I’ve been hiring and working with freelance designers since 1999 and there is something which has always amazed and shocked me.
Even though every freelancer has a unique style and taste but there is one starking similarity in them — hardly anyone of them uses the most effective tactic to double or triple their profits instantly.
I am talking about tactics popularly known as Up-Selling — the art of selling addon products and services
Yeah yeah, I know you don’t do it as much for the money as for your passion for design. However, you have bills to pay and that BMW to buy.
The most perfect example of Up-Selling is when you order a burger at McDonald’s, you are always asked if you’d like fries with that. Yes, we are talking about giving the user to purchase additional services / products from you when they order something.
Now whenever a client comes to you for a design, they probably have just one thing in mind — they want a website for their business. Most of the times they haven’t decided on the webhost they are going to go with, the internet marketing strategy they are going to follow and, sometimes, not even their domain name.
They just know that they need a website and they need a designer to create one. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an excellent opportunity for profit.
SO, what all can you resell with webdesign? Here are a few ideas –
1. Web Hosting. Sure you can’t have a website available to the world without having a webhost. So rather than confusing them by recommending 10 different webhosts who offer 50 different packages, buy a reseller hosting account and sell hosting to them yourself.
With a reseller account, you can charge your client anything and pay a wholesale fees to the ISP. And interesting thing is that they will never know who actually is hosting the site and will have the comfort of dealing with a real person. For you, it’s extra profit.
One host which I fully recommend is HostGator. I had an account with them for over two years before I moved to a VPS and was very happy with their services. I am sure that you will be too.
2. Marketing Services. You can offer managed internet marketing services to your clients. And to make it easier for yourself, just subcontract them. If you are interested, I run a company which offers reseller plans for web designers and consulting firms. Just give me a buzz at lord@lordbrar.com and I’d send you the details.
3. Domain Names. You can offer consulting services for helping to find a good domain name and you can even register a domain for your client on their behalf.
4. Annual Maintenance. Offer your customers an annual maintenance service where you can offer to do minor tweaks and updates on the website for an annual fees. It doesn’t involve much work and can be a great stream of income.
5. Backup Services. You can easily sell your customers a data backup service just in case something goes wrong. If your client’s site uses databases or other dynamic stuff then it’s even better. Remember, the fear of loss is worse than hope of gain.
All that said, it is important that you don’t upsell the stuff to the client that he or she doesn’t need. They are trusting you for good advice and great service — give that! The happier the client, the more business and recommendation he or she will give to you.
In the next post, I am going to talk about another very important strategy for increasing your profits — Repeat Selling. Until then - Rock on!
July 3rd, 2007 at 1:13 am
[…] my post about Up-Selling to clients, I talked about how you can easily sell additional services and products to the clients. In this […]
July 10th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
If you are selling web hosting to a client, you really should be offering backup services for free.
Although, I suppose you could offer weekly backups for free, and then charge for daily backups. ::Evil::