I’ve built 10 websites in 2 weeks.👩💻🎨
How I failed and why I’m lucky to have a Python🍀🐍
👇🧵
In the past I’ve made the experience that owners of small businesses and self-employed people often turn you down instantly when you cold call them to offer web design.🎨
But I had a genius idea!💡🤓
Build a website proactively for businesses who don’t have a website yet.
I just wanted to have something to show in order to start the conversation and to avoid being turned down.
Step 1:
I’ve built a basic website template that enables me to build websites for various businesses fast.⚡
Step 2:
During the past weeks I’ve taken pictures of all name plates, vans and banners of businesses where they don’t mention a website.
Step 3:
I’ve googled the businesses to find out if they really don’t have a website.
If so, I’ve just built a basic one for them.
Step 4:
I’ve called the businesses, told them that I’ve designed a website for them and that I’d like to send it to them in order to get feedback.
(No strings attached)
This worked to some extend for the 1st ~10 businesses.
Meanwhile I’ve >100 photos.
Yesterday I’ve spent ~4 hours just googling businesses to find out if they have a website.
Result: Most of them do have a website already.
Interim Conclusion
Taking pictures of name plates and business vans seems like a waste of time.⏳
…not the picture-taking itself, but rather the process of doing this just to look up businesses on the internet and eventually find out that most of them already have a website.👎
While googling these businesses, I oftentimes ended up on business directory pages.
No website for the business in the business directory usually means they don’t have one.
Pivot
Maybe a minor change, but why not just skip the photo and google steps if I end up in business directories anyway?
That’s why I’m lucky to have a Python!🐍
And that’s what my Python actually looks like:
[scraperImg]
I like structured strategies.
So I’m going to build a small web scraper to search a certain business directory for businesses who don’t have a website entry in the directory.
And eventually I’ll just have a (potentially long) list of businesses who likely don’t have a website yet.
And then I’ll just become a call center…
Because in future I will call the businesses BEFORE I start to build the website.
I’ll claim that I already have a website for them.
(Reminder:
I’m The Flash when it comes to building websites.🦸♂️ So I’ll just send them few hours later after they showed interest. And I’ll just don’t build anything if they aren’t interested.)
50 Websites in 2 Months – Why?
I build 50 websites for real businesses in 2 months.
…to get clients, testimonials and to find a good target group for retainer-based services.
This is going to be the basis to focus more on REAL CODING & building fun, spectacular or boringly useful web apps.
Oh and btw:
I’ve build 10 websites, called the business owners and STILL most of them didn’t want to know about it!😱
Therefore:
- I’m probably super bad in sales calls📞
- I probably need a clear(er) target group🎯
PS:
Please send me DM if you understood the Python Scraper joke before the explanation.😁