I've been doing custom software over the past number of years, but haven't gotten over that 'hump' to where I can get out of scramble mode. I've been making somewhere between $5000 and $15,000 a month profit. Its my sole source of income for a family of four in Seattle, which is not a cheap place to live. I've done some pretty cool things. My biggest system was used to file thousands of lawsuits against BP in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
I've started a number of things over the years, but have failed to gain traction for a number of reasons. The last thing I started into was an app for weightlifting. There's a progress thread on it somewhere here that I stopped a while back. I still think its a good idea and kick myself that I didn't have it up and running for the coronavirus. But, I need money now, not sometime, potentially, in the future.
I stumbled into an idea recently that I want to pursue. It won't make me rich, but it will make me stable, and I can use it to springboard into other things. All the software we write is web based, in PHP, which means that we're pretty good at WordPress. I recently built a website for someone on the forum. His marketing company designed the thing, and we implemented it in WordPress. One thing led to another, and I seem to now be in the marketing business. Crossing my fingers that I'm going to close a $50k website deal this week. Regardless of what happens with that deal, I've also taken over the 6 websites this marketing company runs. I'm doing the support and maintenance of it. Anything technical, and any changes to the website will be specified by the marketing company and performed by my team.
What is pretty cool about this is that it lends itself to extreme levels of process development. I've already set up the marketing company with access into Jira, my project mgt system. They will make their requests there. My team will move them along the pipeline and out the other end.
(Custom software is the opposite end of the spectrum, process-wise. Sure, there's a process, but I haven't specialized in an industry, so each new system is very different from each other.)
I know that there are some marketing companies out there that do everything in-house. There is a decent percentage of them, though, that have no interest in doing the technical side of things. That is where my team comes in.
The offering:
1) Technical support, maintenance and site updates: $225/month/site for a standard small to medium business website. Think: 15 pages or less, pizza chain, custom home builder, etc.
2) Site implementation: $2k-$3k +/- (quoted individually) for a site where we take a design and implement it in WordPress.
3) Custom software (WordPress plugins and up). As i get to know the clients, I will likely run across needs for custom development. These won't be the main thing we're doing here, but they will add nicely to the bottom line, and will keep my developers happy.
The clients:
Marketing agencies that are good at marketing, but not good at the technical side of things.
I've started a number of things over the years, but have failed to gain traction for a number of reasons. The last thing I started into was an app for weightlifting. There's a progress thread on it somewhere here that I stopped a while back. I still think its a good idea and kick myself that I didn't have it up and running for the coronavirus. But, I need money now, not sometime, potentially, in the future.
I stumbled into an idea recently that I want to pursue. It won't make me rich, but it will make me stable, and I can use it to springboard into other things. All the software we write is web based, in PHP, which means that we're pretty good at WordPress. I recently built a website for someone on the forum. His marketing company designed the thing, and we implemented it in WordPress. One thing led to another, and I seem to now be in the marketing business. Crossing my fingers that I'm going to close a $50k website deal this week. Regardless of what happens with that deal, I've also taken over the 6 websites this marketing company runs. I'm doing the support and maintenance of it. Anything technical, and any changes to the website will be specified by the marketing company and performed by my team.
What is pretty cool about this is that it lends itself to extreme levels of process development. I've already set up the marketing company with access into Jira, my project mgt system. They will make their requests there. My team will move them along the pipeline and out the other end.
(Custom software is the opposite end of the spectrum, process-wise. Sure, there's a process, but I haven't specialized in an industry, so each new system is very different from each other.)
I know that there are some marketing companies out there that do everything in-house. There is a decent percentage of them, though, that have no interest in doing the technical side of things. That is where my team comes in.
The offering:
1) Technical support, maintenance and site updates: $225/month/site for a standard small to medium business website. Think: 15 pages or less, pizza chain, custom home builder, etc.
2) Site implementation: $2k-$3k +/- (quoted individually) for a site where we take a design and implement it in WordPress.
3) Custom software (WordPress plugins and up). As i get to know the clients, I will likely run across needs for custom development. These won't be the main thing we're doing here, but they will add nicely to the bottom line, and will keep my developers happy.
The clients:
Marketing agencies that are good at marketing, but not good at the technical side of things.
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