114. How I would sell web design as an advisor—not a freelancer

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I have been building and designing websites for nearly two decades.

Wild, right? Doesn't feel that long.

I started out in the early 2000's as a hobby as a teenager. Eventually, I did it as a freelancer, turned the work into an agency, branched out into other areas of marketing along the way, and some time later became a marketing advisor.

If I had to go back to my roots and sell web design services, I'd consider doing it as an advisor with some back end digital products.

In fact, I thought about offering an advisory package to my coworking website around web design for coworking spaces. I also have a small info product on web design for coworking spaces, which would be another way I'd consider doing things.

So how would I do web design as an advisor?

Loosely speaking, it would go like this.

1. I'd specialize in a vertical/industry who need and value excellent web design and have a budget for great work. 
2. I'd offer an initial strategy portion to help get clarity on scope, goals, and strategic requirements. Price determined by expected scope and value.
3. I'd then sell a fixed-fee project based on the scope to oversee the implementation of the website design project. Basically, I'd be insurance they'd get a great result.
4. I'd bring in strong developers, designers, and content people and introduce them to the client—not marking up their time. Ideally a mix of prices to offset some of the strategy costs.
5. I'd either manage the project (not ideal) or make myself available to review and answer questions along the way.
6. I'd then potentially sell an ongoing retainer (or include some time post-launch in my project scope) to ensure the goals are met and make tweaks to help it get there if not.

It's not a perfectly clear vision in my head, but I think I could do it and it would be a net benefit for similar costs to the client in the end. But only if I specialized.

The only way you can sell your expertise instead of your hands (without a massive audience) is to be the best at what you do. Which means specializing.

Otherwise, people will roll the dice on a generalist and figure it out themselves.

This relates back to the last episode with a question from Ant Pugh. The approach is slightly different but still along the same lines, just applied to web design instead of elearning.

I'd also begin to package my expertise into a course and/or themes for a vertical industry, allowing my expertise to be leveraged at scale for an even wider audience.

—k