10 – Stop Leaving Money on the Table: Our Favorite Web Design Upsells & Downsells

[00:00:00] What up y’all? Welcome to the Web Design Empire where we share stories and strategies to help you build your web design empire from a side gig to multiple six fix. I’m John, joined by Kelly. We’re full-time freelance web designers who’ve. Escape. The real world broke up with our jobs, our bosses, our cubicles, our insecurities, and our commutes over 15 years ago, and we haven’t looked back.
I feel like you add a new one in every time. I’m sorry, I don’t, you’re still going. I know that, that one, uh, you know, have I broken up with all my securities? Probably not. Probably not. But we’re also course creators. Web design business coaches, web design store owners. Kelly owns Airbnbs. I’m a touring professional musician.
Well, sometimes professional, sometimes amateur. All that to say. We are building our empires. Today we’re talking about [00:01:00] upsells and downsells. I was gonna try to get clever and be like, what’s up with upsells and how to get down with downsells. I still worked it in, I guess, but yeah. There you go. I like it.
How you doing, Kelly? What’s up? What’s going on? Doing good. I have another dance competition to go to this weekend, so don’t be jealous there. I did do some cool, I did something cool with my own web design business this week. Probably 10 years or so, overdue, but it’s just one of those things you get stuck in your own processes and you’re like, oh, I’ll change it someday.
But anyway, I finally have my clients going to a. Support form to fill out instead of just emailing me directly. I feel like this was the next step in, I don’t know, best practice slash taking myself off of every piece of every part of my business. So, I was kind of dreading doing that, obviously that’s why I put it off for so long.
But it’s been great. And even my support person even she’s like, oh my God, this is so much better. And you added a, like a dev [00:02:00] person, right?
Sort of. Oh, I did. Or, that was a few weeks. It’s been going on for probably close to a month, but yeah. Yeah. K design has just grown up, making big moves. Again, I’m a little overdue. But yeah, I have a dev back end person helping with the hosting side and just anything that comes up with that because it’s certainly not my forte.
And so when anything does come up, like a site goes down or there’s like a plugin, conflict, , something like that. I just now send all those to him, who’s, got a lot of experience with PHP and servers and stuff that I don’t, so he’s far more efficient at it, and it takes all of that off my plate.
And same on my side. Like we’re actually in the early stages of redoing our website. Or at least, massaging it, let’s say the, the refresh.
The refresh, yeah. But I feel like, through our break into web mentoring that we do. Yes, yes. That sometimes we take our own advice and we’re like, , I know. It’s funny. It’s like, do as we say, not as we do. ‘Cause there’s a lot [00:03:00] of times, especially in my case where, I mean, you have a team at this point, so you had to create some of these, efficiencies and processes along the way.
Like you, you just had to, there’s no way to move forward without that. And so now that I’m finally bringing on. Some more, what’s the word? Stable helpers. , It just really makes sense to get that into place now before we create more bad habits or go backwards. So yeah, this is something that has been on my list for a very long time and I don’t know what I’ve been waiting for.
, ‘Cause it’s been great. We had a gig last night. It was for a big insurance company. And, man, everything about it just reminded me why I’m so glad I’m not working for a corporation anymore.
Everyone had on the, my first gig was insurance, so I feel that hard. Yeah. Everyone had the same t-shirt on. ’cause they’re like, of course , they’re launching a new brand. Thing. And so everyone had to wear their shirt. I’m surprised they didn’t make us wear the shirts. Actually, a little surprised they didn’t [00:04:00] make us wear the shirts.
And then the announcements was by this gal who you could tell she’s been the lead secretary for probably 25 years. Oh gosh. Because she was bless. Her, she was very direct. And you know, everybody listen up. Tomorrow you’re gonna get three emails and you need to read them all top to bottom.
And the first email is gonna be from our CEO. The next email is all about the new branding and how you and the new tone that you need to write to your email. Did you hold up your little sign in the in the corner? Like if you want out of this BS give me a call break into web.com. Totally, totally. Okay. Oh yeah, that’s hard to hear.
Anyway. Well, anyway, but you know what, if you wanna become a successful freelancer and stay a successful freelancer, you need to be able to upsell and downsell. You can’t just throw one offering out there. Yes. So let’s, let’s dive in here. Yeah, let’s talk about upsells. And unlike upsells, you know, creating support forms and getting the right helpers in place, [00:05:00] this is something I’m actually pretty good at, I think.
Do we need to define what upsells and downsells are, or is that just obvious? Is that innate? It’s basically just adding value for the client slash revenue for yourself, right?
Mm-hmm. And that’s usually on the front end of the project. And then a downsell would be, nine times out of 10 if someone doesn’t. Go forward with a project that has to do with price. Even if they give you a different excuse, it’s likely price. Agreed. And so the down sell is the lower priced, version that you don’t pull out in the front end.
It’s until the, project is declined or they say, oh, that’s too much, or, oh, we’re gonna go different direction or whatever. That’s when you can pull out the down sell. Okay. So for upsells, the first thing I was gonna say, which I wouldn’t even call it an upsell ’cause I know you guys require it and I.
Generally do, it’s not really something I talk about as far as it’s an option, but the, of course, the hosting and maintenance plans, not necessarily an upsell, but good old recurring revenue. That’s what that ding, ding was for. And something we talk about in every episode. [00:06:00] So we had to just throw it out there.
Well, but it was. in both of our cases was it was an upsell for you for a long time. It it was an upsell for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. And then there’s, upsells that you can attach to that, hosting and maintenance plan. For example, we used to just have hosting plans or just the maintenance plans and then, at one point mm-hmm.
John combined both of those. Mine were always combined, but then I know artillery has, . Like upsells on top of their maintenance plans for, I forget what, but I know you’ve mentioned them before. What were those? We have a Google search console set up and management’s right? Yeah, that’s one of ’em.
Website speed set up and management. Via Nitro pack. And then, extra hosting space, because we have a lot of sites Oh yeah. That, that go beyond , each of our hosting tiers gig come with, yeah. Lowest. We have three tiers and the lowest one is 10 gig limit, then 20 gig, and then 40 gig.
And, we have some sites combined with their staging [00:07:00] sites that get pretty massive. A time lapse video site, for example. Oh yeah. Gets pretty massive. ’cause they wanna store the videos on their account. And then we do have a couple clients that they’ve outgrown that and they have their own dedicated, right.
Google Cloud server. I have one of those as well. Yeah. It’s like, it’s just time you get your own. But on the, as far as hosting and maintenance goes, and like that side of the house, those are the three upsells that we have is, we used to have AI on there, that’s right. That’s, that’s kind of pointless now. ’cause everyone could just Yes, it’s everywhere. Yeah, it’s everywhere. Some other value that I add to mine is I monitor uptime.
I know a lot of people do like external backups. I just rely on the hosting backups. I know I’m terrible. I guess same. I, no, I used to do that too. I used to back ’em up to Dropbox, but then the problem was once the sites get big enough, it would no longer back up into one zip file, and so Oh, gotcha.
Yeah, it would split it up into like six of ’em, and it got to the point where I was like, I don’t even know if I could restore this if I wanted to. Oh my gosh. Yeah. [00:08:00] That gets messy. We stopped. We stopped doing that. I do malware scans as well, once a week.
I just think it sounds good. But I mean, it is proactive. It does add some value. , I’ve never once had a malware scan come back negative. I’ll just go ahead and throw that out there. There’s also a broken link checker as part of I use Manage wp. So I’m just kind of listing off some of their features, that.
I can see being useful. But typically, SEO companies take care of that stuff, so that’s not something that I’ve ever integrated. And then of course, time for edits, time for actual work on the site. Have three plans as well, and John mentioned his, and, there’s varying levels of hours of time that go along with each of those.
So that’s a really great upsell, especially if you have clients that are reaching out. Every month, it’s a very easy upsell to say, Hey, instead of paying $90 an hour, a hundred dollars an hour, whatever, upsell to, or you don’t use the word upsell, my bad, upgrade to the, next plan.
So you get like mm-hmm a discounted hour of time automatically included. It’s usually a pretty, pretty easy [00:09:00] upsell there. Okay. So I feel like we did our duty of talking about website and maintenance plans. Got it. Always good. And at the risk of regurgitating the entire multiple revenue stream episode, I feel like it’s a lot of these are the same ones, but,
They’re great. So let’s go through some of these. Mm-hmm. Yeah, let’s do it that I know you guys do as well. , Copywriting, right? That’s a really easy upsell that goes right along with web design. It’s something that John has incorporated into their packages for a while now, and I just finally started doing it.
This is one of those things that I fought for a long time and then finally embraced. , Because with AI it makes it, b better slash again, I think that’s a tri, that’s a tricky space, but there’s like a love hate relationship with copywriting and ai, right? We’ve talked about that before. I was gonna say we should, double click on copywriting, and spend a little bit of time on it because,
I feel like this is one of the main ones outside of hosting. Copywriting is kind of a newer one to add, but it solves like the biggest [00:10:00] pain in the web design building process, right? The pain for every web design waiting content.
Waiting for the content. So I’m curious what you do. We have a good, better, best set up, right? So good is like, Hey client, bring your own content. Better is, hey, we have a junior copywriter. We’ll call her and she’s going to write copy for you using chat GPT, and she’s gonna humanize it.
We’re not just gonna mm-hmm. Go with a hundred percent of what chat GPT says or whatever AI language model we’re using. And then the best option is to hire. This gal that we work with named Brittany, she’s got her own business and we send her quite a bit of work and she’s pretty well integrated into our team.
So yeah, she’s not our employee. She’s not right, she’s not on a, on a retainer or any type situation. But we do send her quite a bit of work. I don’t even know if we have a referral set up with her. Actually, we should. If we don’t, you should. Anyway. So that’s our good, better, [00:11:00] best setup. What are you doing?
I. Yeah. I have been sending people to copywriters for a while, and so I had a couple copywriters that, I mean I’ve used Brittany before. She’s great. She actually recommended someone else when she was on maternity leave, so I’ve used another professional one, but it literally added on like six months to that project.
So it’s a. It’s an undertaking because those pros, they’re gonna do it right. They’re gonna strip it all down. They’re gonna start over with your messaging. They’re gonna do like focus groups and talk to different members of the team to make sure they’re getting this well-rounded, all the things.
So again, it’s great. That’s definitely the best option, but it just adds on time. And of course resources ’cause those are not cheap. So that’s something, I do always have a copywriter, if you want to someone to write your content, I will send them like three options , and they just talk to them.
Something I’ve just started offering is doing it myself, me and my helper. , Utilizing, chat GPT . They still need to provide, something like bullet points or a starting point or whatever, some kind of guts to [00:12:00] work with. Or we’ll just, start with their existing website if it already existed, or a brochure, anything.
Send us whatever, and then we’ll take it from there. And then of course, we’re expecting some edits, but it does move the project along as opposed to just sitting there and waiting. For content. So it is a great upsell, mm-hmm. That people generally take advantage of and it’s pretty easy to incorporate, because of tech.
Yay. , And it gives you an out. , Let’s say they don’t use the copywriter you suggested and they’re not using your. Junior copywriter with Cha Batt, they’re gonna provide it themselves. Well, now it’s on them. So now if the project drags, we start charging for hosting, like a month or two after we signed the project.
Yeah, I do too. It kicks in. And so , then they’re like, why am I paying for hosting when my site’s not up? It’s like, well, it would’ve been up if you would’ve gone with our copywriter, but Sure. Not so. It gives you a little bit of an out, not that I would ever say it that directly to a client. I would not say it like that, , it covers your base a little bit.
It makes a point. Yeah. And then [00:13:00] depending on what your background is or if you have any partnerships already set up with. Adjacent, industries to web design, you know, branding, logo design. Of course SEO is a huge upsell. I could sell the snot outta that.
If I could actually find a decent, if there’s any SEO people out there that can work with small businesses for under $500 a month, please gimme a call because everyone, good luck, everyone would sign up for that. I’ve tried white labeling, I’ve tried partnership referrals that have been great until they weren’t.
Gosh, I feel like I’ve tried everything except just starting my own, kind of SEO arm of my own business and just doing it the way I want it. But that’s not my specialty. But anyway, SEO is definitely a perfect, upsell for web design, but
it’s a different skillset. We’ve worked with like three different ones. Oh yeah. That all they start out great. They start out way more than that for me.
Yeah. Then at some point they promise the [00:14:00] world and they underdeliver. It’s again, if anyone could come into that industry and actually flip it on its head and not overcharge and overdeliver and just be honest, it would revolutionize the industry. But it’s, a really crappy industry in my opinion.
They’d make a, they’d make a killing. They would, they, I know. I know. Anyway, hit me up if any of y’all, do that. ’cause I got business to send you. I just don’t have the time to, create an SEO business, at this moment and I wouldn’t enjoy that kind of work anyway.
If you can find a great partner and or. Outsource that or a referral partnership where you’re getting a kickback, that would be an ideal solution. Ads is another one that, kind of goes hands hand in hand with that. Google my business setup I think is, that’s something I’ve done a handful of times, just ’cause I knew the client really needed it.
It’s not something I generally offer, but it’s really low hanging fruit and it’s a really easy upsell if that’s something that they don’t already have set up and it’s. Easy to do. I [00:15:00] usually tell them how to do it, but then they’re still like, can you just do it? I’m like, okay, a thousand bucks. Email campaigns, that’s something you’ve mentioned in the past.
Oh man, yes. Perhaps setting that up for clients. Again, that’s an ongoing thing that you can set up and charge for every month.
But I think the other important piece of upsells is like when to throw it out there. Hmm. , You don’t wanna wait until the project’s in full swing and then be like, Hey, we could do the, like, I’m a huge believer in,, once the estimate is approved and agreed on, even if they try to bring up, some scope creep stuff, like mm-hmm.
Squash it until the agreed upon project is done. , So I don’t like upselling after the project’s agreed on once it’s complete. And there’s something that makes sense that, that you’ve learned about during the process , of creating their site. Then sell that. Otherwise, a lot of times I will just literally have an add-on chunk on the estimate or the proposal mm-hmm.[00:16:00]
Of add-ons. Yep. And they’re not included in the total price,, you have to be really careful and you don’t wanna offer them things that are not relevant or aren’t actually adding value to this particular client’s needs. So, you know, Be smart and for each, particular project, if there’s a couple things that make sense that you do offer as upsells, go ahead and throw them out there.
’cause ideally they would be part of that initial project agreement. I’m in agreement with you. We pitched the relevant add-ons that we think the big ones, like copywriting. Mm-hmm. And hosting what tier they’re gonna be on. Yeah. As part of the initial proposal. Copywriting too.
Yes, for sure. , I agree. Getting that dialed in and then getting through the project and then launching it and then being like, Hey, now that your website’s launched, right? Yeah. There might be some upsells at that point, but yeah, try not to get into the upsells in the middle of a project.
’cause that’s just gonna make it drag on forever, potentially. , And I just realized I completely forgot my other main. [00:17:00] Upsell that. I just glossed over it. I got all excited about recurring revenue, features and integrations, and I think this is an kind of an obvious one that, that we generally will plug into the proposal without thinking about it, but these are technically add-ons.
Things like online bill pay that comes up. Quite a bit. There’s a job listings plugin that I’ve put on a lot of sites that takes, some setup. So it’s an add-on cost to kind of set up this plugin and integrate it. Event calendar. Again, love, hate relationship with that. But it is, a need a lot of times.
Even a course, I’ve done a couple courses for clients where I’ve set up a plugin and that’s kind of a massive add-on, but those are, just giving some ideas here, just brainstorming. Those are some of the features that if in your initial discussions with the client, if it makes sense, because a lot of times.
What they’re asking for doesn’t even meet their needs. So if you can kind of read between the lines and be like, oh, okay, well this plugin would make a lot of sense for you, or what you’re talking about is basically a [00:18:00] course, you know, we should just go there. So kind of guide them to, , something that makes a lot more sense for them then perhaps what they’re asking for.
For the course. This is an interesting upsell as well. I’m doing this for the first time, a revenue share model with an online course. So instead of, ’cause I would charge quite a bit to set up a course, right? I mean, we’ve set up a course together. It’s a, it’s an undertaking.
There’s a lot there. It’s just a lot of, I don’t know. It’s tedious. And so for this particular project, we’ve decided that I will like, host and set up. The course and maintain, the stuff as we go, if there’s any edits or, add this video here, whatever. And then I’m just going to take a percentage of the revenue that she makes off the course, as my ongoing payment.
So doing that, coming up, we’ll see how that works. But that’s, how are you, how are you seeing the revenue on that? What do you mean seeing? What do you mean to know that you’re getting your cut? Is it just in the back end? Because , I’ll have full access to the entire [00:19:00] everything.
Yeah. Got you. Okay. Gotcha. Okay, fine. Yeah. I was thinking 15 to 20%. Haven’t, haven’t quite, dialed in that yet, but yeah. This girl’s like a social media queen, like I know she has a huge following, so. , Could be great, could be a total waste of time. I will fill you guys in once we get further.
And then the other upsell that I, again, I don’t know how I skipped this chunk, was, a redesign. This is something, probably once a year I’ll go through my, all my clients and be like, all right, who is desperately, needing a redesign? Not, I shouldn’t say desperately, but anything that’s existed for, over five years, should probably be redesigned.
And if they don’t go for the redesign, then I got a downsell for that too I tell folks, one year equals three website or one, one website here equals three. It’s right. Three years. So I’m like, so if your site’s five years old, it’s really 15 years old, we’re actually about to launch, another upsell.
’cause we do a lot of sites for, physicians that are starting their own [00:20:00] practice. Nice. And they want, what is it? I, I’m blanking on the name of it. It’s a plugin user way, I think it’s called. Oh, yeah, yeah. The a DA thing. A DA. There we go. Not hipaa, but Aada. A A DA. Compliance. Like I said, I had a show last night.
I’m a little, uh, I’m a little out of it and I’m talking too much, so, yeah, no, I love it. I love it. A DA compliance. So we’re, and we’re still trying to iron out like. Do we just refer folks to this company and be an affiliate for them? Or do we want probably, or that’s what’s, that’s what I’m leaning toward.
Yeah. Or do we want to , buy it on their behalf, client’s behalf and then just upcharge the client? Like develop license or something? Yeah. Sure. , Let’s say it costs six, $9 a month. Hey client, you can go to user way and get it for six, $9 a month.
Here’s our affiliate link. Or if you don’t wanna worry about it, we’ll pay for it for you and we’ll make sure every year it’s renewed, but it’s $99 a month if you go through us. Like something like that, you know? Yeah. Which seems like, yep. But you don’t just wanna add $30 a month for nothing, you know, you kind of want No, just justify that a little bit.[00:21:00]
So. , No, that’s a great one because I feel like a DA is gonna become more and more of a thing. . I don’t love it. Agreed. Agreed. I feel like that’s a whole other agreed episode we could probably go into, , but yeah, I think that’s a great upsell for sure. ’cause it is kind of a standard thing that you can offer multiple people.
Especially those healthcare clients or the government, , related websites. Those are the ones that have to have be a DA compliant, or they can get sued. Found that out the fun way. So. Do you have any examples of of upsells? Any stories of, of projects that you were able to upsell or does anything come to mind
I have one story. Okay. So we did a, we did a website for this custom home builder. Yeah. And. Our hosting plants, we, they’re now called startup growth and Prime. Prime, like transformers. And, startup is $59 a month. Comes with no edit time. Just your basic hosting. [00:22:00] And then the growth plan is $99 a month.
It comes with one hour a month of support. Time does not roll over, no rolling over the same Verizon in 2002. And then , prime is , 2 99 a month. It comes with more storage space, but it comes with, quote unquote unlimited edits. But then there’s a little star that says up to four hours.
So, oh, So not unlimited at all? Very limited. We’ve never ran into the four hour thing. And you know what , if a client did hit that go over four hours, I would do it. But if it was like every month they’re going over four, I’d be like, okay, we gotta talk here. Yeah, maybe some of these should be projects.
So anyway, yeah, this Home Builder’s website, which is like the smallest website, it’s like five pages, you know. And she’s like, I, we wanna be on the prime plan. At the time it was called Platinum. They were silver, gold and platinum, which were terrible names. But I’ve learned my lesson story for another time.
So they’ve been on this prime plan for I don’t [00:23:00] know, at this like almost a year. And, they haven’t rung in one time. About anything. And so I, I’m feeling a little bad about it, and so I email them, it, it’s a couple, and I’m like, Hey, uh. Maybe we should put you , on the middle plan, the $99 a month plan.
’cause you haven’t used any of this and anything. And she was like, no, we wanna stay on the 2 99 plan. I wanna know that when I need you, you’re gonna drop everything and work on my issue and I bet you will. I said, okay. All right. They have never. Still never.
And it’s been like, yeah, but the day they do, you know, you’re getting that done in like 32 seconds. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I’ll wanna drop everything. Even like I could be at church Sunday morning and I’ll, and I’ll be like, I gotta get this done. You’re in the delivery room with your wife with baby number three, and you’re like, Hey, but honey, oh, stop.
Don’t put that out in the world. I We’re done at two. We’re done at two. I am not getting a third row. And in the Bluey cartoon, there’s only [00:24:00] two kids. There’s not third. I don’t want them to feel like that. Oh, you’re right. What’s your story? Well, , I have a couple. Mm, great. One, one is , a bonus upsell here, which is multiple websites. , I’ve had this actually come up quite a bit. Recently, like you guys, I also have a lot of healthcare ish kind of sites, and a lot of them are starting to get into either like an aesthetics kind of, business or a.
Clinical research , but like, they kind of have these offshoots. So for example, one’s like a p big pediatric group in Lincoln and they have this research chunk, which really doesn’t go with like, it’s a, it’s really a separate whole thing. And they have very specific things that they’re focusing on over there, not to mention very specific keywords.
So to have them together, a lot of times, from a marketing perspective, that’s why it makes sense to split ’em up is like if their keywords are either fighting each other. Or, yeah. Anyway, it was just two completely different audiences, [00:25:00] right? Like, here is for parents, here is for you know,, big pharma essentially.
And then same with aesthetics. I have an eye care client who’s , they’re like eye docs, eye surgeons, and then they have this aesthetics arm, which, they do like Botox and fillers and all, so totally different audiences. So in those cases it was a pretty easy sell to do.
A, a second website as opposed to trying to jam it into one. So that’s one example. And then, I’ve had that same thing happen where, I guess kind of the opposite of your example, but I’ve had clients that, that want to do the bare minimum plan and then they do reach out every single month with an update and I’m like, Hey, this, you know, I’m charging you basically double here for what you could be paying for the, upgraded plan and which maybe I shouldn’t, I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t do that, but it just makes sense to be on, you know.
The the correct plan for them. We’re honest. Yeah. We like to keep it, keep it real. We’re very honest. So that’s something I’ve done a few times is upgraded [00:26:00] people against my best interest, which is wild. Okay, so down sells. Should we jump into down sells? Yes. But first, yes. Oh, a sponsor. Start or scale, a self-employed web design, business and lifestyle you love.
We break into web.com. How long ago do we start breaking into web? It’s been a while. Uh, 2000, uh, 16 is when it officially launched. Yeah. Yeah. It’s been a minute. It’s been so, it’s been so cool to, folks, I’ll be 18 folks go from working a job to freelancing full-time as web designers. And so like I mentioned already last night, it’s like, man, I’m glad I made that jump.
At one point I was in that crowd. At one point I was working at Arbor Day wearing the plant tree shirt, you know? Wasting away on a Friday afternoon just trying to figure out what am I doing with my life? And I thought [00:27:00] I would like this better. Why don’t I like this better?
Why am I not content? So anyway, if that’s you, hop into break into web.com to get started on learning how to build websites. And you know what, if you’re already building websites and join our mentoring program, and Kelly and I will join you on your journey to six figs and multiple six figs. We’ve done it.
We want to help you. All right, down sells. Down sells. Actually, I should have started with, oh, I should have started with the mentoring in that, in that thing I just did. Oh yeah. I should have started with the mentoring and then down downs sold into, oh, there you go. The course. Dang it. All right, start over.
No. Okay. Okay. Downsells. Um, I think there’s a big like, kind of warning to put at the top of down sells, and that is don’t ever. Like discount your stuff. Like that’s not what the down sell is. Oh, I like that. , When we say down sell, it’s not wait for them to say, oh, that’s too [00:28:00] expensive.
And you’d be like, oh, well, uh, I can, like, let’s do a 25% discount. You know, like, don’t, don’t be desperate. That’s not what we’re talking about here. We don’t want to devalue our services. Agreed. Agreed. Um, yeah,, It’s a big deal. Yeah. I, the one line I put said. Don’t just lower the price. You gotta take something away.
Yeah. Yeah. So price integrity is what we’re kind of saying, but Yes, definitely. But go ahead, you know what you’re worth. , I have a slam dunk down sell that works every time. Okay. , I’m probably being, uh, a probably breaker. A back forth breaker. I can’t, I can’t think of the last time it didn’t work.
But yeah, I always lead with my, well, depending on how many pages they need, but generally most of the clients would fit , my standard, five to 10 page website package. So that’s what I always lead with. And then of course, if they need e-commerce or like membership crap, that’s a different level.
But I typically lead with this, the standard package. And if they come back and say. You know, like, ugh, that’s too, [00:29:00] that’s more than we are, have budgeted, or that’s more than we were expecting, or whatever. Mm-hmm. Or again, a lot of times they’ll make up something else and they’ll say, it’s not about price, but that, oh, you know, this isn’t the right time.
We’re gonna wait, whatever. It’s still probably about price. Yes. Um, and that’s when I come in with, the one page website, and it is, like I said, a slam dunk, , it’s a tough sell. If they already have a five page website, then they’re obviously not gonna wanna go to one. But if it’s someone who’s just getting started, they don’t have an online presence yet. , It is a slam dunk, classic, and,
yeah, people go for it. , And the best part is, I could do one page websites all day. I love them all day. They’re easy, they’re fast. I can literally get them done in a day. They follow a pretty like standard format. It’s just a win-win win. And then you still get the recurring revenue ’cause it’s still getting hosted.
So that’s my favorite. Do you guys have a favorite, do you even do one page sites? I don’t even know. It’s like, we can just start with the one page. You know, that’s not, if the full site’s not quite enough there. Let’s start with the one [00:30:00] page and then you can use this one page website to grow your business over the next year or two.
But as you’re growing your business, make sure to set aside some resources for that full website that we’re gonna do in a couple. And that’s the best part is that, with the platform we use WordPress, they won’t have to start over, so they’ll essentially still be paying, when they are ready for those other pages, you’ll get to that main project price, mm-hmm.
But you don’t have to start over. So it’s still a win-win win. It’s the downsell that turns into an upsell. Go. ’cause the up upsell later is the full site. And why would we do this? Why would we do this? I’ll tell you why we do this. We would do this one page website down sell option to get folks on our reoccurring revenue.
Yes, I do. I will say I do have like a hidden lower price for my one page websites. Just ’cause it’s hard to justify like. Hosting one page for 80 bucks a month, so I do Got you. 49. I I have a secret. $49 a [00:31:00] month plan Just for a secret menu. There’s a secret menu at the website. There is my downsell menu. You won’t find us anywhere.
Yeah, no, that’s agreed. Yeah. For us, the first down sell is they have to decide a, a new client between a semi-custom website or a custom website. Right. But in either case, the word custom’s in there, do they ever, like, do they ever be like, what’s the difference?
Oh yeah, of course. Does that confuse people? Of course. Okay. No, ’cause ’cause basically Jake tells ’em, Hey, here’s John, he’s the founder of the company. He’s got this many years experience in designing. If you want him to work on the project, it falls into the senior custom design.
Level, and then everyone else is semi custom for the time being. Although one of our designers, I don’t know, she’s really great. She’s probably better than me. She should probably be, she’s really good at the senior level. She’s not better than you, but so that’s the first that in some ways she is for sure.
But , that’s the first down sell would be, Hey, if you can’t afford the custom, let’s [00:32:00] do semi custom. Custom, you know? And then if they can’t, if that’s even out of the question, then it’s down to the one pager. Absolutely. Okay. Yep. We’ll do ’em. And , I should also point out that on both John and my on artillery and K designs, on our initial contact form, fill out the form.
Right? , There is, they have t-shirts that say that. Mm-hmm. , There is a. Uh, what do you wanna call it? a qualifier, a dropdown of what is your budget? And so that’s the first time that they’re gonna see any indication of our prices. We don’t have our prices on the actual website, like with our services, but we have it on that contact form.
And so their first option is, I believe, under $5,000. I think that’s what it is on my site. I’m not sure if you guys have something else. Um, five, 500. 2,500. Okay. So I think mine is just under 5,000 and then whatever. So there’s just like three options and then like over 10,000 and so that’s one way to, just to get rid of the tire kickers right away.
But at least at that [00:33:00] point, you know that they’ve seen a number and should have a decent budget. But I’ll still get people, even though mine starts , at, it says under 5,000, I’ll still get people who are hoping for, that a thousand dollars website that isn’t gonna happen, so.
Mm-hmm. This is what I love that down sell. I wanna ask you if this happens to you. This is what I love. I love , when you get the gravity form notification email that someone filled out your, your get started form. Right. Okay. Okay. Okay. And they’re like, and they mark the top one, like 20 grand plus, and you’re like, oh.
Sweet. And then you read it. It’s like, Hey, I’m a developer. I know it’s, did that happen to you recently, John? And I’m like, you know what? I get it. They’re like. I want them to read this, so I’m gonna mark it works. The 20 works. I’m gonna Mark works the 20 grand plus one anyway. Yeah, yeah. But we do, I do have legit inquiries that do pick a higher Oh yeah.
Oh yeah. A higher price point. Which is a question we’ve gotten before too. Okay. Some other downsell [00:34:00] ideas. I don’t necessarily do all these. I’m curious, John, if you guys do any of these, I know you don’t do this first one, which is a payment plan. That’s, I know that went wrong for you guys, but that is.
Away, you know, it doesn’t have to be a year or whatever, but you can break up that payment into smaller monthly payments, whether that’s over three months or six months. But the risk you run into is they go outta business before they finish paying and you are out, which is rare. That’s so rare, right? That is rare.
No, that, that is so rare. And then the only other one time that I did a website for, service trade was a massage therapist and I launched his website and, uh, two months later he moved to California. Ah, bro. I just feel like those are you massages? I feel like those are rare things.
Like, you know, like, yeah, like it is, so don’t, so don’t listen to me when I say don’t do a payment plan. That’s true. And don’t do a service trade. That is, I have done that a few times. The payment plan, and, it’s in those cases it was suggested by the client like, Hey, can we break this [00:35:00] up? And then I’m like, yeah.
That’s cool. We can make that work. Or you can phase out the project into smaller chunks, , which we have a payment plan, which it’s called deposit, and then pay the rest. There’s a, there’s a payment plan, you know? Correct, correct. Anyway, sorry, go ahead. But yeah, phasing out projects, I’ve done this.
Several times as well where it’s like, okay, let’s start with , the standard five page site today, or even the one pager today. And then, in six months, we’ll add on the rest and then we can tackle that, you know, the big, that the bucket list mm-hmm.
In another year or two when there’s more budget. So you can certainly do the phase out thing. We’ve done that. Yep. Yep. Done that too. And then of course you can use, and I think you guys have done this, or at least used to, like a, there’s like the template based based option, whether it’s a predefined layout with Divi or.
Maybe a child theme from be superfly.com, I don’t know. Mm-hmm. Check them out. Oh yeah, absolutely. But something like that where you’re basically saying, Hey, [00:36:00] pick out which design you want. We’ll put in, your content, your font, your colors, your logo, but it’s basically gonna be this design. We don’t call, and that saves a lot of time.
We don’t call ’em templates, we call them, professional, pre-designed. Uh,, Sec, um, um, assets. Of course you do semi, semi custom, barely custom semi. I get it. I get it. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Another idea for a down sell, and I’ve done this in the past, not as a down sell, I used to actually offer this on my website, but I think it’s a great down sell is like doing some sort of website audit or consultation.
So , if they can’t do. You know, the standard website package, or they can’t do the one page website. Even you can say, you know what, let me do an analysis of your existing website and or let me put together , a consultation package or a brainstorm, you know, idea package of what I think you should have.
Based on what I know about your, business so far, as far as what you should do online, and sell that. And that could be, maybe even half the [00:37:00] price of what you do a one page website for just to offer something. Again, I wouldn’t pull that out unless they would weren’t able to do anything else, I enjoy doing those. I just did one for a client the other day who, he has a website in Shopify and he is like, Hey, can you go in and customize this and make it look great? I’m like, Nope, sure can’t.
But I will give you an analysis of what I think you should hire someone to do. And he was totally grateful for that. I will say this. One thing I loved doing, I absolutely loved doing, was , when one of our coach students, sent in, mentees, sent in and tease, sent in a design they were working on for a client.
Yeah. And I love, I loved going through that thing. That was a lot of fun. You, you are thorough. I love a lot of fun. And, and yeah. After I watched John’s video on his critique on her website, I was like, man, I really want to send you all my websites, but at the same time, I don’t, I don’t because you to destroyed.
That’s how I feel destroyed. You were great. You were, you were very kind. But I [00:38:00] was like, holy moly. That was thorough. Yes, you were thorough. That’s how I feel about, like, I would not wanna send you any sites that I wrote copy for or any kind of stuff. Don’t even read copy John. I literally copy and pasted.
That’s the one thing I don’t enjoy about. This new like AI generated add-on is I actually have to read it and like go through it. But yeah, I typically just copy and paste stuff. I very rarely read content that I’m putting on to websites unless I have to generate it myself. And guess what, you know what, I guess, and I bet a lot of website visitors are along that same line.
So, you know what, definitely just do two, three sentences. Just do little, two, little snack size. Snacks anyway. Well, and then tell those SEO people the. Put it somewhere else. Nobody wants to read eight paragraphs about you. Okay. I’m sorry. You might wanna read eight paragraphs about you, but no one else does.
So anyway, another episode. Okay. Well the only other thing I was gonna say I had mentioned like a redesign is a great upsell when it comes to, I don’t even know if that’s the right [00:39:00] word. , Would you call redesign an upsell? Kind of. I mean, they are existing clients, and I should say, what I typically do for redesigns is give them like a 20% off of the, or 15, it used to be 20, I think I changed to 15, 15% off of the design process part of my projects.
, And that’s what the redesign price would be. So it’s still like a significant, project. And so if they don’t want to do. The redesign then my downsell there is a refresh, which just sounds cute, doesn’t it? , Where you’re, it does basically , keeping the layout, basically what I do for those is adjust the headers and the footers, because usually
that’s where the. Trendy stuff kind of comes and goes the quickest, I think. , Or just , little areas like maybe adding a little bit of animation to some photos or whatever, like just whatever a fresh, modern thing is. Just making those little quick refresh edits on each page. And so it’s a much smaller project, but it still kind of brings them to date as opposed to having their five-year-old website.
It at least helps a little bit. [00:40:00] So that’s another down sell. A light summer refresh, you know, a light summer refresh. Right? A spritz. A little spritz. Yeah. Springtime. Perfect. Time to sell. You know, I, I have one last thing on here that I forgot about for upsells and, oh no, we’re going back to upsell.
It’s gonna, seem kind of weird, but, oh boy. Domain names for your clients. Oh, okay. Okay. So we, we have a $49 a year. Domain, yearly domain management, renewal service. Um, and it doesn’t matter if the domain’s 1499 a year or 1999, we’re gonna pay for it every year to make sure it’s always renewed and there’s always a card on file that’s gonna renew that thing that way you don’t have the site went down.
Why? And it’s got the whole like DNS error and you’re like, uh mm-hmm. Someone forgot. Well, the other huge bonus there is, or, yeah. Is you don’t have to go hunting down their DNS info. If you ever have to make changes, you already have full [00:41:00] access. That, and they can’t go in and mess it up, like they can’t say.
And that I added some, I changed the name servers to, I mean, this website said, uh, ClickFunnels told me to change the name servers, so I changed the name servers. Oh boy. And now our emails don’t work and our website’s down. Why, why? Anyway, um, all that stuff you did, that’s why. So we, we started offering this a few years back.
We have a little over a hundred domains that we do this for. And so, , average price per month on these is between a dollar 50 to a dollar 67. We charge $4 and 8 cents. So we make about $200 a month. Wait, how did you come up with $4 and 8 cents? Oh, that must equal something per year. $49 a year.
Got it. So we make about $200 a month just on that. Like it’s a little sleeper. A little sleeper, a little sleep. It’s a sleeper. Uh, so anyway, that was my last upsell. I told I should tried to upsell everyone to that when I had to [00:42:00] change. Everyone hosts a couple months back. That would’ve been smart. That would’ve been.
Steps, baby. That would’ve. That, that would’ve been the best. Save that for like next decade when I wanna handle that again. Holy cow. . Okay. Last thing about down sells When to downsell. , You wanna offer your main offering first, , and wait until that is. Decline, , and that’s when you would offer the down sell. You don’t wanna show all your cards up front there. All the options. , Don’t pull out that down sell until slash unless they say no to the main offering. ’cause a lot of times they will go for the main offering. True, true, true, true, true. Oh, and I did have a story about, , let’s hear it, a downsell.
This happens quite often. And it’s for, we didn’t even talk about this when it came to downsells, but, for maintenance plans, I will have clients who just want to temporarily shut down their site. For like six months or whatever. For example, I have a client who, , sells winter like ski gear, right?
Yep. And so [00:43:00] right now , spring’s coming and he’s basically out of business for the next six months. And so he was like, can I just shut down my site for six months? And then, , you have to explain, well, if, if you shut it down, then if you don’t wanna pay for hosting, then it just disappears.
I have to like send you a backup and then we’ll have to get a. Back online when he went, like, it’s just a pain. So I just down sold him to, , a lower maintenance plan. , So it’s basically just a one page website right now. We took off everything else. , I just hid it, it’s all drafted. Mm-hmm. , So I put him on the lower maintenance plan.
He’s happy, and I’m happy that I don’t have to bring all that crap back, in a few months because that’s the worst. ’cause I’ve had clients do that too, who don’t go for that. And then they wanna shut it down and then six months later they show up like, Hey, I want my website again. It’s like. And it takes, I just did that last month.
I had to pay site ground 30 bucks to get this thing back online, even though I had a full backup, like it would not work for me. So anyway, that’s something that I have used a downsell often for is actually maintenance plans just to , keep the site online without shutting it down. [00:44:00] I tell clients one year if they want to pause their site, I’m like, we composite for up to one year after that.
With the way technology updates and stuff, you kind of risk it not not coming back online. Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, really, really, probably two years. But I like saying one year to be like, but do you. So you pause it and you keep it hosted. You keep paying for their site ground has a suspend feature so you can just suspend it.
They do, they do. All right. Well that’s good to know, but, but there’s no, like, it’s a site ground page then when you go to their website. Oh, gotcha. So in this particular case, like his website would be gone as opposed to. Okay, so you’re one pager, which you’re better than I am. ’cause I, if I had the client, I would just leave their site up the whole year and be like, yeah, it’s in hibernation mode right now, you know?
But you’re what you, the way you do it is correct. Well, it’s e-commerce. So if I didn’t draft mode all the products, people could technically still find the products and buy them. So we should, it’s win it’s winter somewhere, you know, like [00:45:00] somewhere it’s winter. So anyway. . Some final thoughts and tips when it comes to upsells and downsells, I think we’ve hammered this in, but start with that main offering.
Keep it simple. Don’t offer ’em too many things. You don’t wanna have 25 upsells. All right. Like. Two, three, and make sure that they’re relevant and that they actually add value to the project as opposed to just being this like random, oh, maybe they’ll pay for this. I think that’s the big things, but , don’t overwhelm and then , don’t show that down sell until that main offering’s declined.
And yeah, I think that sums it up. I would say be confident in your original pricing. Don’t be like, yeah, the website’s gonna be 5,000, but don’t worry, I have a, I have, I can do it for less. If, if you, if that’s, yeah, don’t do that. Just don’t let ’em, let ’em sweat it out a bit. Present confidently.
Present your price like this is a good deal. This is how much it’s gonna be. And then let ’em come back to you and you start working from there. , Don’t be unsure , and start to sneak in other possibilities right away. [00:46:00] Have we had a episode on pricing? If not, we should totally do that.
We should totally do one on pricing. Okay. That’d be fun. Let’s put that on a list. Okay. Cool. Alright. Is that, is that, are we good? I think that’s a wrap. That’s our episode on upsells and downsells, or as I say, the right uppers and downers. You like that? You like that one? Thanks for tuning in today, y’all joining us on the Web Design Empire.
Also, check out break into web.com. Learn how you can break away from your daily grind. Become a freelance web designer like us and create the empire, always Ben dreaming of. We’ll see you in the next one. Cheers, y’all.
Cheers y’all.