And you're about me is that. A paragraph of the most important things with a read more option or your services are not, you know, things are just put well together, then I'm going to assume that your talk is put well together and you are put well together and you're automatically assigning values. Sometimes what I'll do in a live client sales meeting is I will Google, not the city that we're in, because I don't want them to know somebody, but I'll be. Denver Colorado wedding photographer. I'll pull up like five or six different websites and then pick two of them, like the best and the worst from like the first three pages of Google. And you'll see the best one gorgeous photo, super clean navigation, the right font, minimal text and this just you see the photo and right away, just like, ah, That versus you go another one where they have like 10 galleries and you're like, what do you do? There's web there's wedding photos here, but there's also car show photos, and the design is not great right away. You're saying, okay, they're probably 500 bucks. And these people are probably three grand. And that's an example of your perception determines how are you received? And so, yeah, so. Perceive that this lawnmower company only had a Facebook page. Are they not legit enough to have a website? Do they not make enough money to afford one? So right away, you thought, oh, they're probably not legit or as legit is what I'm looking for. versus if you land on their website and it was Todd's lawn care, and it was a nice photo of a beautiful manicured lawn with him out in front of them with a picture of him out in front of the Miller and. get a free quote, and then you saw a slider of like 10 happy customers. You'd probably like, yeah, that's what I want. Todd. He seemed like a nice guy. Wow. This person said he's reliable and he cleaned up before we left. That's what I want. Boom.

Sarah St John: 00:29:33

you were given examples of like photography pricing, which made me think of. If you start a web design company, curious what the average rate is that people charge nowadays for like a custom website. And then also how much you can charge for the hosting and maintenance.

John Wooten: 00:29:50

I'll give you some numbers. I'll give you some good ranges. And then based on data from our students that have graduated our course and gone on to be full-time freelancers. So. I'll start what kind of the ceiling is. So as a solo freelancer, 10 grand is kind of the ceiling of what you can do. It's probably more like 7,500. That's probably the top as a one person shop that you're going to be able to sell any business. That's going to have a budget bigger than that. They're going to want features. That you might have to bring a developer in, or you might have to bring another designer in just to handle it. So that's kind of the, ceiling. I think the sweet spot for a seasoned designer or someone's been doing it a few years is three to five. That's kind of the sweet spot, because at that point you're usually working with small mom pop type businesses. There may be an owner or an owner and a spouse or an owner or two partners. So you only have one or two decision makers, Once you get over 7,510 grand, you start getting into a company that has 20, 30 employees, and all of a sudden you have five decision makers. If they have a marketing department it's just going to take longer. There's going to be more red tape and you're going to be like, why did I say yes to this? When you're first starting out, as I mentioned, your first one or two sites might be free. I tell people in our course, the first 10 to 15 websites are going to be the hardest websites that you will ever know. This would be the hardest you work to get websites, assuming that you do a great job on them. Because after that, you're going to have a word of mouth starting to work for you, and you're going to start getting more customers in more demand. and so as more demand comes in your supply, your time is less than that. You can charge more. The average price students come out of our course charging for websites is between. Right away. If they get a paying website is between one to $2,000 after six months or so the students that are having success and that are doing their own freelance thing. The average they're charging is between two to $4,000. We've had three different students get $5,000 websites. We've had one student get that $10,000 website, but that's extremely rare. I think on average two to 5k is. The sweet spot. And then as far as hosting and maintenance, we do three different tiers and it seems to work well for all kinds of clients. Tier one is 49 bucks a month. What do you get for that? You get premium WordPress hosting on site, ground, or something like fly with or something like that. You get the maintenance updating of your WordPress themes, plugins and WordPress. You get backups with that, which the hosting companies do, but we also do separate backups to Dropbox. And then you also get a little bit, you get a security plugin that we've through years. We kind of know what settings to tweak for it to optimize it. And then you get 15 minutes a month of content updates, which most clients that's all. Cause a lot of clients, we train them how to go in and make their own updates. So it's pretty rare that they're like, oh, Hey, this isn't working. Can you tell me why? And it's usually something simple. It takes five minutes. That's $49 $99 a month gets you everything with $400. The only difference is you get one hour of content updates versus 15 minutes. So that's more for the person who's adding stuff to their. several times a week they're just not picking up on the video training maybe, or they just don't want to deal with it. They know that they're going to send those edits to us. We're going to take care of them, but they only get an hour after the 15 minutes in the first plan or after the hour on the second plan, our hourly rate is one 50 per hour, but if they're on our, since they're on our hosting plan, we tell them they're their members, quote unquote. And so they get half off of that. So they pay $75 an hour. Way for them to feel a part of the club. Right? And then our third tier is 2 99 a month, which I think is crazy. But we have three people that are on this. it's the Hey client. You, we're not even gonna give you a little. You will never log into your site. Anytime you have a change, you send it to us. One of these clients that we have on this plan is a custom home builder. And in the last three years they've been paying $300 a month for their hosting and maintenance. They've sent us three months. They've sent us up. Three different months that took less than an hour each for three years, the last three years, we tell them every year, Hey, we could probably roll you it down to like the 99 or 49, because you're, not really utilizing this. And you know what she says? She says, no, I want to stay on it. Cause I want to know that when I have an update, you guys are going to be available to make. That day or the next day. And so she's paying for that and I never would, I think we'd have someone that would do that. Let alone three people. So that's kind of the deal. I would say let's say you take break into web. That's the name of our course break B R E a K. Break into web.com. You go there, take a quiz, but let's say you go through and you graduate. the first one or two sites probably going to be free or $500 or less. That's probably what it's going to be. And then after that, Sites three or four or 5, 7 50 to a grand. And then once you get past sites, 10, we want you to charge in $2,000 or more. Our course is 9 97. Well, it's there it's 1247, but it's 20% off right now. So it's 9 97. And so our goal is that students make their money back the first couple of paid websites that they do. That's what we want. After 10 websites, you're charging a grand or two grand. And then once you get past that, then you're going to start seeing the 2500 3500. And maybe up to that fight, the five grand you're probably looking at, you've been doing it a year or two. And that's when you're going to start seeing those $5,000 clients come out of the woodwork. But that's kind of the, two to five, or I'd say two to four is kind of the sweet spot.

Sarah St John: 00:35:19

Yeah. after hearing all this, I'm like, maybe I should. Consider the whole web design thing again.

John Wooten: 00:35:24

I'm always up for questions. Just hit me up.

Sarah St John: 00:35:26

Yeah. Because I recently launched a podcast production agency, but one of the things that I'm going to do with that is also create people's podcasts websites. So I'm like, well, maybe I can also, I don't know, connect the two businesses somehow,

John Wooten: 00:35:39

Oh, absolutely. if you go to my brilliant site.com, that's going to be the motivational speaker website where we just offer here's three designs. you get one page and above. a lot of podcasts, people, they would need like a here's your homepage. And then obviously the, podcast system, which has probably a plugin that like you mentioned, that they could use maybe they need a blog, maybe not. And then they probably need like a, some kind of a contact page or, request to be on the show kind of thing. And about page. Yeah, that'd be cake. you could have three different styles and, they could just pick one and pay you a monthly fee. and I love that you have the podcast part of it and that's great. Yeah. I love it.

Sarah St John: 00:36:12

Awesome. Yeah, I'm going to have to check out the, so it's break into web.com and then if people want to check out the sites that you've created and whatnot, or if they need their own, sorry, site created it's artillery, media And then of course I'll have show notes as well with links to all of this and these Sarah St. john.com forge slash John Wooten. And was there anything else that you wanted to go over that we hadn't yet?

John Wooten: 00:36:39

Well, so speaking of websites I've done. Yeah. If you go to artillery, me.com, you'll see a work page on there. You can see what's the ad then. But if you go to break into Eben, it's break B R E K, not break like breaker car. if you go to break into web.com/examples, you'll see screenshots of sites our students have done, and you'll see that a lot of them are just gorgeous. And there, and there's a lot of them on there. There's a lot of them on there. But you'll see the kind of caliber of websites that we teach. And then you'll see why these students are getting a thousand, 2,500. For them. And also if you check out our website and web.com and click get started, it's going to take you through that fun quiz I talked about, and then it's going to give you access to a webinar where we have a free training that you can you're going to make your businesses. In that training. So that's pretty exciting when you sit down and dream about how you want your life to look like, what do you want to offer in your business? Stuff like that. And then if you sign up within a day of watching that webinar, or if you sign up within a day, not only do you get the 20% off, but you get a little swag pack and for those listening, you can't see, but you get a, you get a break into web coffee mug. Right or in my, I don't drink coffee. So for me, it's T you also get a break into web planner, just a blank notebook that you can write your goals in about how you're going to slay it in your new business. And then you also get a break into web sticker for your laptop, but then also you get this. It's a, there's no place like homepage. There's no place like home page and you'll be able to pick a color. And that's, if you sign up within one day after watching the webinar otherwise you get the 20% off. So, yeah.

Sarah St John: 00:38:20

Awesome. Yeah. I'm going to have to check that out. I'm curious now. Well, I appreciate your, time today. And I've learned a lot now I'm reconsidering adding that onto my services.

John Wooten: 00:38:31

Well, thanks so much for having me on again, get 20% off, break into web.com. Take the quiz. That's free. It's fun. And it lets, you know, if you, if we think you're a good fit or not, and you know what, if you're not good fit, we still say, well, prove us wrong. Right? We're not going to tell someone. No. And then if you sign up within a day, you get that. Swag pack. I just mentioned. Thanks so much, Tara, for having me on and thanks folks for listening to my wonderful rants.