Creating your own website

Argyll · Post by **Argyll** » Tue Dec 05, 2023 6:15 pm

I advertise my handyman business on Facebook and occasionally look through MyBuilder (that's another story). The other day I received a call from a media company in Belfast offering to build and maintain a website for me for £249 then £30 per month to maintain it. The salesman said I'm losing 82% of the market by not having a website.

I appreciate he's a salesman and obviously desperate to generate sales so taking everything he said with a pinch of salt.

My next door neighbour is quite techy. He reckons the price of the website is okay but the 30 pounds per month is a bit steep.

Opinions appreciated

wine~o · Post by **wine~o** » Tue Dec 05, 2023 6:19 pm

Until I took my website down a few months ago I was paying less than £30 a year. However I was doing all the maintainence myself.

Argyll · Post by **Argyll** » Tue Dec 05, 2023 6:20 pm

wine~o wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 6:19 pm Until I took my website down a few months ago I was paying less than £30 a year. However I was doing all the maintainence myself.

What maintenance were you doing mate. Would it be easy to learn?

Did you find your website generated any business?

oz0707 · Post by **oz0707** » Tue Dec 05, 2023 6:38 pm

I wouldnt bother. Ive got one and its a waste of time. Websites dont generate any business unless you advertise them, even then what is the website achieving? Its basically just a portfolio of work. Any social media page can do the sane

Someone-Else · Post by **Someone-Else** » Tue Dec 05, 2023 7:28 pm

I am with wine~O on this.
I too had a website, I too had to "maintain" it, and it was around £35/year. I used to have pictures of what I was selling along with videos (made by me) of said items working. It ran for quite a few years before the recession hit, and sales dropped, (it was a very niche market) so I closed everything down.

I found out quite a lot about having a website. When I had it I used MS FrontPage (it's obsolete now) but there are similar programmes out there. I never needed to advertise the website as I found out that search engines look for things called "meta tags" without them google does not see your website too well, they were easy to add, just some text and it went very high in the rankings, hence lots of enquiries. (Lots of enquiries does not mean lots of sales)

I "maintained it" by adding pictures of products that were sold and the end user sent in pictures of it installed and working. I had an enquiry form that people would fill in (answering some generic questions) then I would get an email of the form.
Because it was my domain name it also came with 10 email addresses. Example

S-E-handyperson.co.uk my email address was ahmed@S-E-handyperson.co.uk as opposed to being a generic google address such as
ahmed-S-E-handyperson@gmail.com

The more effort you put in, the more you get back, yes, I did not learn it all in a day, it took a while, but it worked. Nowadays, you can even get websites with templates, so you choose what you want and change it (Usually click and search, or choose and click) so you can change colours, pictures layout etc to what you think looks good.

There are lots out there, but I would never pay anywhere near £30/month to some company for a website that I can do myself.

I also think that advertising on social media is only done by those who can't run a website. Yes drop the odd picture of you/your company on social media, but I wouldn't use any one on SM

NOTE: The website and email info I made up for demonstration purposes.

etaf · Post by **etaf** » Tue Dec 05, 2023 7:46 pm

I get 5-10 emails aday about websites, how the one i setup for a salvage company can be improved , making a website and loads of other rubbish
we sell product via the website and also sale via various social media sites

it usually cost to host a website - i use ionos and over the years have made probably 10 sites on that platform , only 1 running now - most for soletraders who have retired now or nolonger needed the site
to host a wordpress website , which i created and maintain (updates almost every week) and add/amend products every week , is about £12 a month for a basic hosting service - including domain name and email address (minimum storage)

i made one from their selfservice site , so an admin with a little training couple of hours max could maintain and update a monthly news letter , themselves- which worked well, more expensive but easy to do with there software

if you decide to go down that route - make sure you fully understand whats actually included in the price and what they are actually going to make for you

Neelix · Post by **Neelix** » Tue Dec 05, 2023 10:26 pm

Having your own website has its ups and downs. I’ve never paid more for any optimisation

The ups is to promote yourself locally and give yourself credibility.

The downs are that you get calls from people wanting prices without seeing the work. Also I get lots of people offering SEO services which gets really tedious because most of it is spam and as they change their addresses, it’s impossible to block them.

fin · Post by **fin** » Mon Dec 25, 2023 5:11 pm

ive just paid £180 again for a website. ive never even bloody looked at it

i needed to approve what they had made for me and then theyd link it up or whatever it is that they do.

sure ive paid it every year for 3 or 4 years now too

ive also got a standard website too

paulfinnonjoinery.co.uk

but it just is set to link to my facebook page which im locked out of for some mad reason now.

i find that i get basically tagged on peoples facebook posts regarding joinery jobs.

now i put a lot of stuff on insta and then share it to facebook also. And ive got a youtube channel but theres very little on there. I think ill dig out the details for that website anyway and atleast make some use of it. but i wouldnt be surprised if facebook/insta and youtube are the way forwards

Someone-Else · Post by **Someone-Else** » Mon Dec 25, 2023 9:16 pm

fin wrote: ↑Mon Dec 25, 2023 5:11 pmive just paid £180 again for a website

I found an invoice from last month, the total is for the whole year.

: inv.jpg (85.35 KiB) Viewed 13194 times

paul8685 · Post by **paul8685** » Mon Oct 07, 2024 6:21 pm

I've found that building a website is just the first step. What really makes a difference is how well it's promoted. A site without proper traffic won't bring in new clients. Instead of just focusing on getting the site up, you might want to think about how you'll drive visitors to it. Some services help with promotion and ensuring your website reaches the right audience.
For instance, I found a site that builds traffic and conversion by security positions to attract visitors through targeted campaigns. This can be especially helpful if you're trying to stand out in a competitive field. You can check it out here Link removed as possible spam. Mod 2.

Someone-Else · Post by **Someone-Else** » Mon Oct 07, 2024 6:53 pm

paul8685 This thread was started in December 2023, it died on Christmas day. Best check the date a thread was last active before you reply to it.

Neelix · Post by **Neelix** » Tue Oct 08, 2024 9:49 am

IIRC the last fee I paid for my website and email hitting was just over £100 which includes support and any changes