Discussion
I have a friend who's trying to start her own "I can do a wide set of things for your small business" type of business. She's having a hard time framing this on a website.
Do you have examples of such websites I could send her? Basically, I'm looking for sole proprietors who are selling their creative and/or tech services. Aka people who could call themselves freelancers but choose not to.
I feel like I see these all the time, but I'm having a hard time thinking of any atm. Help!
I appreciate the thoughts so far! Just to clarify and potentially save people some time, she is really just looking for example websites to peruse 🙂
@alisynthesis If you want to think about a website that is hack-proof because it's just a bunch of static files, or is indeed just a template: https://themes.gohugo.io/
I liked the simplicity of https://themes.gohugo.io/themes/hugo-theme-yassi/ in it's underlying source-code in the couple I built this week.
@alisynthesis a lot of that is on ko-fi. Various small artists and freelancers.
@alisynthesis I used to have my own business like that doing branding, marketing, copywriting, web dev, graphic design for small and large companies.
Take a look at my old website here. It should give them some inspo, but I ask they don’t steal my copy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080125093320/http://www.corereactive.com/
Sounds very useful. Not unlike things a business incubator does.
I do think the desirable range of services would probably depend on the type of business.
A "creative agency" would make sense for artists and writers and the like.
And there's always "marketing consultant", but I always kind of distrust that label. I feel like, if I'm bad at marketing, I'm going to be a sucker for people who are good at it to fool me into a bad deal. Maybe this is paranoid of me.
But complicated services are always about TRUST. If you don't really fully understand what they are selling you, you feel like you can't judge the quality, so you're really judging how honest you think they are.
IDK if this helps or not. 🤷♂️
@alisynthesis You give the business a name and then list all the offerings in a “services” menu. Think of it like an agency of one.
@alisynthesis all the people I know who chose that path, has really bad websites actually 😂
That being said, I got the answer once to see the website as a business card in contrast to being a point of sales. The idea was that clients for this kind of business (like my own) will most likely come from network and references.
(Also, she should absolutely sell each business on setting up their own Fediverse profile)
@benpate haha, baby steps! (She is still on IG, argh)
and that’s totally fine.. there’s so many people there that she’d be irresponsible if she DIDN’T help people there.
But… there’s no rule that you can’t be in both places :)
I don’t have an example website to share, but hopefully this will help: Don’t sell the features, sell the benefits then prove it.
Instead of saying “I can make your WordPress website pretty again” say something like “Get X% more signups with a well-designed website”
Instead of: “I’ll optimize your SEO/Adwords/Socials”, say “Double your inbound leads with a real online marketing strategy.”
@alisynthesis I had my own sole proprietorship as a creative director for hire doing branding, marketing, copywriting, web dev, and graphic design for small and large companies. Here is some of the copy. It should give them some inspo, but I ask they don’t steal my copy.
I used “we” instead of “I” but clients knew I was doing all the work. If they want to see the archived site I can share it privately, but this gives a good way to frame it. I was quite successful for about 10 years.